Laggy Exploration

[tandyuk]

So a couple of days ago, I started to explore properly.

Bought my advanced scanner, detailed surface scanner, fuel scoop, etc.

Headed out, currently going through the Pegasi sector, so not even out of populated space yet.

What has been really bugging me however, is the 'lagginess' of the scanner/server.

For example the system i just scanned...

Land at start,
Start turning away from star, while already deploying my scanner. (And start counting...)
5 seconds or so of charging later, the scanner tells me complete.
(I'm unfortunately getting used to this now), so check my Navigation list.
Now I see only 1 USS, not even the start I landed at.
Eventually, now I've counted to 37, I get the first
"Discovered 1 new Astronomical object"
"Discovered 38 new Astronomical objects"

Ok, so off to next star...
Start turning away from star, while already deploying my scanner. (And start counting...)
5 seconds or so of charging later, the scanner tells me complete.
8 seconds after scanning complete:
"Discovered 1 new Astronomical object"
11 seconds after scanning complete:
"Discovered 38 new Astronomical objects"

Given that if you simply land, scan while pointing at next star, and immediately hit jump, I wonder how much of the data over the past few days that ive scanned I have actually lost.

I verified in one system that if you do this and it lags, and you jump too soon, if you jump back to the system you just scanned, it is NOT explored.
To Clarify, I mean the Navigation panel lists no objects full stop.
When correctly scanned and processed, it will list however many "Unexplored" entries.

I highly doubt my pc/connection has anything to do with it, but before anyone accuses me of having a poor connection/etc:

Spoiler

I7 3770k, running at stock clocks.
32Gb 1800Mhz DDR3 Ram
2x128gb SSD (Raid 0) (Windows)
256Gb SSD (Where Elite is installed)
2x Intel gigabit nics, bonded with LACP, to managed switch, connected to a HA pair of pfsense firewalls.
2x 80/20 FTTC connections, with a VPN tunnel bonding both connections into a 160/40 pipe to my datacenter.
HA Pair of pfsenses in datacenter, each with gigabit WAN connection.

While in a game, and exploring, I see the following connections from the game:
Image PID Address Send (B/sec) Receive (B/sec) Total (B/sec)
EliteDangerous32.exe 9500 ec2-54-78-2-174.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com 31 0 31
EliteDangerous32.exe 9500 ec2-54-78-160-94.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com 16 0 16
EliteDangerous32.exe 9500 ec2-54-78-4-44.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com 2 0 2

Only one of those hosts actually responds to pings, but here it is:
Pinging ec2-54-78-4-44.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com [54.78.4.44] with 32 byte
s of data:
Reply from 54.78.4.44: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=42
Reply from 54.78.4.44: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=42
Reply from 54.78.4.44: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=42
Reply from 54.78.4.44: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=42


Ping statistics for 54.78.4.44:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 20ms, Maximum = 22ms, Average = 20ms

Please, please please fix the lag!
It depresses me to think how much exploration data I have lost, by being too efficient in scanning and jumping to the next system.
I know this must be either a bug or just plain lag, because when its working properly, you instantly discover the objects when the scanner finishes scanning.

This is really putting me off spending too much more time exploring until I can trust the server to actually process my exploration data in a sensible timeframe (A couple of seconds lag would be acceptable, but not 10+!)

EDIT:

There seems to be 2 distinctly different lag issues here, which I've been keeping track of over the past 100 or so systems explored:
1: The lag between your Scanner being 'Complete' and you actually getting the 'Discovered X ...' popup. (Happens to me about 50% of the time)
2: I assume the response lag, where your scanner is 'Complete', you got the 'Discovered X ...' popup, but your Navigation list still shows no Unexplored objects. (Happens to me about 20% of the time)

 

[ollobrains]

Unfornatley working as intended.

 

[tandyuk]

How is seriously laggy "Working as intended"?
I have to refuse to believe that until an FDEV confirms that, at which point I'll be putting the game down until they re-evaluate that.

To all explorers who simply land, ping a system, and move one, I highly recommend you check your navigation list has actually populated before doing your next jump.

 

[kamenjar]

11 seconds after scanning complete:
"Discovered 38 new Astronomical objects"
?
I got that now immediately
Maybe your internet connection.
Though I am getting bumped out with "Unrecoverable transaction" almost every 2nd jump now. Maybe symptoms of a dying server.

 

[kb_Nomad]

by being too efficient in scanning and jumping to the next system.

And this is your idea of Exploring??

I should think it is working as it should - if you don't have time to look (explore) around you should not earn anything as that's really what you have done - 'very little'
I feel you need to rethink the role/job as an Explorer.
Speed and Explorer do not go well hand in hand.
KB

 

[OnePercent]

Every 2-5 systems I crash with a server transaction error.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Lag is not good. But posting here isnt the best option. Either the bug report thread or else submit a ticket.

I had similar problem a while back and was about to submit a ticket but then my problem went away.

 

[R3tCrick3t]

And this is your idea of Exploring??

I should think it is working as it should - if you don't have time to look (explore) around you should not earn anything as that's really what you have done - 'very little'
I feel you need to rethink the role/job as an Explorer.
Speed and Explorer do not go well hand in hand.
KB

all the asps racing through the galaxy are missing the point i geuss, ameriica was discovered by accident finding a better way to india

 

[Kitiara]

This is NOT workign as intended. It's related to problems with the transaction server. I've been seeing the issue intermittently for a couple of days now. Unfortunately there's nothing that can be done by anyone but Frontier.

It is fairly intermittent from what I have seen. I hate to suggest "wait an hour or 2 and try again" but that really is the best suggestion I have.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

-- Deleted --

 

[tandyuk]

11 seconds after scanning complete:
"Discovered 38 new Astronomical objects"
?
I got that now immediately
Maybe your internet connection.

