OpenRA

Should there be an automatic win in the game, if all the enemy players have either disconnected or surrendered?

At the moment, in a 3v3 say, one enemy player may surrender, and the other two enemy players may disconnect, and you are left having to destroy their two base for the win. Yes, you can just disconnect yourself knowing that the game is won, but would it be better if the game automatically ends when all enemy players are gone?

https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/13284
Already in the works

As was discussed in IRC and discord, this is also the issue of correctly ending the game, because if in 1v1 one player just leaves without surrendering, game outcome could be incorrect, leading to replay file stating incorrect winner and also problems with parsing game results for ranked games in the future.

The current behaviour of OpenRA was not a deliberate choice, but instead a technical limitation from the way disconnects were detected and reported until recently.

Most people who played online before the 2017 playtests/releases will probably remember the crashes that would randomly occur when a player disconnects. Having a player's buildings/units explode when they disconnect made those crashes happen much more often.

The bug that caused those crashes should have been fixed in release-20170421, and it would not be difficult to implement the surrender on disconnect logic. All of the hard work is in testing the change to make sure it does not introduce any new desync crashes, and previous discussions on this topic suggest that this hard work would be rewarded with arguments from people who vocally prefer the current behaviour. That makes this an unenjoyable and therefore low prioriy feature to implement, even for those of us who think this is an obvious bug that should be fixed.

Sleipnir wrote: ↑ -Snip-

Would it be possible to implement it as a choice for the server owner or the first player in a server rather than a constant? Then at least there is a choice for players, though i can understand if you would rather not pollute the options menu with these kinds of thing.

Note that the poll is 'Should the game automatically end when all enemy players are gone?' not 'Should a players buildings and units be destroyed when they disconnect?'.

I suggest the latter is not desirable as during a team game it is already difficult enough to persist with a 2v3, 3v4, etc. after a player disconnects. It'd be harder again if the disconnecting player's units and base (with the ability to build off of it) disappear, along with ceding map control. Of course, 1v1s are covered by the poll question.

That would be technically possible, but I wouldn't support adding more UI (which means more code, more things to test, and more things that could influence bugs in the future) to maintain something that i consider to be a bug in the first place.

Surrender on Leave is simple and ready, but was refused. I think it would in the meantime improve the situation.

GDave wrote: ↑Note that the poll is 'Should the game automatically end when all enemy players are gone?' not 'Should a players buildings and units be destroyed when they disconnect?'.

I suggest the latter is not desirable as during a team game it is already difficult enough to persist with a 2v3, 3v4, etc. after a player disconnects. It'd be harder again if the disconnecting player's units and base (with the ability to build off of it) disappear, along with ceding map control. Of course, 1v1s are covered by the poll question.

I agree with your point here.

Surrender on disconnect just makes team games harder for one side. That was never the feature I was interested in.

There is a related idea, #3001, which is to allow an AI bot to take over when a player disconnects. This could perhaps integrate with Murto's suggestion for a lobby setting, with three options (do nothing, surrender, AI take over).

I am personally not a fan of this AI take over idea though, because it will make it a lot more difficult to write better / more performant AI bots that depend on building up internal state across the course of a game. Dumping a full player's worth of stuff at a new bot would require special code to work out what it has and build up any missing state, which may not be easy or possible for some of the more interesting AI implementations.

Edit: spelling/wording clarity.

IMO we can/should forget this AI option. I don't know other such game. And if the bot will be better than the player, it is also unfair, makes the game unnecessary longer despite players surrending (=leaving),...

r0b0v wrote: ↑I don't know other such game

Civ V (and supposedly VI) does this. This produces some peculiar results when weak player is swapped with Emperor AI who then plays much stronger due to his cheating mechanics.

Still, AI sub should not be a subject here (or rather should be a separate issue). When your opponent leaves in a competitve 1v1 game and then surprisingly you lose to an AI sub that will also give crazy problems

Slightly relevent. I once won a 2vs2 game when my ally disconnected as he had a GPS go off. I killed his harvesters and just built up around his base. Was a nice challenge so surrender on d/c i'm not keen on.

It can be a game option then

eskimo wrote: ↑Slightly relevent. I once won a 2vs2 game when my ally disconnected as he had a GPS go off. I killed his harvesters and just built up around his base. Was a nice challenge so surrender on d/c i'm not keen on.

exactly. It should only kill everything if a condition is met like "All Team Surrendered or Disconnected"

Alternatively, when all enemies are (Gone), display the victory score-screen with options to 'exit' and 'continue playing'.