In game voice chat - advice needed

[Steve Dark]

Ok, so here's the situtation. Myself and my housemates have recently got the LAN properly sorted, and now epic battle is the theme of most evenings. Thus far it has been C&C Generals, but the other day I had a sudden craving for Sins of a Solar Empire (which those who have played it know, is an EPIC game).
Getting a decent number of people together for an evening of Galaxy conquering, diplomatic backstabbing fun would simply be amazing. However it's here that I need your advice.

The main thing here is the diplomacy; it would be kickass to have some kind of system where mid-game I could just press a button to open a channel to an ally to propose a joint strike on an enemy system and then a moment later press another button to switch to talking to the player we're attacking to offer a chance to join me in an epic betrayal. With Teamspeak or ventrilo, as I understand it's very much "everyone is on a team, you all talk now" rather than giving the option to address individual players.

So my question is this, is there an easy way to do this? Is there a hard way to do this? Or do I have to settle for just sending text chats midgame to arrange my deviousness?

Help me Escapists! You are my only hope.

 

[Elamdri]

Ok, so here's the situtation. Myself and my housemates have recently got the LAN properly sorted, and now epic battle is the theme of most evenings. Thus far it has been C&C Generals, but the other day I had a sudden craving for Sins of a Solar Empire (which those who have played it know, is an EPIC game).
Getting a decent number of people together for an evening of Galaxy conquering, diplomatic backstabbing fun would simply be amazing. However it's here that I need your advice.

The main thing here is the diplomacy; it would be kickass to have some kind of system where mid-game I could just press a button to open a channel to an ally to propose a joint strike on an enemy system and then a moment later press another button to switch to talking to the player we're attacking to offer a chance to join me in an epic betrayal. With Teamspeak or Voip, as I understand it's very much "everyone is on a team, you all talk now" rather than giving the option to address individual players.

So my question is this, is there an easy way to do this? Is there a hard way to do this? Or do I have to settle for just sending text chats midgame to arrange my deviousness?

Help me Escapists! You are my only hope.

Ventrillo has options to group individuals so that only certain people hear you in a channel when you hold down a button. How to do that, I forget, but I'm sure a google search would help you figure out how.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

EDIT: Wait a sec... A LAN party where everyone is in a different room?

I doubt that's what's going on here. At most LAN parties, people have headphones in at all times, and you can't really hear people talking unless they're right next to you. Voice chat is still just as important at a LAN as it is online, usually.

OT: I don't really have anything to add to the topic as a whole, but I would be interested to see what the options are to do what the OP is talking about.

 

[StrangerThanFiction]

I think your best bet is xfire in-game. Start a call when you want to talk to some specific person, end it when you're finished, simple as that. I can't see why it won't work so long as you establish it with everyone initially.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

You could use Skype and alt-tab back and forth.

 

[Trolldor]

Can't you like... type them a message?

 

[Hader]

If it is a LAN, just type the messages. Unless you live in a freakin mansion and are all in different rooms, it just is too much to go through. We tried it with AoE2 in a LAN and voice chat just didn't work. Stick to text chat, it is more...sneaky.

 

[jayzz911]

ventrilo has the option to hotkey to talk to certain people by pressing that hotkey and that even works cross channel

 

[Fenring]

COOL PEOPLE use TS3 and switch between channels to talk to different people.

 

[PeePantz]

LAN? Raise your voice?........

 

[Tax_Document]

LAN? Raise your voice?........

Brilliant Sir! Simply BRILLIANT!