How Playable is The Game on High Latency?

[Synthetic Frost]

Hey all, Synthetic Frost here.

I've been a fan of the Elite series for many, many years, and have been following the development of this game ever since it was originally announced before the Kickstarter campaign. I originally was fully willing to be an alpha backer for this, but as I followed the dev videos and various let's plays of other backers over the last year, I became increasingly concerned that I might not even really be able to play.

Long story short, I'm in the U.S., but I'm way out in the country where my only possible option is 400ms-600ms satellite internet. We don't even get a solid enough cell signal to maintain a 3G or 4G LTE connection for internet over wireless. I'm about one step away from buying the beta right now, but I wanted to hear from others to hear if it's even worth paying the $75 to test it.

I'm pretty accustomed to playing games on the lag. I play a healer on WoW, and have for several years, on this latency. I also used to play a lot of Freespace 2 and other space and flight sims on similar connections, such as Dial-Up internet. I fully realize that I would never be able to do much dogfighting on my ping times. But my question is, is my own ship flight handled locally, or will I be warping all over the place as the server tries to resync me like in console FPS games?

If I can at the very least fly with nothing worse than delayed responses for docking requests and stuff like that, I'll go ahead and pick up the game, fully knowing in advance I'll never go beyond basic trading runs.

Thanks in advance,

Synthetic Frost

 

[Corium]

Personally, I'd find a way to decrease that ping as most of the ONLINE aspect of the game is purely Peer to Peer.


As for the solo mode, it's still online, you're not being matched to other players so a higher ping could be playable.

I do not have the means to simply ramp up my ping and give the game a test run for you, but for those that may. I'd recommend atleast giving this gentleman a heads up.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Hey all, Synthetic Frost here.

I've been a fan of the Elite series for many, many years, and have been following the development of this game ever since it was originally announced before the Kickstarter campaign. I originally was fully willing to be an alpha backer for this, but as I followed the dev videos and various let's plays of other backers over the last year, I became increasingly concerned that I might not even really be able to play.

Long story short, I'm in the U.S., but I'm way out in the country where my only possible option is 400ms-600ms satellite internet. We don't even get a solid enough cell signal to maintain a 3G or 4G LTE connection for internet over wireless. I'm about one step away from buying the beta right now, but I wanted to hear from others to hear if it's even worth paying the $75 to test it.

I'm pretty accustomed to playing games on the lag. I play a healer on WoW, and have for several years, on this latency. I also used to play a lot of Freespace 2 and other space and flight sims on similar connections, such as Dial-Up internet. I fully realize that I would never be able to do much dogfighting on my ping times. But my question is, is my own ship flight handled locally, or will I be warping all over the place as the server tries to resync me like in console FPS games?

If I can at the very least fly with nothing worse than delayed responses for docking requests and stuff like that, I'll go ahead and pick up the game, fully knowing in advance I'll never go beyond basic trading runs.

Thanks in advance,

Synthetic Frost

You'll be fine in solo play and online play your ship won't desync, but other players' will.

Your ship movement and NPC ship movement are handled locally unless you're in someone else's instance, and even then I haven't noticed my location desyncing, just everyone else's location, and I imagine I desync on their side.

I'm not quite as rural, I have a 1.5mbit DSL connection, but my ISP throttles my bandwidth doing certain things every day like clockwork. I know exactly where you're coming from.

Edit: If you use a signal booster is it possible to get 3g cell connections?

 

[Asp Explorer]

The problem with satellite is that not only is it high latency, but it's essentially read-only

You need an uplink too, and it looks like that will probably have to be dialup

 

[Synthetic Frost]

You'll be fine in solo play and online play your ship won't desync, but other players' will.

Your ship movement and NPC ship movement are handled locally unless you're in someone else's instance, and even then I haven't noticed my location desyncing, just everyone else's location, and I imagine I desync on their side.

I'm not quite as rural, I have a 1.5mbit DSL connection, but my ISP throttles my bandwidth doing certain things every day like clockwork. I know exactly where you're coming from.

Edit: If you use a signal booster is it possible to get 3g cell connections?

Nope, I'm basically in the woods. Trees block signals all the way around. Our Satellite connection is actually pretty solid though. I hardly ever just plain DC out of other online games. As I said, I heal in WoW and I've gotten so good at anticipating incoming raid damage and running out of the fire in advance that most people never realize I'm even on satellite.

As long as I'm never randomly warping when I'm trying to fly, I think I'll be just fine. granted, like I said, dogfighting will never really be an option, but I'm really okay with that as I've always preferred to be a solitary player in games like this.

