Multiplayer

Atomic Dawn is built for cooperative and competitive multiplayer across the whole Cold War. Each player leads a nation, and all of them share one clock and one world. Multiplayer is still in development and isn't included in the first public demo. Its foundations, however, are already the foundations of every singleplayer game. Nothing about the simulation is simplified for solo play, and nothing about how a session is checked changes when other people join.

Singleplayer is a one-player game

When you play alone, your machine quietly hosts a session in the background, and you pick your nation as you would in a lobby. There is no separate singleplayer mode that could fall out of step with multiplayer, because underneath it's the same thing.

The simulation runs on its own thread the whole time, both alone and with others. It never competes with rendering or input for your machine's attention, so the map stays smooth and responsive however much is happening in the world. If the host is delayed for a moment, the game simply carries on with its next normal day. It never rushes through missed days to catch up, so a hitch can't suddenly speed the campaign up.

The lobby

In a multiplayer lobby, players connect, claim a nation (the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, or any regional power), and mark themselves ready. When the host starts the game, the starting world and everyone's choice of country are sent to every player.

You command only your own country

Every action you take, whether taxation, military spending, a policy reform, a national focus, moving brigades or proposing a treaty, is checked by the host against the country you're playing. You can't command another player's army or reach into their economy. Your only levers on other countries are the diplomatic and covert tools every player has (see Diplomacy and Espionage). Anything that doesn't pass the check is rejected.

Shared time, instant pauses

The clock is shared by everyone at the table, at an agreed speed from Slow to Maximum.

• Any player, or the host, can pause the game.
• Picking a speed unpauses it again.
• Even while the game is paused, actions take effect immediately. Moving units and adjusting budget sliders are confirmed by the host and shown to everyone right away, so the game never feels stalled while you think.

The right decision reaches the right player

Events are decided only by the host: whether they're eligible, when they fire, and how the AI answers them. When a historical event, a crisis, a peace conference or a treaty proposal concerns your country, it goes straight to you. Other players follow the broader picture through the map and the live event feed without being pulled away from what they're doing.

Map modes are personal. Each player picks their own view of the world (see Map Modes).

One authoritative history

The host creates the campaign once and sends that exact state to every player. From then on, the order in which the host accepts actions is final. Each accepted action is numbered and sent to everyone in that order, so every player's game follows the same history, including the outcome of every random roll. Players' own machines never decide anything on their own.