[iliketrains]

Multiplayer is a big topic and it is obviously on our minds. The big questions is what type of multiplayer would be the best for this kind of game?

Would it be coop where each player would start on their corner of the map? Or would it be shared factory? Of maybe each player with its own island + trading?

Also, it is technically very challenging, since the entire simulation must be perfectly deterministic. We actually have most of the things deterministic, maybe like 95%, fixing the last 5% is a lot of work.

[paraph1n]

Leave it up to the player. If they want to build a shared factory, so be it. If they want to build on separate corners of the map, that's cool too.

Just place the players in the same game world.

With regards to trickiness of determinism and what not, just make it so there's an authoritative server running the simulation, and the other players/clients just get their source of truth from the server.

The server could be an actual dedicated server program that has no frontend, or it could be one of the clients in the game.

[culopatin]

I always wanted to try a game where you join an economy and your supply impacts the demand of others and changes the price, etc.

When playing Minecraft as a kid I always envisioned getting specialized in finding certain minerals or making certain items and selling them but I guess it was too early in the game and that wasn’t an option. There might be a mod now that allows for thag

[ialexpw]

Own island + trading would be great. You could end up having an island that "specialises" on a certain comodity and trading with other players.