I'm perfectly content just mining or making trade runs or things of those natures that don't involve other people that much.

I'll go ahead and take the plunge. I'll let you all know how it goes after the game's all downloaded and installed by tomorrow.

 

[Thomas Jefferson Jones]

Nope, I'm basically in the woods. Trees block signals all the way around. Our Satellite connection is actually pretty solid though. I hardly ever just plain DC out of other online games. As I said, I heal in WoW and I've gotten so good at anticipating incoming raid damage and running out of the fire in advance that most people never realize I'm even on satellite.

As long as I'm never randomly warping when I'm trying to fly, I think I'll be just fine. granted, like I said, dogfighting will never really be an option, but I'm really okay with that as I've always preferred to be a solitary player in games like this.

I'm perfectly content just mining or making trade runs or things of those natures that don't involve other people that much.

I'll go ahead and take the plunge. I'll let you all know how it goes after the game's all downloaded and installed by tomorrow.

I think you'll still have a great experience, when the galaxy is opened up closer to release being in another player's instance will be a pretty rare event anyway.

 

[Non Grata]

The problem with satellite is that not only is it high latency, but it's essentially read-only

You need an uplink too, and it looks like that will probably have to be dialup

Satellites can do uplink too (e.g. IPStar).

 

[Synthetic Frost]

Okay guys. First impressions!

The important things are indeed handled locally on my machine. I'm able to run the game at max settings, without it even getting choppy around planet rings and asteroid fields. Current specs are as follows:

i7-4770k @ 4.3Ghz
Corsair H100i
Gigabyte Z87X-OC
32GB Corsair Vengeance LP 1866Mhz
2x SLI EVGA GTX 770 Superclocked with ACX Cooling
Cooler Master HAF X 942 Blue
Corsair HX750 PSU 80+ Gold
Samsung 840 Pro SSD - 128GB
3TB Western Digital Black 7200rpm HDD
1TB Western Digital Black 7200rpm HDD

5Mb/sec 400-600ms satellite internet connection.

SLI currently disabled because of no SLI support in the game yet.

Honestly, everything runs smooth as butter. Even with the latency, I can just come within 50km of a port while in super cruise, and time coming out of it right next to the starport. I am SO glad that Frontier lets the game handle most things on the local machine instead of from a host server. The game would be unplayable for me at that point. But fortunately, I can play. And a LOT better than I expected coming into this. So thank you, Frontier, for making the network code work as it does.

I've played for about 3 hours total so far. I spent the first hour or so remapping and getting used to the controls. I went to a remote astroid field and practiced some lateral maneuvering, as well as assist off training, and did fairly well.

Once I was confident I could at least pilot my Sidewinder, I headed to I Bootis and spent the next 45 mins to an hour trading to and from Azeban City. Racking in about 22,000 credits thus far.

So far, I've been killed twice. Both times while INSIDE Freeport's docking bay. I knew it was an anarchic system. But I was curious just how quickly other players would turn on me. Thus far, I'd seen several other players at the various space ports. None of which seemed to be warping or desyncing much at all. That made me doubly curious to see how bad my lag was. So unloaded all my cargo at the previous system, and jumped to Freeport, hoping to find out just how bad my lag made dogfighting other players.

There were several people around, but no one seemed interested in me as I purposely crawled towards Freeport's docking entrance, hoping to bait some attention.

Sadly, I made it into the docking bay without incident. But just as I was landing on my cleared docking pad, I see a Viper hovering above me. I slam on my vertical thruster, hoping to get down on the pad and into the hanger before he can kill me, but it was too late. Within just a second or two, I went from full shields and health to hunks of charred debris drifting inside the spaceport.

Luckily, I was prepared, so I took a free sidewinder and lost zero credits from the event.

The second time, I wanted to see if he was still there over an hour later, so I went to Freeport, slammed on my boost, and entered the docking ring at full speed, aiming for my pad. I was honestly surprised I did as well as I did. I got to my pad and started the computer-controled takeover with the Starport Services menu just coming up when he killed me. I hadn't quite gotten down into the hanger quick enough. But again, no credits lost.

Honestly I wouldn't have minded at all if he'd picked a fight outside the station. I know I wouldn't have been a match for him either way, but camping INSIDE the station seems so... Dishonorable, even for a pirate.

Either way, it wasn't like I wasn't expecting it. So all in all, I'm VERY happy with the game so far.

 

[Tiggo]

this is a bug or exploit though, the station security (even in anarchic system) should kill him when shooting inside station.