tired of playing against computers (trinity)

I am also a long-time Trinity player, but have never tried multiplayer.  Honestly, the way the experts describe the experience, it sounds like a duel with shotguns at 3 paces, and a very different game than what I am used to and enjoy.  I would be willing to experiment, however.  But based on my lack of knowledge, I do have a few questions, which I might as well ask here:

01.  Is it possible to embed 2 human players in an environment with AI players as well, or is it only human vs. human?

02.  Does the game have to be played all in one sitting, or can everyone pause and walk away for a day and resume at a mutually agreed upon time?

03.  If it is possible to pause and resume, can you look at the game in the meantime?

That's the competitive online experience. Games with friends or other people who aren't pros won't be like that. Given that most the pro scene has left to Rebellion if you can find random games online they'll probably be fine too. And you can always keep the game speeds on normal if you really don't want to encourage rushing.

You can have AI as well. Besides the pro online games, the other main type of game are "Comp Stomps", where teams of humans take on AI together.

You can save multiplayer and reload later, though obviously you need to have a fairly organized group so that you all come back at the given time.

Yes, you can pause, and everyone can look around and give orders in that time. However, any other player can unpause the game, and you only have 10 pauses per match, so you should make sure all the other players are fine with you pausing before doing that.

Very helpful reply.  Thank you.  Based on your answers, I do have a few more questions:

01.  So in a "comp stomp" is it possible to start the human players at opposite ends of the universe, let them deal with the AI players in the middle according to their own strategies, and then meet in the endgame for a final battle?  For this I guess you have to be able to have someone call up the map and then assign starting positions...can that be done?

02.  Is there some sort of chat channel for humans to communicate with each other during a multiplayer game, or do you have to have another computer with email available?

03.  Is a "pause" the same as a "save"?  What I was trying to ask was -- if a group agrees to play every Wednesday at 5pm for two hours, can the players look at the game in between those two hour sessions.

Thanks in advance for your reply.

You'd need a custom map to do exactly that. So that probably won't happen.

The maps are the same as single player, so no you can't assign starting positions. Some fixed maps like Razor's Edge have teams set up to spawn next to each other, but they're meant for the teams to be in symmetrical positions.

There's a chat both in ICO and in game (you can use it in single player with enter).

No, a pause is just like it is in single player, except any human player can override it. I have no idea if you can load the save in single player.

I can confirm that you can load a game saved in multiplayer while playing singleplayer, and play as any human in the game.

well all of the above is terribly interesting, but with that in mind is anybody trying to play?