How many of you play online? Thinking about hosting a tournament...

By Rogue Dakotan, in Imperial Assault Skirmish

do many of you play online using Vassel or Tabletop Simulator?

I've never used either but if enough of you do, and would be interested in participating in a friendly tournament hosted by The Jodo Cast (there would likely be prizes) then I might actually get around to learning vassel or Tabletop Sim.

Lemme know.

I would love to, but time and other concerns have kept me from taking the plunge. That and every time I've looked besides one time, I've never seen anyone on to start a game with

I tried to join a vassal league once but after a few games it became evident that it's just too hard to line up games between different time zones. Throw in kids and work schedules and I think our 6 player Round Robbin got through 4 matches.

I try to play online all the time.

Hard to find matches, though.

With the league, the problem was people just wouldn't schedule their matches.

If people weren't scheduling, could you just set a deadline and give players who didn't make an effort to schedule games a loss for the match? Or drop them from the league?

We've organised a vassal tournament at the Boardwars podcast earlier this year and we did limit who could participate according to time zone to avoid those scheduling conflicts. On the other hand it feels unhandy to barr some of our listeners from participating due to location. I don't know if there is any simple solution to the problem, unfortunately, but we will likely host another one in the future, trying to draw on our experience from the first one.

If people weren't scheduling, could you just set a deadline and give players who didn't make an effort to schedule games a loss for the match? Or drop them from the league?

Yeah it's tough. We had a deadline of course but people didn't seem to care much. I don't even know what happened to the league, maybe I got booted (even though I had the most games in my group), maybe our whole group got booted.

Problem with deadlines is they have to be long enough to give everyone enough time, but short enough that the league doesn't run for 6 months.

At the same time you don't want to drop half the players but you also don't want to keep extending the time forever. It's a tough balance.

I think limiting it by time zone, or at least for the first swiss round (or round robin) stage makes the most sense.

Maybe having a $5 buy in or something will make sure only those really interested sign up. Might stop some of the "I'll sign up even though I probably won't finish" people.

I'd be down.

Couldn't commit sorry, still haven't played online either but I'm spending a lot of time playing physical version and I'm limited by timezone once kids are in bed

TTS just seems to be an easier experience. I'll be glad to play on TTS.

Vassal is much better than TTS for the following reasons:
​1) Lobby to wait for people to get on to find games

2) On TTS, you must lock all your rooms or else random people come in and screw up your game

3) Setup is faster

4) Dice are easier to use

5) Tracking damage and conditions are way better

6) No need to scroll around all over the place just to see things. In TTS it is hard to see figures, dice, cards. You have to continuously zoom in and out and move around.

7) Easy to save replays/game logs

TTS has these advantages:

1) More like the actual game, if you like that kind of thing

2) Voice chat built in

Edited by DTDanix

I'd like to get involved in this if there is a chance please. I'm new to the game but have experience playing armada over vassal.

Didn't have a problem playing with U.S. players (I'm in west Europe).

I would be interested, haven't played it on TTS or Vas but willing to learn

I would be interested during the summer, but I'd have to pass until then. School teacher life...

-ryanjamal

Just played my first IA game for the first time ever on vassal and got wrecked! :P It's so much fun! Can't wait for my physical copy to arrive in the post this week :) Hope to see you guys around online

You could have people sign up for specific Time Zones. So if you sign up for GMT, and you live in EST it's on you to be there for scheduling. Seems much better than an entrance fee.

Do people play online much? I just downloaded Vassal and the IA module a couple of days ago and haven't seen a single active game yet.

I play a lot, but there really aren't that many people that show up.

I generally try to be on 7-10 PM PST weekdays. Afternoons as well on weekends.

Vassal also seems to have a bug where if you're sitting there alone you eventually get disconnected from the server, so you need to disconnect/reconnect every now and then (15 minutes?) to still show up in the active list.

I recommend the Imperial Assault Skirmish Command Post facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1551885518468362/

Good place to ask to try to find a match.

If someone wants to organize this then I'd definitely love to play. I know the Vassal version well (since I'm the guy who designed and programmed it). I haven't had a chance to learn the TTS version yet, but I'd be happy to learn it if we end up going that route.

I ended up grabbing TTS since I saw it on a good sale one day. Still haven't even had time to try out yet though lol.

I ended up grabbing TTS since I saw it on a good sale one day. Still haven't even had time to try out yet though lol.

Well let me know what you think of the TTS skirmish Mod. I've been quite swamped for time to keep it updated but I do my best.

I've never played online but I would definitely be up for giving it a try.

If this is still a thing that's possible, count me in

I still haven't tried Vassel yet, but I have TTS now even though I haven't even had time to try it yet...