Store ship vitals on ED systems (PvP)

mrspoonsi · May 7, 2015

From what I can tell, once enter into a PvP with another player it is your computer talking to the other persons computer, values like shield etc are held on each respective computer. These values need to be held on frontier systems, so it is always referenced from the ED servers, this would put an end to the various exploits, damage can be registered with the ED servers which also would make future exploits easier to spot (such as a player having weapons which can fire more often, or do more damage than possible).

Last night was in a wing of 4, Clipper, python, and 2 vultures. We pull a conda (which did not have any shield boosters) and 40 seconds of sustained fire, of all 4 ships on the conda did not shift the shield value even slightly...

TriumphANT · May 7, 2015

Combat with other players IS Peer-to-Peer. That's it. It's not going to change, because doing player-server-player for a large group doubles the effective lag. Are you insisting this guy was exploiting?

babelfisch · May 7, 2015

You can either have an active combat system with P2P or an automatic point and click combat system with dedicated servers. I prefer manual combat.

If hits and ship status would be handled by dedicated servers you would need one server per instance making maintenance very expensive. There is a reason why no single MMO (even with subscriptions) uses a manual combat system.

mrspoonsi · May 7, 2015

You assume that shield damage could not be bunched together to be referenced to the main server, every single beam hit does not need registering, only that in the last 1 second X damage was done, the clients can take from other computer then sync with the main server any discrepancies...however it is a technical issue and technical issues can always be solved.

There are known programs out there which people can use to maintain shield, this puts a big doubt on any combat you enter into, was it the other guy had a better ship (pretty hard to justify if 2 people have the same ship and yours is a rated), or was the pilot better? or were they exploiting?

babelfisch · May 7, 2015

mrspoonsi said:
You assume that shield damage could not be bunched together to be referenced to the main server, every single beam hit does not need registering, only that in the last 1 second X damage was done, the clients can take from other computer then sync with the main server any discrepancies...however it is a technical issue and technical issues can always be solved.

There are known programs out there which people can use to maintain shield, this puts a big doubt on any combat you enter into, was it the other guy had a better ship (pretty hard to justify if 2 people have the same ship and yours is a rated), or was the pilot better? or were they exploiting?

Simple solution: If you are scared that you encounter a cheater dont do PVP.

mrspoonsi · May 7, 2015

That sort of negates the whole point of ED, unless you are after a space truck simulator.

babelfisch · May 7, 2015

mrspoonsi said:
That sort of negates the whole point of ED, unless you are after a space truck simulator.

PVP is not the whole point of ED. It might be for you. Counter-Strike is about PVP. The official website doesn't even mention PVP.

Sandmann · May 7, 2015

mrspoonsi said:
From what I can tell, once enter into a PvP with another player it is your computer talking to the other persons computer, values like shield etc are held on each respective computer. These values need to be held on frontier systems, so it is always referenced from the ED servers, this would put an end to the various exploits, damage can be registered with the ED servers which also would make future exploits easier to spot (such as a player having weapons which can fire more often, or do more damage than possible).

Last night was in a wing of 4, Clipper, python, and 2 vultures. We pull a conda (which did not have any shield boosters) and 40 seconds of sustained fire, of all 4 ships on the conda did not shift the shield value even slightly...

Cheats need to be stopped, absolutely... but introducing servers isn't going to happen given that the whole networking code would have to be rewritten from scratch, and servers set up strategically around the world at significant expense.

mrspoonsi · May 7, 2015

Ok how about this? I not know the background to how ED handles its PvP, lets assume that currently:

1) your own shield value is stored on your own computer
2) damage is sent from one player to other player to be deducted

Simple, make each computer hold not only their own shield value, but also the other persons, damage should be calculated on both computers, and any large discrepancy the PvP battle should be over and telemetry form both computers sent to ED servers for investigation.

cowasaki · May 7, 2015

mrspoonsi said:
Ok how about this? I not know the background to how ED handles its PvP, lets assume that currently:

1) your own shield value is stored on your own computer
2) damage is sent from one player to other player to be deducted

Simple, make each computer hold not only their own shield value, but also the other persons, damage should be calculated on both computers, and any large discrepancy the PvP battle should be over and telemetry form both computers sent to ED servers for investigation.

This would be the only reasonable way to do it.