SiteLink

Linking multiple VWE Pod Bays together to play games across the internet.

A Pod Bay today is an air-gapped network of ~20 computers: 1 command console, 1 printer, 2 review stations (Live Cam & Mission Review), and 16 cockpit computers. SiteLink is the project to connect those islands — so a bay in one city can field a lance against a bay in another, share a queue, share voice, and (eventually) be commanded as one fleet.

Seed concept (2026-07-10)

Organize each site into its own 10.0.y.x subnet (site 1 = 10.0.1.x, site 2 = 10.0.2.x, …), VPN them all together into a single 10.0.0.0/16, then collect every site's .siteconfig and merge them for a master console that can command the entire fleet.

That concept is the anchor of this repo. The analysis, alternatives, and open questions live in the docs below.

Contents

File	What it is
docs/PODBAY-ECOSYSTEM.md	Survey of the existing bay software stack — every component, every protocol/port, with source pointers into the sibling repos. The ground truth SiteLink has to work with.
docs/BRAINSTORM.md	The design record: goals, the seed proposal analyzed, addressing plan, VPN topology options (routed vs bridged), the event authority-handover model, per-game linking analysis, shared services, security, open questions, and a phased roadmap.
docs/PHASE0-PLAN.md	The lab-proof plan: VM topology simulating two sites + the hub, hypervisor/VM-management recommendations, and experiments E1–E9 with pass criteria that close the brainstorm's open questions — no cockpit hardware, no travel.
tools/SiteConfigMerge	Working tool: decodes TeslaConsole .siteconfig files and merges <siteName>.siteconfig inputs into one master.siteconfig for the central event console, renaming squads <siteName>-<squad>. Verified against the real TeslaConsole 4.11.4.1 loader.

Related repositories (gitea.mysticmachines.com/VWE)

Repo	Role
TeslaSuite	TeslaConsole (operator console), TeslaLauncher (pod service), the Console↔Pod RPC contract, SecureConfig provisioning, and vPOD (virtual pod — our cross-site test double).
firestorm	BattleTech: Firestorm — the MW4/Gameleap-engine game the 16 cockpits run. DirectPlay 4 multiplayer. Contains the drafted 16→32 player-cap plan that a two-bay link needs.
RP411	Classic Red Planet — Tesla 4.10 reconstruction as a native Win32 port (MUNGA engine + L4 platform layer, DX9). Console-controlled via Munga protocol, TCP 1501.
BT411	Classic BattleTech — Tesla 4.10 reconstruction on the shared RP411/MUNGA Windows engine. Console streams the mission egg over TCP; pods mesh with each other.
TeslaRel410	The original 1994–96 Tesla 4.10 source/content archive plus a custom DOSBox-X emulator (HLE of the Division VPX render board) to run the original unmodified DOS games on today's Windows pod hardware — cockpit RIO and plasma passed through on COM1/COM2, pod networking via emulated NE2000.
(local PQS/)	Pod Queue System — operator-built PHP/MySQL event tooling (traffic flow when bringing pods to events): registration, callsigns, queue, and the HTTP endpoints the game/console poll for the next mission + roster. Support tooling in SiteLink scope; possible future coordination layer.

Status

Brainstorm / design phase. Nothing here touches a live bay yet.