Newcomer / Intro Just wondering....

[Touchwood]

I'm a little puzzled as to how a particular game mechanism is managed - I refer to the occupation of a landing pad by a ship in open....

If I log out with my ship on a landing pad, I presume that pad becomes available for other ships. If, however, when I log back in, there is another ship occupying that pad what happens?

Maybe it's as simple as an automatic transfer of my ship to the hangar? Never noticed, but this could happen I suppose.

This query has been prompted by the current Pleiades exploration CG - the station where data is handed in only appears to have three pads, and it occurred to me that the CG could be hi-jacked by three players leaving their ships on the pads and not logging off - surely there's something in game to stop this happening?

 

[Ashnak]

Yep. Instancing.

Basically, the game (server) decides in which instance of the game your ship is placed when you log in. This may be an instance that contains only you or several (up to lots) other human players. One of the criteria is whether that landing pad you want to instance on is already occupied, other criteria seem to be based on your location in order to reduce lag between players.

And talking about that CG - you won't instance together with all other players in that CG. On a good day, that could be several hundred. At most, you'll usually see about a dozen other human players.

 

[Hanz Sorensen]

"you won't instance together with all other players in that CG. On a good day, that could be several hundred. At most, you'll usually see about a dozen other human players."
because you would wind up in a Queue a mile long to enter stations and such ?

Are you always be able to Wing or hook up with people on your Friends list ? Does instancing try to get you instanced with your Friends and those close enough to not have a laggy connection with ?

 

[Para Handy]

I don't know if they have changed the participant numbers per instance but I used to turn up to trade CG's in Mobius to find loads of hollow icons and being held in a stack for ages at space stations (not outposts). The past few times though I have had no delays and there seemed to be fewer hollow icons.


[where is it]

 

[Chris Simon]

Regarding the numbers, I believe the "normal" maximum reachable in the bubble is about 30 commanders plus some NPCs.
In ideal environment without NPCs and with all commanders having good and wide enough connection, up to a hundred is theoretically possible.

The problem with bases and outposts is that you can't load into an instance where your landing pad is occupied, so you very often end up in your own instance. If you wait there, other commanders will eventually drop in, though.

 

[Touchwood]

Regarding the numbers, I believe the "normal" maximum reachable in the bubble is about 30 commanders plus some NPCs.
In ideal environment without NPCs and with all commanders having good and wide enough connection, up to a hundred is theoretically possible.

The problem with bases and outposts is that you can't load into an instance where your landing pad is occupied, so you very often end up in your own instance. If you wait there, other commanders will eventually drop in, though.

So you could influence the chances of whether you drop into a populated instance or one of your own by leaving your ship on a landing pad or putting it in the hangar?

 

[Chris Simon]

If it is an outpost, then yes. If you log out outside of the outpost, then when you're logging in, the game will happily put into a well-populated instance (like they are during the CGsand so on.
If you log out inside the outpost, you are more likely to be put into a new instance where you don't collide with other docked commanders.

In stations or big surface bases with lots of pads it won't work, of course.

And btw. It doesn't matter if you are outside on the pad or in the hangar. Both counts as occupied landing pad.

 

[Ashnak]

...
Are you always be able to Wing or hook up with people on your Friends list ? Does instancing try to get you instanced with your Friends and those close enough to not have a laggy connection with ?

Not always - but if possible, yes.

For a definite answer to that question, you'll probably have to ask the Fuel Rats. They're the wizards regarding on how to instance with a specific player - the one time I had to use their services, it went through friending, winging up and deploying the wing beacon, but there was a specific sequence to it.