¿Que Pasa? and ServerSmashing:
Given that we have shards with their own immediate state of the world, but at the same time we would like to be able set global prices, have inter-shard events happening etc., how could it work?
Imagine a blockade of a jump point generated by ¿Que Pasa? and performed by a group of pirate Arrows. Let's say 10 of them (more could 30k the server since large space battles are impossible). This blockade is presented in every shard and initially looks the same - a group of Arrows show up and start shooting at players. From then on, in each shard, the battle rages on differently. In some shards, player will destroy the Arrows. In others, they will run away, leaving the blockade behind.
How can diverging states of the shards be resolved? There are two methods.
- There is a global count of pirate Arrows replicated across shards. If an Arrow gets destroyed in one Shard, the event is propagated to other shards. This means, however, that in other shards a random (or the weakest) Arrow would explode seemingly without reason. Even funnier, in a shard where there is a single player observing the pirate group from a distance without engaging, they would watch the Arrows pop one after another, like balloons. Another side effect - free loot from popped Arrows, available across shards. Also, it would be enough for a battle to be won by players in a single shard to be won in all of them.
- The battle in each shard resolves to its own conclusion and the results are aggregated. The outcome is averaged over all player actions and battle results. This way we get a better representation of the event overall but we also have to worry about interesting questions. In some shards the result of the battle will go contrary to the aggregated result. Will the Arrows reappear in the shards where they lost if pirates won overall?
Of course, this works only with blockades generated by ¿Que Pasa?. It is not clear how the dynamic dynamicity of the 'verse would react if players banded together in half of the shards to block the same trade route. Would ¿Que Pasa? send Space Police to defend the route in each shard? Or only in the ones where the blockade happened? How would the results be aggregated?
It is all doable, of course. But it will be full of gamey tricks that are employed by other games.
