So, last night I flew 100ly out to Igorodimos for the combat community goal. After accepting it and fueling up, I jumped into one of the high-intensity conflict zones. Some great fun was had, but then stuff started getting weird. I would link footage, but apparently new users aren't allowed to post any links, at all. You can find short clips of what I describe here on my YouTube channel (slavik262).
As others have pointed out, the first thing to go was the sound. Whenever large amounts of weapons are firing, the sound just sputters out into loud clicks and pops. Note that the frame rate never drops, it's just the audio. This is on a good machine (4 GHz i7), so processing power shouldn't be an issue.
Then, some really nasty lag set in. Lag so bad that it becomes difficult to hit targets. Targeted ships would literally bounce around (and out of) my field of view. According to my sensors and comms panel, I was connected to about four other human players.
Fighting with other players should be fantastic, but if you're trying to work towards a goal or get bounties, it's frustrating since E
still only credits a single player with a kill. This basically means that all of us would pump damage into a target, then all have beam lasers firing as it exploded so that we would be considered the last to deal damage. This was exacerbated by targets only trickling into the zone one to three at a time.
All of that is a little frustrating, but easy enough to deal with. What is not acceptable is how the lag interacts with the friend or foe calculations done by the game. Twice in a row last night, I had been fighting for an hour when a federal ship teleported (due to lag) directly into my line of fire. Before I could stop shooting, everyone turned hostile. With an entire capital ship and 20+ supporting ships all focusing their firepower on me, shields drop almost instantly, and my ship exploded so quickly that all I had time to do was swear so loudly I'm afraid I woke neighbors. I saw this happen to several other commanders too, and only a few barely escaped with their lives because they were farther away from the capital ship and its escorts.
So now I have lost 150k in insuracne (which is 2/3 of all the money I had since I only play a few hours after work some days) and an additional 150k to 200k in combat bonds and progress towards the community goal. If this has seemed a bit like a rant, that's why. Frankly, I never want to visit a high-intensity zone again until some of this is fixed.
Suggestions
Clearly the game engine is being pushed to its limits by these conflict zones. Space combat in Elite is fantastic, but cracks really begin to show in these large arenas. Something needs to be done to better optimize things and smooth out these issues. Or, a more realistic and short-term fix would be to not create these situations in the first place. It is clear that the engine cannot currently handle this many ships, all fighting in one area. It looks amazing to see 20 fighters all buzzing around a capital ship in a massive battle, but I would much rather have a functional, enjoyable experience. One would also assume that the net code would also behave better with fewer things going on - for years other games have been able to successfully establish P2P connections to 4-8 players without major issues.
Fighting with other players would be much more enjoyable if they could split the kill rewards. Clearly some code is already in place to track who has dealt damage to a stricken ship. Surely keeping a list of players who have dealt damage to the ship instead and dividing the reward somehow can't be too hard. Failing that, warp more enemy ships into a conflict zone at once. It makes zero tactical sense to trickle in reinforcements, and from a gameplay perspective everyone ends up chasing one or two guys.
But whatever is done, please, please address everything turning hostile on you. The recent changes that forgive minor damage to an untargeted NPC have been a great first step, but if Elite is going to have scenarios with this many ships flying in close proximity, we need something more. Perhaps the amount of damage the game ignores on friendly ships could be multiplied by some coefficient for the number of ships in your immediate vicinity. Dealing with lag is one thing, but when it starts costing your players hours of their time, it isn't okay.
As others have pointed out, the first thing to go was the sound. Whenever large amounts of weapons are firing, the sound just sputters out into loud clicks and pops. Note that the frame rate never drops, it's just the audio. This is on a good machine (4 GHz i7), so processing power shouldn't be an issue.
Then, some really nasty lag set in. Lag so bad that it becomes difficult to hit targets. Targeted ships would literally bounce around (and out of) my field of view. According to my sensors and comms panel, I was connected to about four other human players.
Fighting with other players should be fantastic, but if you're trying to work towards a goal or get bounties, it's frustrating since E
still only credits a single player with a kill. This basically means that all of us would pump damage into a target, then all have beam lasers firing as it exploded so that we would be considered the last to deal damage. This was exacerbated by targets only trickling into the zone one to three at a time.All of that is a little frustrating, but easy enough to deal with. What is not acceptable is how the lag interacts with the friend or foe calculations done by the game. Twice in a row last night, I had been fighting for an hour when a federal ship teleported (due to lag) directly into my line of fire. Before I could stop shooting, everyone turned hostile. With an entire capital ship and 20+ supporting ships all focusing their firepower on me, shields drop almost instantly, and my ship exploded so quickly that all I had time to do was swear so loudly I'm afraid I woke neighbors. I saw this happen to several other commanders too, and only a few barely escaped with their lives because they were farther away from the capital ship and its escorts.
So now I have lost 150k in insuracne (which is 2/3 of all the money I had since I only play a few hours after work some days) and an additional 150k to 200k in combat bonds and progress towards the community goal. If this has seemed a bit like a rant, that's why. Frankly, I never want to visit a high-intensity zone again until some of this is fixed.
Suggestions
Clearly the game engine is being pushed to its limits by these conflict zones. Space combat in Elite is fantastic, but cracks really begin to show in these large arenas. Something needs to be done to better optimize things and smooth out these issues. Or, a more realistic and short-term fix would be to not create these situations in the first place. It is clear that the engine cannot currently handle this many ships, all fighting in one area. It looks amazing to see 20 fighters all buzzing around a capital ship in a massive battle, but I would much rather have a functional, enjoyable experience. One would also assume that the net code would also behave better with fewer things going on - for years other games have been able to successfully establish P2P connections to 4-8 players without major issues.
Fighting with other players would be much more enjoyable if they could split the kill rewards. Clearly some code is already in place to track who has dealt damage to a stricken ship. Surely keeping a list of players who have dealt damage to the ship instead and dividing the reward somehow can't be too hard. Failing that, warp more enemy ships into a conflict zone at once. It makes zero tactical sense to trickle in reinforcements, and from a gameplay perspective everyone ends up chasing one or two guys.
But whatever is done, please, please address everything turning hostile on you. The recent changes that forgive minor damage to an untargeted NPC have been a great first step, but if Elite is going to have scenarios with this many ships flying in close proximity, we need something more. Perhaps the amount of damage the game ignores on friendly ships could be multiplied by some coefficient for the number of ships in your immediate vicinity. Dealing with lag is one thing, but when it starts costing your players hours of their time, it isn't okay.