A Simple Solution to Combat Logging

[Stealthie]

I had somebody spam multiple threads about how I "combat logged" on him back on Xbox, which was just me logging out at the end of my night but he had wanted to attack me but didn't get to.

The fact that people immediately assume the only people affected by "naming and shaming" are cheaters is exactly why the policy exists.

I think I made one of those "Combat Logger" lists on Reddit (I was told although I didn't check for myself).

Turned out I'd already been accused of cheating when a certain Imperial faction couldn't destroy my Cutter at a CG and then I arrived at an Engineer base, in Open, where my landing-pad was blocked and I logged out while completely unaware that somebody from that same Imperial faction was apparently following me with the intent to attack.

 

[Stealthie]

Now this would be funny. FD should make it happen.

Right, cos P2P shenanigans involving unengineered sidey's and billion-credit Cutters/Corvettes totally wouldn't become a thing.

 

[Old Duck]

There is a valid point, but, because I am an old coder as well as You (40 years by now) I am happy about EVERY line of code which is NOT added...

FWIW, I neither clog nor do I care when somebody else clogs, so ultimately I guess we are in agreement.

Speaking of, I had a FDL clog on me last week. It was some harmless, wanted noob who obviously followed a YouTube video to get rich before knowing how to fly, as I was in a humble EAGLE and yet was able to knock him down below 50% hull before he did the Houdini on me. The way I saw it, I won, and I would have probably felt bad if I had killed the poor sob, as he clearly was new to the game as evidenced by his lack of piloting skills.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Combat logging is a fringe case for a minuscule subset of players. Just like the ganking problem is. It's time to deal with it and move on.

 

[Jack Schitt]

That's a non-starter too, for anybody with a bit of brains.

Yes, hence the word "might". And you've been around the forum block enough times to know that the only reason I put it in there is because if I hadn't, a whatabouterist would have popped up and done it for me. This is the problem with responding to threads on perennial subjects; when you've seen every possible variant play out you have to either try to preempt them or resign yourself to rehashing them over and over.

 

[Hossi]

I disagree. A ship is only a series of variables, variables which everyone in an instance has access to. If a player disconnects, the game code can EASILY spawn an NPC ship using the variables it has for the player's ship, thus magically causing what appears to be the player's ship to continue on under AI control.

Nope, sorry.

Most of your ships variables only exist on your machine, only what is absolutly neccessary is transmitted to the other peers.
A players ship on a different machine is just an empty shell. That the reason why all these cheats work. If you hit another players ship with a weapon, your client has no idea what is supposed to happen. Instead your client will inform the other client of the hit, and this one will calculte the effects.
Your machine just transmittes a small fraction of of your ship stats over to the other peers. Mostly position and speed.
Thats why disconnected ships just keep flying in one direction.

Either way, it's not impossible, and it might even be simple depending on how Frontier handles the server side of things. ED is more of a server-based game than many people realize.

The servers handle all the background stuff. The galaxy, the market, the missionboard... there is a server for ingame communication, and of course the matchmaking and thats about it.
The actual instance itself is 'serverless', its exclusively p2p.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

A Simple Solution to Combat Logging: it's no big deal so stop worrying about it.

 

[myothershipisacobraiv]

clog should result in game treating like no input from active player. no byebye handshake, ship just sits in space idle

the balance for this is some kind of option to recover your ship on easier terms. let's call it "re acquire screen" or something

what is point of 5% rebuy thing again?

 

[Old Duck]

Nope, sorry.

Most of your ships variables only exist on your machine, only what is absolutly neccessary is transmitted to the other peers.
.....
The servers handle all the background stuff. The galaxy, the market, the missionboard... there is a server for ingame communication, and of course the matchmaking and thats about it.
The actual instance itself is 'serverless', its exclusively p2p.

Nope, sorry.

I think we're talking about a different set of variables, but I still feel you are wrong. Every variable regarding ship health, name, weapons, mods, cargo, etc. is stored on ED's servers. Go ahead, uninstall and reinstall Elite, and you'll see that the only thing you lose is your key bindings and graphics settings. Everything about your CMDR and ships is stored on the server. The ONLY* thing not stored on the server is the X,Y,Z,VX,VY,VZ of your ship in real time (this is updated at intervals as you play, and when you log off). THESE are the variables, along with your ship stats, that are shared in real time via P2P. These variables could easily be handed to an NPC on any client in the P2P instance should one of the players disappear from the instance, the end result being the appearance that the player continues to be part of the instance (but his ship is controlled by an NPC AI). Obviously the "master" in the P2P will have to share this NPC with the other ships, but that's already in the game.

