On nights where we are utilising multiple ships for an operation we are going to need ...
Intra-ship comms for multi-crewed vessels - skipper and crew
Inter-ship comms for ship groups - skippers within the group only
Inter-ship comms for fleet command - all skippers
And probably some I haven't thought of.
I'm not sure what else is out there but I feel TS ain't gonna cut it.
I'll do some research to see if there's something with the flexibility we'll need regarding multiple whisper channels etc.
Quote from: OldBloke;409445I'm not sure what else is out there but I feel TS ain't gonna cut it.
I'll do some research to see if there's something with the flexibility we'll need regarding multiple whisper channels etc.
Why would TS not cut it? You can join multiple instances of TS to have multiple channel cross chat, and you can have whisper channels where appropriate.
There might also be something else out there, but I suspect they will all have limitations.
Gonna need a new keyboard for all the push to talk buttons
A room for each ship and the Captain has the ability to whisper to other ship captains. Small ships could enter a squadron room with the leader having cross channel whisper abilities.
TS I think can definitely handle this.
i suppose until we try different things we wont know how well it will work. But preferably would like to use TS
...i didnt realise you can have several instances open at once, handy to know :thumb:
Quote from: Sparko;409478...i didnt realise you can have several instances open at once, handy to know :thumb:
From your bookmark list, right click and select 'Connect in new tab'.
It'sd always worth looking about for better tools. I think TS could handle the requirements although the keybinds will be fun to get right. If there's a better tool out there though it's worth looking into.
I agree that TeamSpeak should be able to handle this setup.
There's not much else out there though, but Discord is fast becoming the defacto VOIP system being adopted by many gaming groups. It is being actively developed, and they have just had a $20m injection of capital to develop it further!
There are a number of things it doesn't support that many are saying are a must in order to migrate to it, with nested channels and whisper/shout functions being on the request list. If you want to lend some weight to any of the requests, head on over to their feedback forum (https://feedback.discordapp.com/forums/326712-discord-dream-land?query=whisper) and vote for the features you want the most.
Nested channels (or categories) are being reviewed, and are probably necessary for whisper/shout functions to work, so progress is being made.
It just remains to be seen as to whether or not they develop it sufficiently for our needs before SC launches.
:)
Also, don't forget that CIG are also going to be developing their own VOIP system for use in game.
From what I can remember it is going to be very much along the lines of what OB is suggesting but with additional 'public' channels that relate to the environment that you're in, so, for example, there will be a 'hailing' channel that will broadcast to all players who are listening on that channel within a certain radius as well as on-the-fly 'private' channels that can be used to hold conversations with players you meet without having to shout it out across the 'hailing' channel (introducing another game mechanic whereby someone can 'hack' into the conversation to listen in). I believe that there will also be 'global' channels that can be used 'verse-wide so that orgs without 3rd party VOIP can use the in-game VOIP.
I believe that they are also going to be adding various effects for immersion, e.g. distortion and degradation over distance (think the voice comms you hear on Battlestar Galactica). Not sure whether they plan to make this an option though.
There are downsides to using in-game VOIP of course, with the main one being that if you're game client goes down then you lose VOIP as well - unless CIG run it as a separate app that hooks into the game servers based on your login, so it 'knows' where in the verse you are...
There would be nothing to stop us running a TS client as a back-up to the in game voice chat. Bind speak to some obscure keybind and only use it for specific chat i.e. if the in game voice falls over. I assume we will be using it as it gets pushed out by CIG so chances are it will be alpha as well.
Quote from: Obsydian;409667There are downsides to using in-game VOIP of course, with the main one being that if you're game client goes down then you lose VOIP as well - unless CIG run it as a separate app that hooks into the game servers based on your login, so it 'knows' where in the verse you are...
Just call me psychic! :)
Quote from: Obsydian;419263Just call me psychic! :)
I'll add that to the list of your wonderful attributes :flirty:
At the last PACT meeting we spent a bit of non-agenda time discussing Discord. One of the PACT members is strongly for it (always pushing it), but everyone else is still at the stage of 'no thanks, not yet'. The general view was that it needs to sort a lot of functionality out before it could replace TS, despite its other bells and whistles. We left the conversation at 'continue to monitor and see what comes out'.
Was the potential use of Spectrum discussed at all TL?
Yes, we discussed that too, but the consensus was that it had ignored all the bits that they had asked for in beta, removed the bits that were liked in alpha and now generally fell short of anything even halfway useful.
The thing the others can't compete with TS on is maturity and quality. Although not knowing the size of concurrent user count requirements of the PACT SC Alliance I'd guess that any voice server available today might struggle to cope if the game is super popular over a long period of time. TS3 has a 2 VM and 512 combined slot capacity if you register your license. So paying for a higher capacity license is likely the best option and then there's the infrastructure and bandwidth to support many thousands of users required.
In terms of resilience of the solution, I agree that using the SC in built voice and messaging solution as primary is wise. It will likely make for smoother logging, debugging and dispute settling for CIG than third party servers. TS as a backup. Pretty much like we do with CS. Scalability is still a concern though.
Quote from: albert;419317Scalability is still a concern though.
If anyone's going to get scalability right, it'll be the CIG networking engineers - those guys are working real magic behind the scenes.
Quote from: albert;419317TS3 has a 2 VM and 512 combined slot capacity if you register your license.
For info: We have a fully registered licence for our TS.