Advice for an often link-dead player?

[KittenLicks]

Heya, fellow arm peeps! I have the misfortune of living in a place where the power often cuts out for hours on end, often with no warning or any real way to prepare. In a game with permadeath and wildlife that is not terribly understanding of my linkdeadness, this is pretty scary.

Does anyone have any advice on anything I can do to minimize the odds of random linkdead death and/or embarrassment? Whether it's practical suggestions (like "don't play an indie hunter") or technical suggestions?

[triste]

Just checking that you've looked into the obvious:
1. a mobile mud client to connect and quit OOC from if needed.
2. a mobile hotspot + laptop.

I've been traveling for 9 months with unpredictable internet and I have found option 2 works well because my phone can connect to wifi when available and failover to mobile data, all while keeping my connection steady for Armageddon on my laptop.

I hear you though, I would love for there to be a logout button on armageddon.org or some such for when you are suddenly without stable internet.

[Narf]

There are batteries you can plug into the wall with outlets in them that'll keep a router going for a while. You just use them as a power strip. We got one for similar reasons (though we mostly just had issues with brownouts), and it was pretty inexpensive. Also helps with a lot of other necessity type things like light or heat.

[KittenLicks]

Just checking that you've looked into the obvious:
1. a mobile mud client to connect and quit OOC from if needed.

This is my current solution! It's not perfect, unfortunately, the mobile internet gets very spotty when the power is out in this area - I assume because the tower it is supposed to be connecting to is down because no power - but it is better than nothing.

There are batteries you can plug into the wall with outlets in them that'll keep a router going for a while. You just use them as a power strip. We got one for similar reasons (though we mostly just had issues with brownouts), and it was pretty inexpensive. Also helps with a lot of other necessity type things like light or heat.

These sound pretty cool, I'll need to look into these! Thanks.

[triste]

You could always just kill the Whiran and/or Vivaduan terrorizing your area. Fuckin' gicks.

Another expensive option worth mentioning just because it hasn't been mentioned and you're dealing with a crappy cell tower to boot is satellite internet (Hughes Net, DirectTV)*. The bandwidth on these services generally suck but the cool thing about MUDs is they are the lowest bandwidth games around these days.

_{* No, you don't need to wait for Starlink, because just like every one of Musk's "inventions" or "innovations," Starlink isn't new or innovative at all but rather a repackaging of existing technology. I used to work for Tesla and as part of onboarding they show you Musk's patents to show you how ingenious he is BUT the fact is he hasn't invented shit and the first Tesla was in fact just a rebranded Lotus rich kid Musk wanted customized.}

[tarkas]

Anybody got the skills to make a phone app that just logs in and ooc quits cause I'm linkdead?

[LXXXVIII]

Good post. This GDB is so slow on a bad connection too. That messes with roleplay if you are trying to coordinate with a clannie, etc. I almost miss when there was that SSL/CSS bug because it allowed me to load the GDB marginally quicker.

I definitely do not recommend a combat or outdoors PC if you have a chronically slow connection. If you want to play a combat PC in these circumstances, I recommend one where your character can elect when to enter combat or not.

It's just the way it is with a permadeath game. I don't think staff can do anything like collect stats to see who is on an awful connection to grant amnesty if you die. So if you play on a slow or unstable connection, you put yourself at risk.

I don't know what to say besides people like you are great roleplayers, and if staff could consider investing time in things like a quitooc button on the website or a quitooc timer like someone else suggested elsewhere that would make things at least slightly more bearable for folks on bad connections.

I typed this entire post on the time it took for the GDB to load once on my bad connection.

[Halcyon]

Anybody got the skills to make a phone app that just logs in and ooc quits cause I'm linkdead?

On IOS, "MudRammer" is a decent client app.

[650Booger]

if you're in the city, change your ldesc to something NPC-like, most people won't even realize you are a PC

[Inks]

If LD you probably won't starve or dehydrate at least. And good players won't do anything to a clearly LD person. That being said it is often hard to tell who is LD and who is doing [redacted].

I wish up when I see a PC standing in one spot for several days.

Ah sorry for the forum rez. Misread the date on it. Doh.