ED Server / Servers Down problems discussion thread

[Aewarin Jameson]

Forgive me if I am mistaken... as I understand things, I thought it would be:

1. SP mode - ELITE on your PC
2. MP Mode - ELITE on a server

Whether you choose to play with other players when you are on MP is your choice, isn't it? Just like in an MMO, you can log in, and do nothing except hang out in town? Or run around the various "zones" on your own without a group?

If so, then the question is only whether your savegame ("profile") can be used both in SP and MP, or must you create separate profiles.

If 1 profile can be used for SP and MP, then I guess checks must be made for anti-cheating and data syncing. I would be interested to know how the NPC AI ships work in MP too... whether it's all done by the server, or done on your PC but synced to server to verify, or whatever new and interesting methods

Your understanding of the modes (online/offline) matches mine.

Yes, I imagine that you will have 1 commander per mode and can't mix. (Save file offline remains there and your server online commander remans there too)

 

[izzy]

To ne precise, you can play solo online or offline

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

To ne precise, you can play solo online or offline

Nit picking - if I understand FD correctly there are 2 modes:

• Offline
• Online

Offline is solo / single player

Online is selectable between solo / single player; custom group play; and everyone "all pilot" group

 

[Alpha Protocol]

International Server? Continental Servers?

Does anyone know if Frontier plans to implement continental service, or will the entire world be pinging England? Just curious to know if this has been discussed. A forum search did not produce any evidence that it had.

Cheers!

 

[Greeboski]

Does anyone know if Frontier plans to implement continental service, or will the entire world be pinging England? Just curious to know if this has been discussed. A forum search did not produce any evidence that it had.

Cheers!

just for a change the servers wont all be in the USA labeled us1, us2, europe, aisia. your turn to suffer

seriously tho since the game is peer to peer based , its only the global changes that are server side. which will most likely be a quick check for changes once every 5-60 mins , and possibly only when you actualy dock !!

 

[Adam Lusardi]

according to :-

http://www.frontier.co.uk/docs/files/Frontier_Developments-Year_end_results-14_November_2013.pdf

quote:
Recent developments
 Development of Xbox One launch title based on Microsoft Zoo Tycoon franchise
 Continued partnerships with key industry players including Microsoft, Apple, Nintendo, Amazon and Atari
end quote:


I believe Amazon offer this faculty

 

[Tinman]

Does anyone know if Frontier plans to implement continental service, or will the entire world be pinging England? Just curious to know if this has been discussed. A forum search did not produce any evidence that it had.

Cheers!

As far as I have understood there will only be one server.

This server will take care of the background simulation of the galaxy, economy, political events, newsfeeds and other persistent but not time-critical forms of data.

When you see other players in your game (and possibly fight them) that is handled over a P2P network between the players themselves. So not central server is needed for this type of bandwidth except helping to do the "handshake" between the players when they connect to each other.

 

[Alpha Protocol]

just for a change the servers wont all be in the USA labeled us1, us2, europe, aisia. your turn to suffer

seriously tho since the game is peer to peer based , its only the global changes that are server side. which will most likely be a quick check for changes once every 5-60 mins , and possibly only when you actualy dock !!

As far as I have understood there will only be one server.

This server will take care of the background simulation of the galaxy, economy, political events, newsfeeds and other persistent but not time-critical forms of data.

When you see other players in your game (and possibly fight them) that is handled over a P2P network between the players themselves. So not central server is needed for this type of bandwidth except helping to do the "handshake" between the players when they connect to each other.

Very interesting! So essentially everyone that meets in space is on the same footing as far as latency is concerned? What if I have a lan-party in my house (my wife is also a backer) with my wife on her pc and we get our sons accounts. Are we at a disadvantage now because of network traffic? I am not a network engineer, so if anyone can provide additional feedback I would appreciate it.

Cheers!

 

[Mazhurg]

Very interesting! So essentially everyone that meets in space is on the same footing as far as latency is concerned? What if I have a lan-party in my house (my wife is also a backer) with my wife on her pc and we get our sons accounts. Are we at a disadvantage now because of network traffic? I am not a network engineer, so if anyone can provide additional feedback I would appreciate it.

Cheers!

The "matcher" will take latency into account when syncing peers.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Very interesting! So essentially everyone that meets in space is on the same footing as far as latency is concerned? What if I have a lan-party in my house (my wife is also a backer) with my wife on her pc and we get our sons accounts. Are we at a disadvantage now because of network traffic? I am not a network engineer, so if anyone can provide additional feedback I would appreciate it.

Cheers!

You won't be at any disadvantage regarding network traffic. In fact, if you are all playing in the same instance, you might be at a slight advantage as you are not sending much information out, it will all be handled on your local network apart from occasional background updates.

New players coming into your instance, they will not be on local traffic so performance will depend on your internet router/isp/general traffic. The game engine is supposedly clever enough to select interacting players for your instance, so you will get the nearest local player with an acceptable connection.

Much better than the days of being matched with some guy on the other side of the planet with a 2400 modem

At least, that is my understanding of it, but I could be very wrong.

 

[Hellhawk666]

You won't be at any disadvantage regarding network traffic. In fact, if you are all playing in the same instance, you might be at a slight advantage as you are not sending much information out, it will all be handled on your local network apart from occasional background updates.

At least, that is my understanding of it, but I could be very wrong.

Makes sense to me. A wired lan or fast wireless setup should be ideal for a private group.

