On an old thread on this topic the methods and pitfalls were discussed
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...&threadid=7898 . I have bumped it up in the General/help forum as well.
Here's one of the most informative posts as given by Walt
______________________________________
As cbn mentioned, I've made the switch back and forth from tcp/ip game to and from pbem game seamlessly and fairly often, although only in AXT042 have I ever done it with four participants. However, I have a lot of experience running the procedure in 3- and 2-player games.
The procedure to go from tcp/ip play to pbem is as buster described. The only caveat I'd mention here is to use the procedure that cbn describes. Make sure all players have finished their turns but /not/ pressed 'End Turn'. Once it's ascertained that this condition is met, the Host saves the game. If playing Ironman, this will end the session, or at least the Host's involvement in it. It's important to be aware of that. If not playing Ironman, the game is saved and the Host can inform everyone. At this point, everyone can drop the game. Once everyone's gone, the Host can exit the game without being asked whether he wants to cowardly slink away in shame (or something like that...). The Host plays the turn as a normal pbem turn and sends it to the next player.
To go the other way, from pbem to tcp/ip, the Host loads the saved game turn, chooses his faction, waits for everyone else to do the same, as one normally would in a tcp/ip game. The procedure varies a little bit from SMAC to SMAX, as more factions are available in the latter. Thus, all AI factions must be specifically stipulated by the Host. I don't know what happens if this step isn't performed, but I imagine the Host would receive an error message and the game would go no further until he stipulated the requisite factions.
For those who aren't acquainted with the procedure, tcp/ip games are easy to Host or Join. From the intro menu, once you've started either SMAC or SMAX, choose 'Multiplayer' and choose "tcp/ip game". At this point (or maybe the next - somewhere in there it asks you your name...) you're asked whether you'd like to Host or Join a game. If you want to Join a game (i.e., you're not hosting the session), choose Join. You'll get a system (Windows or, presumably, Mac, and now Linux) dialog box asking you to enter a specific IP address. Enter the IP address given to you by the person hosting the session. You'll see a window listing all the specs for the game you're joining, the persons already connected to the session and their faction choices and difficulty levels. Choose your own faction and difficulty level and check out all the settings (it helps to have multiple sets of eyes check all the settings to make sure they're all correct).
If you're hosting the session, before you start up SMAC or SMAX you should determine your IP address and let the other people playing know what that is. Windows 95/98 users can determine their IP address by clicking on the 'Start' button in the lower left hand corner of their task bar, selecting 'Run', and typing winipcfg.exe. For NT users (if SMAC even runs under NT...) it would be ipcfg.exe. Might be the same under Windows 2000 and/or Windows ME, but I don't know. If anyone does, please pipe up. I don't know the procedure for Mac or Linux users. Once you know the number, communicate it to the other players. Start up SMAC or SMAX and follow the steps above until it's time to choose Host or Join. Choose Host. You'll get the window/screen mentioned above with faction choices. The Host, however, must select the game to play. Choices are made by clicking on the small blue triangle (or carat) next to the specific game parameter choice. In SMAX, you'll need to populate the game with the AI factions and set their difficulty levels. In SMAC you just need to set the difficulty levels. The rest of the screen is fairly self-explanatory. If there are questions, post 'em on this thread or send 'em to my box, I'll be happy to help.
A couple (possibly important) things to consider: The switch /to/ tcp/ip screws players who have not yet taken their turns: everyone loses their turn in the mission year in which tcp/ip is started. Always. Thus, if you don't start a tcp/ip session, coming from pbem, with the first person in the turn order, then that person, and whoever else has gone already, gets a free turn (the turn they played before going to tcp/ip). Thus, I usually make sure that the last person in turn order has played and have them send the turn to the host instead of to the next/first person in turn order.
Something similar happens coming /out/ of tcp/ip and going back to pbem. The host (and anyone after him) get to play the mission year in which you leave tcp/ip again. That is, for them it's the next turn, but no advance of the mission calendar occurs. The only way I could see around this would be for the first person in the turn sequence to save the game, and resume play from his game save. But (and this is a big "but"), I don't know whether his save contains all the necessary information to continue playing the game. We will probably be testing this in AXT042 on May 12th unless someone can provide info to answer this question before then.
That's about all I've got regarding this topic. PBEM really does advance play in a mighty speedy manner, and I suggest everyone try it.
I'd like to make a suggestion for further tournament games: to facilitate switches from pbem to tcp/ip and back, I would suggest that the person with the biggest machine and best internet connection be placed first in the turn order. This would require Tau Ceti to inquire regarding these details (perhaps the intro message in the sign up thread could be edited) and, worse yet, to keep track of the details. Quite possibly impractical. The point may be moot if the remote game save has the requisite information to continue the game via pbem. Then the primacy of the Host would be largely irrelevant (although still convenient). We'll know on May 12th (I think...).
Thanks for reading...
