Increased Ally Sharability

Good idea - I vote for "and"

And maybe a "Lock Alliances" and "Friendly Fire" button, just to escape the annoying allies who back stab you.

You can already create game modes with fixed alliances.

More ally interaction is a good thing.

Another suggestion for this:
[ ]Shared Prism Tower Supports and Tesla Overpowering
Not sure if any of these options should be user-controlled or mod-controlled - the mod should probably be able to decide who has control.

I would very much like this to be added it provides ally gameplay promotes teamwork :)

hogo

So, lets say, two countries are sharing Power.. then suddenly, out of nowhere, comes a floating disk.. One of the countries, that had weak air defenses, had its power sabotaged, what happens next?.. Does the second country lose it power too? or does its power compensate for the first country's lack of power, and thus neutralize the sabotage?

The same goes for money.. What happens when Sofia's so called 'Cursed Allied Spies' manage to steal all of your money.. Does that go for the Alliance as well?

And yeah, it would be very realistic if the 'Link Power' on the diplomacy screen costs money, depending on the distance between the two bases (May be a center point like the Construction yard.. if more than one exists, the Closest one)

I guess that should be optional for the modder. IMO it would require a lot more teamwork if all allied players lost their power to one Disk, or all their cash to some Spies.

So here's a proposal.

* Power can be shared.
* Money would be better off sharable (diplomacy screen)
* My ally can use additional power from my base, not if I don't have more than 100 power to spare.
   * If someone drains my power, then any player using power from my base will loose THAT SPECIFIC AMOUNT of power, but he should still have power from his own powerplant
   * If someone drains power from a base leeching my power, it will loose its own power, but will still be able to use the power it is leeching from me. And, if I hold a few additional Nuclear Reactors, and if that power can compensate for his base's loss of power, he should be able to use that power (atleast to power up his defenses and get rid of the threat)..

Sounds Pretty Complicated.. but IMO, it shouldn require much more than a couple of IF and CASE definitions.. (just my Opinion, not that I know much about C++)

any ideas on further improvement/refinement?

money should be donated on diplomacy screen

Okay I think it would be cool to have this.
1.Share power
2.Share Money
3.Share money by donation
4.Share power through donation
5.Share tech
6.Share specific tech through donation or option's
7.Share all (this would just select all of them)

I'd rather prefer gameplay wise sharability to all this diplomatic options, like Allowing Undock Harvester at ally's Refinery to fund him, or using his Service Depot, Helipads or Super Powers, or ability to give him full control of specific unit\building (new MCV replacement instead destroyed one)

Just do share money by donation and leave it at that. That's all multiplayer needs. The rest is just garbage.

Ability to power up allies' Tesla Coils or Prism Towers should be available though.

Maybe there should be a cool down time and/or limit on donating money though, so a player cant spy an AI and then the whole team of players gets insta rich for example.

I really like the idea of sharing surplus power, as it expands the role options for player. Same goes for sharing surplus money, maybe a box in the diplomacy screen that sets the level to begin sharing. Direct donation is also good.

Here is what I see as the best ideas in this discussion:

--Ability to have all of the team's base powered by all of the team's powerplants-- that is, all of the team supplies power to one power meter and all the team's buildings add to one big drain value. Disks and spies will shut down the entire team's power grid.

--Disabling allies' ability to force-fire on your units

--Sharing money through donation

--Allowing harvesters to dock at allies' refineries (this was already possible in RA2)

--Powering up allies' tesla and prism towers

--Being able to use allies' service depots (I think this was possible in RA2)

--Being able to use allies' airports (you can alt-click on an airfield to force aircraft to dock at a specific airfield; it would be useful if you could do this with allies' airfields)

The stuff I outlined above is really all that we need and it's all this is really feasible to code. All this extra Power sharing hoopla is stupidly complicated; I say keep it simple if anything.

Just heard about this diplomacy thing (that's the downside of jingoism, I suppose), so forgive me if this refers to stuff that goes counter to Ares's diplomacy system.

There should be a button (the ally button) in the diplomacy sidebar that acts like the sell button, only by clicking it multiple times it cycles through your allies and you. Clicking on any of your TechnoTypes while an ally is selected with the button will give that ally control. Clicking on an ally's TechnoType while you are selected via the ally button will ask that ally to transfer control over to you. Right-clicking while in ally button mode will take you out of ally mode, just as right-clicking while in sell-mode will take you out of sell mode. The ally button will be the house color of the selected ally (which defaults to yourself).

This will be represented by an ally icon (set to the house color of the sender for the receiver) with an exclamation mark next to it for a granted request or a question mark for a request. To clear a request or retake a building, select yourself with the ally button and click the building.

For sanity's sake, I'm making a few sub-optimal decisions:
* You can't have and "everyone" in the ally menu, since you probably couldn't have that without extensive ASM
* You can't transfer a TechnoType in the middle of building something (or rather you can, but it will abort construction since you may well reclaim a second construction yard and be building an Allied barracks *while building a Soviet Barracks you lack the prerequisites for!*

I'd suggest putting an [TechnoType]>AllySell= flag, so you can have the following cases:
*If it's 0, you can't sell it if it isn't yours (Construction Yard).
*If it's 1, you can sell it, but the original owner gets the money (for the Nuclear Reactor).
*If it's 2, you can sell it and get money for it regardless of who's it really is (might sound stupid, but let's face it: we do awesome stuff with stupid ideas all the time in this community).

