Physical Multi-Crew is a great idea, if only it was usable...

[Frop]

For me, there is a specific problem with frequent disconnects with physical multicrew when jumping.

During the recent Frameshift Live 4, Arther and Bruce tried physical multicrew, and guess what, Bruce got disconnectd. Then started a whole pantomime of them trying to get back together.

If FDev can’t get it to work in their own studios, it seems to me 100% crystal clear this is not something the average player is going to be able to resolve with a port forwarding FAQ.

If I recall correctly, they weren't even using multicrew, they just dropped out of the team after their very first jump. They already went in two separate ships on purpose so that they could switch the feed to whoever was having the least issues at any time.

 

[JohnRoberts]

If I recall correctly, they weren't even using multicrew, they just dropped out of the team after their very first jump. They already went in two separate ships on purpose so that they could switch the feed to whoever was having the least issues at any time.

No, they both got on Art's ship (The Wizard). Art joked to Bruce, "wipe your feet before you get it". From there, they leave for Colley Industrial Mouldings, and Bruce gets disconnected as the ship transitions from Orbital Cruise to Glide at that station. We don't see Bruce's screen, but the Team icon on Arts screen clearly shows its a disconnect, and Bruce anyway gets dumped back to the initial system (and then started the pantomime of him going to the wrong planet).

(Yes, I was watching like a hawk the moment they said they would go in a single ship )

For me, that particular transition is definitely a danger point - its where I see most disconnects. However, its fragile on all instance transitions, but does not necessarily always fail on any particular kind.

(P.S. I think I will open an ticket on this, and cite their own live stream as evidence.)

(P.P.S. Of course, there already was an issue (click here). Might be helpful is a few more people confirm it?)

 

[Frop]

(P.S. I think I will open an ticket on this, and cite their own live stream as evidence.)

(P.P.S. Of course, there already was an issue (click here). Might be helpful is a few more people confirm it?)

It's one of those long standing issues and also one of many where I can't even recall when they last mentioned considering the remote possibility of looking into it (again).

 

[Erei]

You mean, working on an "old" feature which is not still in production ?

If it works, it works. Otherwise "it's a feature".

-NPC controlled SLF still are a pain for any kind of multiplayer
-multicrew is buggy
-PP haven't had any update since its inception, pretty much, and haven't done any impact on anything since ever I think ?
-you still can only get pp items 10 a times, even in Odyssey, when you need literally hundreds for your ranks
-SLF crew member still eat 50% of your rank xp because f**** you
-FC are still a server performance drain and need to be capped
-FC filter options are poor

Just some examples. Don't worry, soon enough Frontier will jump on their new feature and forget everything that was done before.
I had a good laugh in the stream before the previous one, when someone asked for the crew member to be visibile inside the FC (the SLF one) and both Bruce and Arf were confused as to what it meant. It's already forgotten.

 

[CMD Nakamura Sakura]

Bonjour tout le monde je pense que j'ai eu le même souci sauf que de mon coter je ne suis pas déconnecté ou autres... mais j'étais avec un ami à bord de son vaisseau en multi Crew physique et le moment qui passe en FSD j'ai le chrono qui défile mais arriver à zéro mon ami passe en FSD et moi je reste bloquer à zéro et je me déplace pas avec lui. donc bon il y a des fois où sa fonctionne et des fois non. c'est dommage que cette fonctionnalité est Bug surtout que c'est un peut la star du DLC Odyssey avec la possibilité de transporter tes amis partir en exploration lointain ou tout simplement faire du R.E.S ou chasseur de primes etc surtout qui ont augmenté une place supplémentaire dans certaine Vaisseaux. ou même maintenant un VRS en multi crew il faut vraiment qui règle ses problèmes de synchronisation ou autre pour profiter pleinement du DLC Odyssey . Fin bref j'espère qui va pas le lasser tomber comme c'était le cas de la première itération du multi crew sur la version horizon.. désoler d'écrire en français... merci de votre compression...

A oui petite question il y a pas un lien pour remonter se type de Bug ou autre a Frontier??.. et encore merci de tout vos retour lien info que vous pouvez me donner....

 

[JohnRoberts]

A oui petite question il y a pas un lien pour remonter se type de Bug ou autre a Frontier??

