Hello !!! I am new here and i have a few questions!

[Armageddonn]

Your cup is still full. You can influence the galaxy (your own private galaxy) offline, but the development and richness that will happen because of the background simulation, the influence of the actions of many players and injected events will of course not be available. But I would consider these as extras not as losses if I were planning to play single play offline.

If that is the case i am good with it, but as you read in some previous posts now we might even not get background simulation, i am ok with the galaxy not evolving because of some players actions or some dev injected events since i will be playing in offline, but if the team decides to cut some single player events,features just to force me to be online, now that i cannot take.

Even if the full background simulation was running (which it sounds like it won't), the changes that a single player can make on a 100 billion star galaxy will be almost immeasurably small.

Its ok i am good with that, i want my own galaxy, but events can be made if they actually program the npc to attack space stations and stuff like that kinda like crusader kings 2, everything happens around you even if you don't do anything, 1 faction can rule the world and you can still have 1 country (i know they are 2 tottaly different games but still)

 

[Michael Brookes]

So let me get this straight if at some point in development someone from the team said that background simulation to be local to our machines, but that is now is changed and i have to be online because that is just how it was decided a while ago ???

I don't get it, if background simulation can be local on my pc aka events that can still happen at random intervals at time, than why i must go online? i said i care nothing about players changing the galaxy i want the galaxy to change locally from my pc i want the npc and me changing the galaxy, are you telling me that i will be at disadvantage and i wont get the full experience of the game if i am not online even tho as ive read some posts the background simulation can still function on my pc but is not allowed?

The background simulation runs on the server, that has always been the case. Local machines have some components to allow for the basic gameplay interactions like trading. The higher level simulation does not run on your local machine.

Michael

 

[Associat0r]

If that is the case i am good with it, but as you read in some previous posts now we might even not get background simulation, i am ok with the galaxy not evolving because of some players actions or some dev injected events since i will be playing in offline, but if the team decides to cut some single player events,features just to force me to be online, now that i cannot take.



Its ok i am good with that, i want my own galaxy, but events can be made if they actually program the npc to attack space stations and stuff like that kinda like crusader kings 2, everything happens around you even if you don't do anything, 1 faction can rule the world and you can still have 1 country (i know they are 2 tottaly different games but still)

Stuff will still happen around you with the peristent NPC's and contacts, they just won't have broad global influences.

 

[Mephane]

Would it be possible to run the server software locally? Freelancer, for example did that. You could either play the normal singleplayer campaign mode, or just start the server .exe and connect to localhost and have the same experience as in multiplayer, minus the other players. It was a static universe there, however, and I am not sure what kind of power a computer you would need just to run the ED galaxy in the background.

 

[Slawkenbergius]

Would it be possible to run the server software locally? Freelancer, for example did that. You could either play the normal singleplayer campaign mode, or just start the server .exe and connect to localhost and have the same experience as in multiplayer, minus the other players. It was a static universe there, however, and I am not sure what kind of power a computer you would need just to run the ED galaxy in the background.

Very unlikely it will work like that. Judging by the proposals, the background sim is quite complex and is based on the servers running 24/7. It makes no real sense to try and run it on a local machine.

Rather than do what you describe above, I can't for the life of me see why you wouldn't just play solo online. You get all of the activity happening, but won't meet any other players.

 

[Barns]

Would it be possible to run the server software locally? Freelancer, for example did that. You could either play the normal singleplayer campaign mode, or just start the server .exe and connect to localhost and have the same experience as in multiplayer, minus the other players. It was a static universe there, however, and I am not sure what kind of power a computer you would need just to run the ED galaxy in the background.

Maybe, but I can't see FD letting the server side software out into the wild "Private" servers are generally pretty unpopular with developers, at least with devs who want to make money from the online component (like FD does, with a cash shop).

 

[Barns]

Rather than do what you describe above, I can't for the life of me see why you wouldn't just play solo online. You get all of the activity happening, but won't meet any other players.

I'm hazarding a guess that some of the offline wishes are due to people wanting to "customise" their game with mods, hacks etc just like you may do with single player games. The online mode of ED will definitely be checking for those sorts of things and banning accounts which use them (e.g. a hack to give yourself 1M credits - bannable of course - but reasonable to use on a single player offline game as you don't hurt anyone else).

 

[Associat0r]

Very unlikely it will work like that. Judging by the proposals, the background sim is quite complex and is based on the servers running 24/7. It makes no real sense to try and run it on a local machine.

Rather than do what you describe above, I can't for the life of me see why you wouldn't just play solo online. You get all of the activity happening, but won't meet any other players.

I see no technical reason for why it needs to run 24/7 and can't be run on a local machine, it mainly does statistical modeling at a very low update rate so it's not that computationally intensive. A mainstream PC should be able to run it without problems.

Maybe, but I can't see FD letting the server side software out into the wild "Private" servers are generally pretty unpopular with developers, at least with devs who want to make money from the online component (like FD does, with a cash shop).

Frontier said during the kickstarter that once the game is discontinued they will release the server code, I guess that won't happen until after the 5th expansion if all goes well.

 

[Slawkenbergius]

I see no technical reason for why it needs to run 24/7 and can't be run on a local machine, it mainly does statistical modeling at a very low update rate so it's not that computationally intensive. A mainstream PC should be able to run it without problems.

If the code is designed to run on 24/7 servers, then surely it would have to be modified in some way to run on a local machine? Also, if the ticks are spaced every 12 hours, then surely everything will evolve very slowly if the ticks only occur while you're running the game... You'd have to rack up serious hours to see any difference.

The statistical modelling is of tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of entities, so it seem to me like it would take some serious number-crunching, on top of actually running the game.

 

[Barns]

The statistical modelling is of tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of entities, so it seem to me like it would take some serious number-crunching, on top of actually running the game.

We're entering pure speculation mode here, but if it was me and I was tuning this galaxy-twiddling simulation for single player mode, I'd put in a performance tweak such that it only bothers running the sim for systems within a given distance of the player's current location. So systems outside that distance don't evolve until you go near them again, at which point a single "catch up" sim calculation could take place to bring them (approximately) up to date.

Means it'd only run the sim for a few hundred (say) systems at a time, rather than all umpteen hundred thousand (or however many FD run it on for the live system).

 

[Andrew Sayers]

If the code is designed to run on 24/7 servers, then surely it would have to be modified in some way to run on a local machine?

Having written my fair share of code designed to run on 24/7 servers, yes very much so.

Some of the reasons are technical, like architecting your code so you can throw more servers at the problem when your game gets too popular. Others are more organisational, like focusing QA resources on the client that's going out to millions of demanding customers instead of the server you can patch whenever the error log throws something up. And don't get me started on the legal differences.

In short, even if it's technically possible to make the background sim run on the client, there may be significant time and money implications in doing so. If I were you, I'd assume there'll be nothing and hope to be pleasantly surprised.

 

[Armageddonn]

We're entering pure speculation mode here, but if it was me and I was tuning this galaxy-twiddling simulation for single player mode, I'd put in a performance tweak such that it only bothers running the sim for systems within a given distance of the player's current location. So systems outside that distance don't evolve until you go near them again, at which point a single "catch up" sim calculation could take place to bring them (approximately) up to date.

Means it'd only run the sim for a few hundred (say) systems at a time, rather than all umpteen hundred thousand (or however many FD run it on for the live system).

I like you.