I thought I rigorously covered that in my spoiler..
I run an ISP and Hosting company, and can assure you that I and my customers would be noticing constantly If it were anything at my end lagging.

And in the spirit of https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=76615 I will start to maintain a list of actual locations for putting in a ticket...

Pegasi Sector VO-R B4-2: No lag
Pegasi Sector VO-R B4-3: No lag
HIP 114235: No Lag
Pegasi Sector YU-P B5-5: No lag
Pegasi Sector MX-U C2-9: No lag
Pegasi Sector ZP-P B5-3: No lag
Pegasi Sector ZP-P B5-4: Lag type 1, about 6 seconds
Pegasi Sector ZP-P B5-2: No lag
Pegasi Sector XU-P B5-4: No lag
And so on, but im bored now.. Will just log the laggy ones from now on in case the system matters.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

And this is your idea of Exploring??

I should think it is working as it should - if you don't have time to look (explore) around you should not earn anything as that's really what you have done - 'very little'
I feel you need to rethink the role/job as an Explorer.
Speed and Explorer do not go well hand in hand.
KB

I dont dispute that I've done very little exploring, however what I'm doing is discovering objects that need exploring.
This is why I'll obnly earn a few credits, vs the thousands that can be earnt by someone who comes and does a detailed scan on every planet.

Personally I am just doing it this way until i get ~500Ly away from the main blob of the galaxy, at which point i will then start fully exploring systems.

 

[Nurmi]

Never noticed any lag between "Discovered X" and navigation list (not that I misbelieve you -- just never noticed it), but the lag from "Complete" to "Discovered X" is *very* annoying.

If fixing the lag is a deeper issue, issuing a "Nothing Discovered" popup would be a big help. That way you'd at least know when the data was in.

While on topic of exploration annoyances: enumerating unexplored bodies from the center of the system outwards would be a big help. Ie. "Unexplored 1", "Unexplored 2", etc, instead of just calling them all unexplored.

Since scanning belts doesn't increase exploration payoff currently I at least end up doing "target first unexplored from top, check the hologram, if it's a belt target the next one down -- repeat until you get something other than a belt"; then after scanning the first non-belt body, repeat the whole skip-past-the-belts thing. I'm just thankful I can get the navigation screen and the hologram visible at the same time...

(Having the navigation list say "Unexplored Belt 1" would be even nicer, but I kind of suspect someone's idea of gameplay calls for manual interpretation of the hologram's, which is sort-of fine, if boring after you realize how it works.)

 

[CmdrPSB]

Varies for me between instant and a short lag of several seconds. All I guess you can do is wait and maybe fire the scanner again just to make sure once it's cooled down. It's not intended, but at the same time it's hardly that big an issue either compared to some.

 

[tandyuk]

Yay - Unrecoverable Error on transaction server.

I agree a 'Nothing new discovered' popup or similar would be awesome.
I think enumerating the objects would be a bad thing, as it implies 1 is closest, 2 gets further and so on.
In reality you havent explored yet, so you dont know that.
OTOH, having a rough guess size, eg "Unexplored - tiny" vs "Unexplored - Huge" (Asteroid vs Gas giant) might bridge that gap as you would be able to rough guess at the size of the object (If you go into system map for example, you can already see this before an object is explored).

 

[Sinxar]

deleted

 

[tandyuk]

I've had an issue where I scanned and got the message right away (Discovered X new Astronomical objects). But I went to scan the bodies and nothing was there. It took me a while to figure out something was wrong then I did the scan again (with same message and same number of objects) but this time they showed up to be explored.

In my case im not sure a popup would help as it said I discovered them when it actually did nothing.

Thats what I described as Lag type 2 at the bottom of the OP.

Perhaps It has more to do with straight packet loss, and not just lag.
To me this would explain why a second scan fixes it, but I suspect this is just a tiny noticable case of a much larger problem with the design of the servers/network.
Elite is clearly not hosted by a single machine, so theres also potentially a lot of places the lag we see could stem from.

 

[Bobo]

Im chomping at the bit to get back in and fly home, but with all the lag and weird server issues currently Im a little afraid to do so. Already petrified Ive lost all the data gathered on the way out. To think of weeks worth of data lost, Id have hard time getting back into the game, really hope they fix it on monday

 

[B. Valentine]

It's not your connection and it's not tied to a specific system. There's currently something going wrong between the game servers and the cloud it seems. Two days ago, the discovered objects would only show after 3-4 scans and detailed scans were the same. It's better now, but still laggy.

 

[Nurmi]

I think enumerating the objects would be a bad thing, as it implies 1 is closest, 2 gets further and so on.
In reality you havent explored yet, so you dont know that.

My opinion doesn't really matter, but I obviously don't agree. It seems to me you already know where the object is -- because you can lock it as a target, and orbit lines appear for unexplored targets, so you also know its orbital path. So logically the computer system should be trivially able to also number them.

For the biggest gameplay benefit just using distance from the current location of the ship and numbering from there outwards would work fine as well, and not tell very much about the orbits -- and you absolutely have a distance to the object even before you target it.

For a klunkier experience that would still be superior to the current all-identical-unexploreds you could even have just random identifiers for them; so that if you can keep it in your head that Unexplored G7A looked like a belt in the hologram, then you're golden. More importantly, random identifiers would make it easy to pick the thing that looked interesting in the system map from the navigation list without guesswork.

 

[tandyuk]

Had loads more "Unrecoverable error on transaction server" now.
It seems to be that when there is a very long lag on a scan, the next jump Im almost guaranteed to be thrown back to the login screen.

When I reconnect, Im back where I was, and the entire system is unscanned (Ie not even the main star is listed as Unexplored)