I used to do this for a living (just like everyone else in this forum), so I know what I'm talking about.

* and maybe visited systems for the galaxy map filter..

 

[Ezren]

Combat logging is a fringe case for a minuscule subset of players. Just like the ganking problem is. It's time to deal with it and move on.

It's a favorite topic for people to bang on about because it allows them to declare:

• I do PvP!
• People are so afraid of me they combat log!
• Super controversial stance of "cheating is bad"

It's a high horse people love to ride around in circles.

 

[Hossi]

Nope, sorry.

I think we're talking about a different set of variables, but I still feel you are wrong. Every variable regarding ship health, name, weapons, mods, cargo, etc. is stored on ED's servers. Go ahead, uninstall and reinstall Elite, and you'll see that the only thing you lose is your key bindings and graphics settings. Everything about your CMDR and ships is stored on the server. The ONLY* thing not stored on the server is the X,Y,Z,VX,VY,VZ of your ship in real time (this is updated at intervals as you play, and when you log off). THESE are the variables, along with your ship stats, that are shared in real time via P2P. These variables could easily be handed to an NPC on any client in the P2P instance should one of the players disappear from the instance, the end result being the appearance that the player continues to be part of the instance (but his ship is controlled by an NPC AI). Obviously the "master" in the P2P will have to share this NPC with the other ships, but that's already in the game.

I used to do this for a living (just like everyone else in this forum), so I know what I'm talking about.

* and maybe visited systems for the galaxy map filter..

Yes, we're talking about a different set of variables.
Yes, your commander data is stored at fd's servers. And when you log in it is loaded into your client, and only into your client.
But, this data is not shared with the other people in the instance (the 'peers'). Noone else has access to your commander data. Instead your client just tranfers a tiny fraction of your current ship stats to the peers, and thats the empty shell I was talking about.
Not even fd knows the actual stat of your ship in the instance (the instance is serverless), they know just what your client reports back to fd's servers every now and then.

And yes, I do this for a living as well (like anyone here). Well not for gaming, but for industrial data.

 

[Stealthie]

It's a favorite topic for people to bang on about because it allows them to declare:

• I do PvP!
• People are so afraid of me they combat log!
• Super controversial stance of "cheating is bad"

It's a high horse people love to ride around in circles.

With a side-order of "Don't look at that! Look at this instead!" whenever other topics related to dubious play-styles arise.

 

[Jack Schitt]

For those posters insisting that some sort of AI "takeover" of a disconnected player's ship is possible in ED, can I ask whether you believe Sandro was lying, exaggerating, simplifying or just plain wrong when he explained in the 2016 live stream that it wasn't?

I'm not just rattling cages for the sake of it here; I'm not a programmer nor a networking specialist and I have no more knowledge of what was going on inside Sandro's head when he made his assertion than does anyone else, so it's quite possible I'm being naive in taking him at his word. But I am genuinely curious as to why, when the former lead designer made an explicit statement that for technical reasons they could not do what the community would have liked them to do, some people actively choose to ignore him.

Convince me why I should do the same.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Right, cos P2P shenanigans involving unengineered sidey's and billion-credit Cutters/Corvettes totally wouldn't become a thing.

Dayum, someone didn't understand it was a joke. Oh well....

 

[Robert Maynard]

For those posters insisting that some sort of AI "takeover" of a disconnected player's ship is possible in ED, can I ask whether you believe Sandro was lying, exaggerating, simplifying or just plain wrong when he explained in the 2016 live stream that it wasn't?

I get the impression that proponents of an AI takeover of a disconnected player expect that the game clients of the remaining players in the instance can be trusted.

 

[Old Duck]

I get the impression that proponents of an AI takeover of a disconnected player expect that the game clients of the remaining players in the instance can be trusted.

I did address this issue in my post:

....
The only hard part (relatively speaking) is updating the server with the results of the battle against the NPC ship, since damage / death needs to be attributed to the player for whom the NPC AI took over for. This would require some work because it makes another player's computer responsible for the stats of the player that went offline (which introduces some security issues). Worst-case-scenario, you could decouple the stats and not worry about it. This means that in a battle between two players where one clogs, the remaining player continues the battle and may even destroy the other player's ship, but the player that clogs doesn't actually lose his ship. Probably not the best solution, but at least it gives the one player the satisfaction of seeing an explosion rather than a disappearing act.

