Battle of Tsushima

[anav]

Hi all
I'm relatively new here, so this might seem like a stupid question, but has anyone ever even tried a Multi play Battle of Tsushima? The battle is basically the climax of the whole war at sea so I assume the answer is yes. However since the game has some pretty severe multi play problems, I wonder if it was a sucessful effort or just abandonded in favor of campaigns against the AI.
My primary interest is in large Multi Player naval battles and I've been pursueing this with DG since I bought the game a few months ago. Well not large as we learned very early on that any number of players over 2 is impossible.
Based on what I've learned about the game I think the Battle of Tsushima can be done if all the players other then the two fleet commanders are content with the command of just one division. DG is such an excellent and viusally stunning naval simulation though I would certainly be content to have only one division in order to fight in a big battle.
Some MP questions remain however, and hopefully the assembled brain trust here can answer them for me.
The first one is how many players can the game take?
Is it possible for the fleet commander, or owning player, to expand the size of a division command by combining it with another division once the battle has started?
Is it possible for the Fleet commander to take back a shot up division and assign a another division to a player?
Last but not least is there enough interest here to give the big battle a try?
Would SES be interested in trying to organize such an event if only to help answer some of the problems with Mulit player games? Probably not right now as I'm sure all hands are trying to get Jutland out the door, but I thought I'd ask anyway.
Regards Anav

[MajorDamage]

I've never actually tried multiplayer DG but from the impression I get from reading posts here is that it doesn't tend to work all that well. I could be totally wrong on this of course, but seeing as nobody else has posted a response I thought I'd bump the thread, mostly because I'd be very interested to see other people's comments on this. I too would love to be able to take part in a multiplayer Tsushima. It's the kind of thing computers were invented for. :)

If DG had a good stable multiplayer component, preferably with some sort of metaserver lobby system (like Defcon for example), and an active multiplayer community, I'd be playing it a lot more. I hope this is something that SES get the time and resources to look at in the future.

[anav]

Yes I agree, clearly multi player games are not high on the list for members of this forum, or they believe it just can't be done. I've been writing about MP games since I joined and not once has anyone replied that they tried all that back in the day when the game was new. So I tend to think there is just not a lot of interest in the idea.
I also asked a few MP questions in my post to which no one has replied. Since members of this forum do not appear shy in giving their opinions, I have to conclude that no knows the anwsers.
At the risk of repeating myself, I've found that 2 player MP games can be done. The system works and is great fun. The only thing to remember is that the host defaults as the Russian, and the 2nd player defaults as the Japanese. Players must leave these defaults alone. An attempt to change them confuses the game and does not work.
An even larger problem though is it appears in games of more then two players, each additional player can only be assigned one division. An attempt to assign additional divisions once play has started confuses the game again. The assignments never go as wished. They appear random and often assign players from the other side. Plus once assigned the fleet commander cannot undo whats been done, and try again.
All this means that getting a large MP game off the ground would be like walking on eggshells. If a group could be got together to try it, they would have to be patient and prepared for several tries. Also of course everyone but the fleet commanders would have to be content with only one division to play with.
At this stage any attempt to actually try the battle of Tsushima would probably have to be organized and sponsored by SES itself. Something I doubt they would try to do. Hopefully the fix for MP play is in Jutland and can be back fitted into DG in due course. (Hopefully)?! :)

Regards Anav