Here's my stupid question for the day: Last night I made my way to Pyramoe PM-X b33-6 to see the sights. I'm strictly a solo player so I don't have any experience with the multiplayer side. I didn't realize that planet landings were instanced. I was hoping to watch other ships land and take off (I'm in FCPG). How do they do the mass gatherings like the initial take off? Why does FC warn me to be nice around other players when I can't see them on the ground anyways (told you it was dumb question time)?
First of all: Them's the rules fro Fleetcomm. Being in a PG only limits the possibility of instancing to people in the same PG. Instancing is, however, complicated - your PG, friends, wings, friends of friends and most of all network connectivity play a large role, as ED is P2P.
So:
- you can get instanced with anyone playing in the same PG as you do
- the server will try to put you into the same instance as your friends
- the server will try even harder to put you into the same instance as your wing (with often rather strange results)
- while the server will (try to) set up the instance, the handling of that instance is P2P, so if your system/network isn't up to it, you may not be instanced with anybody at all
The usual process of setting up an instance for a mass jump (e.g.) is:
- someone with a lot of friends tries to find an instance that already has a large number of those friends in it
- they then invite other people into their wing (as does everybody else in that instance)
- the invitees, after accepting the invite, go into supercruise (or the main menu), then try to drop into the wing beacon (and the instance)
- once succesfully in that instance, they leave the wing to make space for the next wave of invitees (only 4 people in a wing)
- repeat until people drop out of the instance faster than you can wing them in, then start the countdown for the server crash (a.k.a. mass jump)
