Nothing fancy - this is Weewar so let's keep it simple ... but I had a thought; would be good to create a simple alliance with another player (or as many as you want) just a simple on/off and all it does is disable ZOC for the units of those two players.

For example - I got a private message from a player in my game letting me know they wanted to move some ships past me to attack someone else and that they wouldn't attack me. I trust them, but they can't get past because of the ZOC issue.

It would be nice if you can't shoot @ 1another either, unless you break the alliance again. Both players need to have the 'alliance with ...' switched on to have an alliance. When somebody switches it off... you know what is going to happen!

Enabling proper team games is something we'd really like to add. We'll look into the next steps after tomorrows maps update!

cool!   ... and then after that back to balancing?

balancing first! that way we can test and give comments while you guys work on team games

Balancing won't be signed off as fixed until I start winning games!

hahaha... team games need to be created. I guess you should also not be allowed to capture allied bases? that would be very usefull as a first step to prevent instant backstabbing.

BTW, how do you private message?

shadow - if you're talking about in tangler, then i'm pretty sure you have to be "friends".  then you choose to "chat" with that friend that you want to message.

I think team dynamics should be carefully considered. Same as Nathaniel I thing ZOC ignorance is enough.

1) kill allied units can be necessary/usefull if a mates unit is in the way of a much stronger unit (speedboat blocking a BB). In which case, if its for the victory, I dont mind my team mate killing my unit to advance the common goal.

2) taking an team mates 's bases is also a necessity and should not be forbidden. Sometimes you want to exchange bases for strategical purposes. Disabling this will cause some serious trouble!

3) As soon as everyone else gets wiped out, with only allied players left in the game, should end the game immediately (or maybe optional, asking players if they wanna continue, but I am against this option). I then also think that all allies should be awarded a "win". I am aware however that this shouts for abuse, for both win stats and points awarded.

4) You should not be able at ally with everyone on the map, to prevent the cases of instead of peace, everyone just allies, so everyone gets a win. I guess one way around this is to just limit alliance creation to the first 3 rounds, or even only to the game start.

5) An alliance should take a turn before its cancelled, depending on what approach is taken above.

6) If alliances are chosen at game start, then players should be allowed to choose a team, hence a starting position.

any thoughts?

sounds good streen.

To keep things simple, I think it boils down to two things:

(1) Have the option to "trust" another player.  When you trust them, your units don't exert ZOC on their units.  Note that this is uni-directional; the other side independently trusts or doesn't trust your side.

(2) Auto-win or auto-peace when all remaining sides trust each other fully.

I think the zoc disabling (trust) should be toggleable throughout the game as diplomacy and military strategy sees fit.

Besides ZOC effects, you should still be able to attack allied units, take over their bases, etc.

On the surface, I like the strategy considerations that go along with ZOC.  There is some rationale that units from different countries acting in vicinity of each other should be less effient, in their attacking (e.g. no attacking bonus benefit) as well as movement.

More broadly speaking of team games: One potential problem I've wondered about, is when players join that know each other, and communicate outside of the message board or naturally become allies (it's can be impossible to know for sure what makes an alliance)... without the other players being aware of this connection.  It would be nice if players could be blinded in FFA games, along with some rules that communication is not supposed to occur outside of the game message board in those games.

For team games, I also like the idea of giving a start up option for preestablished unchanging teams vs. free alliance play vs. ffa play.

Maybe its easyer if this model is for teamgames only, not really for alliances made and broken during the game. So to make sure everyone is aware of whats happening teams should be set before the start of the game.

Also, something I forgot to mention before:

7) you dont gain any points if a teammate bites the dust

I think many of this depends on the time and effort which the devs are willing to put into this, as some of the ideas here are easy to implement, others are a lot harder.

good ideas XD