Instead of a diplomacy menu, there should be a diplomacy sidebar. The objectives menu works because it pauses. It wouldn't work if whenever you stopped to look at your objectives the tanks were still killing you. If by diplomacy menu you mean like temporarily replacing the map like the score screen does, though, or some other overlay rather than something like that takes you out of the action like the pause screen, that'll work.

P.S. Anyone know where this diplomacy menu issue is? I did a quick search and all it gave was this topic.

How about something more uncommon?

Maybe...

Some sort of invisible-virtual waypoints you could create in-game by action button to order your allies to attack the area you have chosen?

Being able to order your allies' units (without owner transfer) is multiple kinds of stupid. I don't think I need to explain why.

I'm not saying you could just control them anywhere, anytime

I'm talking about ask your friendly (of course computer only) for a support, then he would create a team that would move to that waypoint and areaguard there.

hahah, in the future they might be even script-taunts for the allies like
"Focus on Economy"
"Focus on Defense"
"Focus on Attack"
:D

I'd say refine it to this:

Diplomacy menu on skirmish screen (to facilitate the new alliance additions)

Radio buttons controlling:

Build off ally conyard (can be changed to base via string & ini editing)
Disable friendly fire (make allied units immune to each other's fire)
Share money between allies (like RA3, splits it to both player's stockpile)
Share power between allies (similar to money, power split between allies)
Share unique tech between allies
Share Stolen Tech benefits between allies (note 1)
Share Tesla & Prism power ups between allies
Share MCV with ally (note 2)

Maybe even sliders for percentages for power and money like this:

Money percentage kept: 0% |------------| 100%

Power percentage kept: 0% |------------| 100%

Note 1: By stolen tech, I mean the tech index, not the unit. So if an allied player spies on a soviet player's battle lab, their ally, whom is soviet, gets a Tesla Ivan (allied spying soviet), not a Tesla Commando (soviet spying soviet). Since the way the units are developed by the spy logic in theory is that the spy recovers tech information on that side that allows the player that spied to produce a unit that has hybrid tech of their side and the enemy side.

Note 2: Essentially speaking, this is like unholy alliance. If you're Allied and your ally is Soviet, then you get a Soviet MCV along with you're standard Allied MCV. This means the logic has to not give Allied allied with Allied players 2 of the same MCV.

My full support. But!:
If it's possible, it's not good to "share" something, be it power, money, etc. The reasons can be read above. Instead, make something much simpler and much more efficient and straightforward: change owner for (donate) objects.
This way, you can give energy by donating a powerplant; give money by the means of a miner/refinery; tech by a tech/Factory building, so on. This way we're not straying away from the default game. Plus you can give units/infantry.
Nevertheless, it wouldn't be too much of strategy if the allies had each other's tech tree. Well, then make it so you could only give units/inf (my opinion). Past this point, sharing energy, tech, is not strategy-wise.
The prism/tesla thing is pretty neat.
For a full customization, a tag like IsDonable= can be made for builds/units/inf

Anyway, I play multiplayer 80% and it'd be more enjoyable with this feature. It's a must.

Full support. I like mireazma's donation idea. Many a time I have wished that I could just give allies units/buildings so that it would be more useful to them. But how would it work with multiple allies?

Prism/Tesla thing is simply a must.

Note to whoever develops this:
Prism Forwarding allows modder to specify Prism sharing on a per-BuildingType basis. There are relevant checks in PrismForwarding.cpp and Hooks.Prism.cpp - search for PrismForwarding.ToAllies

Modder should specify individual prism towers as allowing shared beams as well as this option having to be on (iff the option is included).

I'd personally like to re-iterate what i said above:

--Disabling allies' ability to force-fire on your units
--Sharing money through donation (that's DONATION; having two players spending from one credit pool was one of the stupidest ideas they came up with in RA3)
--Allowing harvesters to dock at allies' refineries (this was already possible in RA2)
--Powering up allies' tesla and prism towers (already possible)
--Being able to use allies' service depots (I think this was possible in RA2)
--Being able to use allies' airports (you can alt-click on an airfield to force aircraft to dock at a specific airfield; it would be useful if you could do this with allies' airfields)

The stuff I outlined above is really all that we need and it's all this is really feasible to code. All this extra Power sharing hoopla is stupidly complicated; I say keep it simple if anything.

Now to address a new idea that was presented above:

I personally do not like the idea of country tech/special tech/stolen spy tech sharing, nor am I particularly fond of point-and-click owner transferring. For country techs, well, countries are each unique for a reason. If two allies pick two different countries, it's because they are going to be playing slightly different roles in the game.

If you go one France and one Korea, for example, well then one will be camping with grand cannons and protecting the other player while he pounds the enemies with aircraft. If both players got both grand cannons and black eagles, that would be rather unfair, because then both players would be able to build grand cannons and pound the enemy with aircraft simultaneously. I am a strong believer in distinct roles in a team dynamic like this. If you have each player focus on one thing they can do it much more effectively than 2 or 3 players trying to do everything at once.

For special tech/spy tech sharing, all I can say is that one player getting such tech is a big enough advantage. Imagine if one player got in an allied battle lab, and all 3 enemy teammates got Chrono Commandos.

I know someone's gonna say "well if you let the spy in, it's your fault" but one player having the advantage is enough of a punishment, IMO.