I was sorting through my mods list today and found this thing I made a few months ago but never released publicly. So, hey, why not release it?

This mod allows you or other players in your lobby to start the game before all players are ready.
This mod only works when you are the host!

Features

• Force-Start your lobby before all players have readied up (including yourself).
• Allow other players to Force-Start via a chat command, or "keyword." The default keyword is /forcestart, but you can change this.
• You can choose which players are allowed to Force-Start your lobbies: All players in your lobbies, Steam friends only, or only you.
• You can also simply bind a key to Force-Start the game instead of using the keyword in chat.
• (Optional) If you have BeardLib, this mod will support auto-updates through BeardLib's mod updater.

To change the chat command, please follow the instructions in-game (or see the menu screenshot in this modpage's preview images) to make sure you are changing the correct file.

Installation

1. Download the mod.
2. Un-zip the mod.
3. Drag the Force Start with Chat Command folder into your mods folder.
4. That's it, there's no more steps.
5. I mean, you could launch the game, I guess. I'm kind of assuming you'll want to play the game after you've modded it

About this version

There are two (to my knowledge) other Force-Start mods on MWS. (While the concept was certainly taken from FishTaco's mod, I wrote this version from scratch- I did not take any code from any other versions)

1. The first - Force Ready 1.7 by FishTaco - has evidently been broken for several years.
2. The second - Force Ready by zzorra - is functional (as of six months before this posting) and maintained, but lacks the ability to start via a keyword or the ability for clients to start the game. However, zzorra's version is not obsolete- it possesses the ability to force-start the game even if teammates are desynced from you, which my version does not have. I also recommend using zzorra's version if you have no use for allowing other people to start your game, or else if you want to be able to start the game even if teammates are desynced.

I made this on request a while ago for a friend who wanted to afk while hosting a stealth lobby for their partner. (This is pretty much the main use-case for the keyword feature.) At the time I was much more hesitant to distribute this mod (due also in part to the fact that this is a pretty specific use-case), but I think since there's plenty of options to customize how this functions, I'm okay with it now. (Also if you're reading this, hi Blitz/Sky)

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If you have feedback, comments, or bug reports, please feel free to contact me on this modpage or through the MWS Discord.