Ici: https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/49056

 

[Imo]

I once had a commander on board. I docked at starport, went off and the poor guy flew helpless in the space station. I did not know that when my ship suddenly disappeared when I left my mate will suddenly transform into space trash. D:

 

[Erei]

Bonjour tout le monde je pense que j'ai eu le même souci sauf que de mon coter je ne suis pas déconnecté ou autres... mais j'étais avec un ami à bord de son vaisseau en multi Crew physique et le moment qui passe en FSD j'ai le chrono qui défile mais arriver à zéro mon ami passe en FSD et moi je reste bloquer à zéro et je me déplace pas avec lui. donc bon il y a des fois où sa fonctionne et des fois non. c'est dommage que cette fonctionnalité est Bug surtout que c'est un peut la star du DLC Odyssey avec la possibilité de transporter tes amis partir en exploration lointain ou tout simplement faire du R.E.S ou chasseur de primes etc surtout qui ont augmenté une place supplémentaire dans certaine Vaisseaux. ou même maintenant un VRS en multi crew il faut vraiment qui règle ses problèmes de synchronisation ou autre pour profiter pleinement du DLC Odyssey . Fin bref j'espère qui va pas le lasser tomber comme c'était le cas de la première itération du multi crew sur la version horizon.. désoler d'écrire en français... merci de votre compression...

A oui petite question il y a pas un lien pour remonter se type de Bug ou autre a Frontier??.. et encore merci de tout vos retour lien info que vous pouvez me donner....

C'est le forum anglais uniquement ici
Forum francais : https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forums/french-traductions-francaise.174/

Et non, le systeme de bug est foireux (il faut un certain nombre de vote pour que ca soit validé comme bug). C'est un bug qui existe depuis la release du systeme de multicrew.

Le site pour les bug report :
https://issues.frontierstore.net/
En anglais aussi.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Hey, Erei, tu parles très bien l'italien!

 

[Erei]

Hey, Erei, tu parles très bien l'italien!

Muchas gracias !

 

[CMD Nakamura Sakura]

Thank you very much for everything worth return and link give

"googel traduction "

 

[JohnRoberts]

Thank you very much for everything worth return and link give

De rien, amigo.

 

[CMDR James Northstar]

Multiplayer is soooooo far down the list of things FDev care about.

There is a whole body of things they could do to remedy this, but they don't seem to be particularly interested in them.

The big one is just making it so that if I should happen to lose connection for whatever reason, let me rejoin the crew I was just on when I log back on! I mean yeah, I'd love it if they actually cared enough about the Multicrew Orange Sidewinder to do something about it, but if they aren't interested in that at least let us rejoin a session in progress, like just about every other multiplayer game running allows. It baffles me that we can't even have that much.

 

[gorankar]

Multiplayer is soooooo far down the list of things FDev care about.

There is a whole body of things they could do to remedy this, but they don't seem to be particularly interested in them.

The big one is just making it so that if I should happen to lose connection for whatever reason, let me rejoin the crew I was just on when I log back on! I mean yeah, I'd love it if they actually cared enough about the Multicrew Orange Sidewinder to do something about it, but if they aren't interested in that at least let us rejoin a session in progress, like just about every other multiplayer game running allows. It baffles me that we can't even have that much.

My opinion, is that the networking for this game is such a kludge, that it is a miracle it works at all. To be fair, they might not have expected their network foundations to have to hold up as much as it tries to do now, when they first thought it up and coded it. Then they appeared to started stapling things onto it rather than a full rewrite. Wings, multicrew, then legs multicrew, and every instance change is a dice roll. My guess is that they can't fix it without a complete, or near complete, rewrite. The ROI may not be there for them. This game, like it or not, is likely in it's last couple years of active development.

 

[Viajero]

In case you have not done yet I strongly recommend to have a look at this thread. If implemented properly it should help mitigate many of the usual issues.

Peer to peer networking, the one in Elite, is just a design choice for game developers (it has its advantages, and its disadvantages chief of which is its unreliability) that players need to be aware of if they want to play that game in multiplayer. Elite is not the only game, by far, that uses it.

The UPnP protocol that peer to peer architecture is based on is inherently unreliable, not much FDEV can do there except completely change and revamp the whole networking architecture for Elite. The main mitigation for most of those peer to peer games happens to be port forwarding.

 

[Winterwalker]

The UPnP protocol that peer to peer architecture is based on is inherently unreliable, not much FDEV can do there except completely change and revamp the whole networking architecture for Elite. The main mitigation for most of those peer to peer games happens to be port forwarding.

I think that's why the OP's is a good suggestion.

Disconnects can happen even with a central server but if you were tagged with current location "in Cmdr X's multicrew seat" and you did disconnect, when you log in again the game could check your seat is still available before sending you back to a station.

I think it should probably do this similar to the way you see a redeploy screen, after ship/SRV crash or critical injury actually, giving you a choice of where to respawn and a chance to check if your multicrew seat is available before you divert yourself back to station.

 

[Viajero]

I think that's why the OP's is a good suggestion.

Disconnects can happen even with a central server but if you were tagged with current location "in Cmdr X's multicrew seat" and you did disconnect, when you log in again the game could check your seat is still available before sending you back to a station.