 

[Greeboski]

Very interesting! So essentially everyone that meets in space is on the same footing as far as latency is concerned? What if I have a lan-party in my house (my wife is also a backer) with my wife on her pc and we get our sons accounts. Are we at a disadvantage now because of network traffic? I am not a network engineer, so if anyone can provide additional feedback I would appreciate it.

Cheers!

You won't be at any disadvantage regarding network traffic. In fact, if you are all playing in the same instance, you might be at a slight advantage as you are not sending much information out, it will all be handled on your local network apart from occasional background updates.

New players coming into your instance, they will not be on local traffic so performance will depend on your internet router/isp/general traffic. The game engine is supposedly clever enough to select interacting players for your instance, so you will get the nearest local player with an acceptable connection.

Much better than the days of being matched with some guy on the other side of the planet with a 2400 modem

At least, that is my understanding of it, but I could be very wrong.

Makes sense to me. A wired lan or fast wireless setup should be ideal for a private group.

im not so sure .
as each of the pc's are still conecting into the game via the internet so they arnt actualy using the lan as a direct connect and are still going through your ISP.

 

[Asp Explorer]

im not so sure .
as each of the pc's are still conecting into the game via the internet so they arnt actualy using the lan as a direct connect and are still going through your ISP.

If the game engine acts as expected, it will send requests out and prioritise clients traffic based on latency. If all your clients in your instance are on your own LAN, they will prioritise amongst themselves, so most traffic will stay inside your network switch.

When a local client decides it's time to update the server, it will hook out and get those updates from your router. So will all the rest of the LAN clients. I don't think they will synchronise updates to avoid spiking traffic.

When an external client is joined to your instance, you should only notice extra incoming traffic, their own updates etc won't affect your LAN.

 

[Greeboski]

If the game engine acts as expected, it will send requests out and prioritise clients traffic based on latency. If all your clients in your instance are on your own LAN, they will prioritise amongst themselves, so most traffic will stay inside your network switch.

When a local client decides it's time to update the server, it will hook out and get those updates from your router. So will all the rest of the LAN clients. I don't think they will synchronise updates to avoid spiking traffic.

When an external client is joined to your instance, you should only notice extra incoming traffic, their own updates etc won't affect your LAN.

i doubt that very much , or you could 'force' a multi-player off line game by simply unpluging your switch from your hub (a situation im sure ED will also have thought through). anyway as the LAN and ISP use different header info to destinguish where to send said info it meens even tho one pc is 2 foot from the other the packets will still be bounced off the ISP (admitedly not all round the world).

 

[Asp Explorer]

i doubt that very much , or you could 'force' a multi-player off line game by simply unpluging your switch from your hub (a situation im sure ED will also have thought through). anyway as the LAN and ISP use different header info to destinguish where to send said info it meens even tho one pc is 2 foot from the other the packets will still be bounced off the ISP (admitedly not all round the world).

The game clients prioritise with latency, as far as I can tell.

If all the game clients are on your LAN, they will all have a relative latency of about 1ms between them, so I expect the engine to priotirise local traffic to each other locally. Makes perfect sense.

If you unplug your switch, nobody can play with anyone else, I assume local PC's will continue the universe and NPC's, and I have no idea how they will match updates between PC's later. Besides - it's not header info on a LAN, MAC takes care of that on the switching matrix. It's even easier on a hub, but you hardly ever even see those these days unless you are clustering.

If you unplug your router, I assume your LAN group will continue to play as before, just nobody can join you, and no universe updates come to you until routing is restored.

Just because all your LAN clients had internet access does not mean they are using it all the time. Remember, switch where you can, and route where you must.

 

[Hellhawk666]

... as the LAN and ISP use different header info to destinguish where to send said info it meens even tho one pc is 2 foot from the other the packets will still be bounced off the ISP (admitedly not all round the world).

Exactly - even if packet information is sent out to the ISP and bounced back to the originating address it would still take less time than pinging data back and forth between individual addresses and a server - certainly so in the case of overseas players with poor latency.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Exactly - even if packet information is sent out to the ISP and bounced back to the originating address it would still take less time than pinging data back and forth between individual addresses and a server - certainly so in the case of overseas players with poor latency.

No offense, but do you know what a switch does? Do you know what a router does? Your ISP is not involved in local traffic. That is the beauty of a game engine with latency preference.

Maybe Frontier have hardcoded in something that forces packets to hit it's server constantly, but for the life of me, I cannot think of why.

Even if your fastest instance buddy is a continent away, you should have a smooth multiplayer experience as the engine picks on latency.

You can have a buddy two doors down you could never play with, as his latency is too high, so the engine eliminates him from your instance suitors. He can have a perfectly great game with other peeps 50 miles away, as their latency matches better.

There is simply no way of knowing.

 

[Hellhawk666]

Maybe Frontier have hardcoded in something that forces packets to hit it's server constantly, but for the life of me, I cannot think of why.

Err - actually I was agreeing with YOU. What I meant @Greeb was that even in the worst case situation it would still probably be faster.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Frontier has probably already made international tests, toward his server in the UK. And certainly already done tests P2P internationally. To be sure that these configurations are reliable, before embarking on this project to develop ED

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Frontier has probably already made international tests, toward his server in the UK. And certainly already done tests P2P internationally. To be sure that these configurations are reliable, before embarking on this project to develop ED

They have done networking games before, so it isn't new thing for them. However, ED networking model is complex, so it will be very very interesting how that will work.