Zireael wrote:Why have multiplayer Oolite, when we can have Hired Guns and Personalities, and (hopefully) Squadron Leader, and Galactic Navy...
This is more or less my opinion as well. These are OXPs which bring sort of a multiplayer experience into a single player Ooniverse (perhaps not GalNav, but the others). Personally I don't want more than that, so I don't particularly care for a multiplayer Oolite.
All the (in)frequently popping up debates have been more or less circling around the same lines. In short: Oolite in its totality cannot be ported into multiplayer. It's simply too vast,
both in
size of its universe (2048 systems, which means that short of a couple of hundred players it's unlikely to meet anybody else), and in
scope of its gameplay (exploring, trading, fighting, contract-delivery, missions, and whatnot). In order to make it practical for multiplayer, you have to cut down every aspect of it: restrict it to one galaxy only, even one system (or a couple of systems) only, get rid of the trading mechanism, make it into a pure arena combat environment. Which means that the final result wouldn't really resemble Oolite. Which begs the question: what's the point of a multiplayer Oolite, if it stops being Oolite? And would the resulting multiplayer game be attractive in its own right? Either that, or it wouldn't be much more than the IRC channel is right now: a mere opportunity to chat while playing.