I think it should probably do this similar to the way you see a redeploy screen, after ship/SRV crash or critical injury actually, giving you a choice of where to respawn and a chance to check if your multicrew seat is available before you divert yourself back to station.

Indeed, my own proposals were quite similar:

Respawn

When you physically multicrew and fly in a wingmate´s ship, get to a settlement, disembark and die in combat there then the game respawn you back at your ship location wherever that may be. This leads to long periods of wait to get back into the action with your crew mates.

Unless sent to a penal station due to crimes etc I would suggest crew members dying have an additional spawn option to spawn in orbit (similar to when you bring your own ship) at a Vulture dropship (like in CZ) or an Apex which are then automatically bound to go to the general area where they died last.

Healing/revive

Posted this in the feedback thread but maybe better a dedicated thread if of interest for discussion:

At present the penalty of death while out in a settlement seems significant as the player loses any and all active missions and all consumable and materials carried. The player also loses the time used there plus the Apex transport time which is also significant.

I suggest that a simple and straightforward revive mechanic be implemented:

• A downed player with critical injuries gets a 1 minute window (or other arbitrary amount of time based on game balance) within which he/she can be revived by a wing mate.
• On being injured critically the downed player gets presented with an option to wait for revive from a wing mate or to give up and respawn at a station like at present.
• While waiting for a revive the player can not control camera, the image is darkened like the current visual after critical injury but the player can still see the scanner info.
• A revive action by a wing mate takes a reasonable amount of time and needs said wing mate to use an available medikit.
• If the revive window lapses the player respawns at a station or ship etc like at present.
• If revived the player receives a minimum amount of health and energy, and he/she must refill those as per usual.
• Edit: Possibly limit revives to a max number per arbitrary period of time, say 1 per hour or 1 per 5 hours or similar.

This mechanic could get a great sinergy with the shield grenade.

Edit for alpha phase 2: This mechanic can also work in CZ, the team the downed player is in will not lose the 10 resource points until the downed player gives up waiting for a heal and clicks the "respawn button" or the revive window lapses. If the player is revived before the revive window lapses then his/her team does not lose the 10 resource points.

Multicrew shared missions and disconnect related proposals:

Elite Dangerous: Odyssey Update 8 / Horizons Update | 27 October discussion

Is anyone else noticing excessive "camera shake" when fuel scooping? eg. Go in for a fuel scoop, reduce throttle to zero the ship looks like it'll shake a wing loose! this is in flat screen - I have been playing mostly in VR and didn't notice it - but that was before the last patch... Yeah...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[CMDR James Northstar]

In case you have not done yet I strongly recommend to have a look at this thread. If implemented properly it should help mitigate many of the usual issues.

Peer to peer networking, the one in Elite, is just a design choice for game developers (it has its advantages, and its disadvantages chief of which is its unreliability) that players need to be aware of if they want to play that game in multiplayer. Elite is not the only game, by far, that uses it.

The UPnP protocol that peer to peer architecture is based on is inherently unreliable, not much FDEV can do there except completely change and revamp the whole networking architecture for Elite. The main mitigation for most of those peer to peer games happens to be port forwarding.

My own personal experience with this thread is, it doesn't help. And yes, I did set everything up correctly and yes, I do know what I'm doing.

That said, there's only so much it can help. Everyone's got different hardware, every ISP can have their own funny little way of handling this kind of traffic.

The real solution to this has to be FDev implementing some solutions to improve stability, which may not be possible, or at least recovery, which definitely is if they're willing to prioritize it. Seeing as how they billed Odyssey as a multiplayer experience I would think they'd want it to work as well as it can.

 

[Viajero]

My own personal experience with this thread is, it doesn't help. And yes, I did set everything up correctly and yes, I do know what I'm doing

It does help a lot when implemented properly though, and there are are enough testimonials in there that show it. Port forwarding has helped for eons to players in many other peer to peer based games, not just Elite. Having said that it is important to remind that there will always be exceptions and there are certain home or private network setups that have limitations such as cgnat etc.

As for what can FDEV do, well, the UPnP protocol that peer to peer architecture is based on is inherently unreliable (not just for Elite), not much FDEV can do there except completely change and revamp the whole networking architecture for Elite. The main mitigation for most of those peer to peer games happens to be port forwarding.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I am quite certain my network is set up correctly. I understand the technologies involved well, I am familiar with the specific devices (and operating systems) that I use, and I know how to test and trouble shoot. I do not have problems with other P2P games.

Yet, I have regular problems with Elite teams, especially with physical multi-crew.

Elite Teams multi crew also doesn't with two players both using IPv6 (IPv4 disabled). There is no NAT, let alone CGNAT, there is no port forwarding needed, and the router's firewall rules correctly configured and tested outside of the game.