The idea being that the player still effectively clogs, but the opponent at least gets to finish a proper combat engagement and see a pretty explosion rather than just a disappearing ship.

 

[Hossi]

To add something constructive to this thread...
If you really feel that clogging is such an issue that it needs addressing (I seriously think the whole thing is exaggerated), how about that?

If:
-A cmdr loses connection to the fd servers (not to his peers)
-While hes was 'under attack' at his last status report
-And does not reconnect to the same game-mode within... lets say 5 minutes

then the ship is destroyed at reconnection

Some remarks
-We cannot base this on loss of the p2p-connection, since its impossible to say on which side the connection failed. This means that clogging by blocking a port would still be possible (I don't think there is a way around that).
-We need a timeout big enough to allow for a reboot and a router reset. 5 minutes should be enough. That means that any human opponent would need to wait in the instance for 5 minutes if he wants to continue the fight
-In a pure pve scenario it dosen't make any sense, since the instance dies with the disconnect. The npcs won't be there when you reconnect. So it could be limited to pvp situations, which would also limit the risk to destroy people that have honest connection issues. While pve clogging is still cheating, the NPCs don't care. Its a victimless crime.

That should make clogging in a pvp situation either unatractive or at least it would require more efford. Not sure if its worth though.

 

[Riverside]

To add something constructive to this thread...
If you really feel that clogging is such an issue that it needs addressing (I seriously think the whole thing is exaggerated), how about that?

If:
-A cmdr loses connection to the fd servers (not to his peers)
-While hes was 'under attack' at his last status report
-And does not reconnect to the same game-mode within... lets say 5 minutes

then the ship is destroyed at reconnection

Some remarks
-We cannot base this on loss of the p2p-connection, since its impossible to say on which side the connection failed. This means that clogging by blocking a port would still be possible (I don't think there is a way around that).
-We need a timeout big enough to allow for a reboot and a router reset. 5 minutes should be enough. That means that any human opponent would need to wait in the instance for 5 minutes if he wants to continue the fight
-In a pure pve scenario it dosen't make any sense, since the instance dies with the disconnect. The npcs won't be there when you reconnect. So it could be limited to pvp situations, which would also limit the risk to destroy people that have honest connection issues. While pve clogging is still cheating, the NPCs don't care. Its a victimless crime.

That should make clogging in a pvp situation either unatractive or at least it would require more efford. Not sure if its worth though.

I linked to a similar proposal in post #3 of this thread.

 

[Jack Schitt]

I get the impression that proponents of an AI takeover of a disconnected player expect that the game clients of the remaining players in the instance can be trusted.

Perhaps. Which would make it less of a wholesale dismissal of Sandro's point, and more a movement of the goalposts. "You can't actually take control of a player's ship, but perhaps someone else in the instance can?" Fair enough I suppose, but then all we've done is to move the issue of trust from one client to another.

Probably not the best solution, but at least it gives the one player the satisfaction of seeing an explosion rather than a disappearing act.

It would give some continuity to the gameplay experience of the non-disconnecting player(s), but I remain sceptical about how much overall "satisfaction" it would provide to the playerbase as a whole. For example I would posit that anyone who has spoken of the pleasure obtained by "sending someone to the rebuy screen" would have that pleasure significantly reduced by the possibility that no player was, in fact, sent to the rebuy screen.

So it sort of solves -- or at least works around -- part of the technical issue, but doesn't resolve the underlying gameplay problem. In that regard I'm forced again to fall back on Sandro's assertion that because the game's current architecture offers no way for a trusted arbiter to take the place of a disconnected client and give the remaining players the opportunity to complete their attack, he was right when he said FD "just can't do that."

 

[Queex]

If:
-A cmdr loses connection to the fd servers (not to his peers)
-While hes was 'under attack' at his last status report
-And does not reconnect to the same game-mode within... lets say 5 minutes

then the ship is destroyed at reconnection

This is a poor idea. I've had connection issues with no obvious cause that have lasted for well over 15 minutes. I get them more frequently than short interruptions, in fact. Plus power cuts, etc. exist. The big problem with all these 'solutions' is that they mean someone who's already having a bit of a bad night for reasons outside the game gets dumped on further when they finally reconnect (which may even be a couple of days later). Credits are not exactly meaningless, not for occasional players.

As others have pointed out, this isn't a competitive game. If someone clogs on you, consider it a win if you want. Nobody's stopping you. If you can only feel like you've won when you've compelled someone else to lose something, that's on you. The game shouldn't cater to your hang-ups.