Today was the saddest day of my 30 year Elite career

[Splendour]

I don't think the connection speed had anything to do with it.

During Beta testing there were several similar reported cases of two commanders in an instance, A able to see and affect B, B unable to see and affect A. AFAIK these were isolated incidents they couldn't reproduce.

I think Hypermaniak just got unlucky and ended up in a similar situation

 

[OVMorat]

Sorry Hexen but I am not exaggerating. What possible reason could I have to do that?

I expect lag. I coded a space combat multiplayer game on a UK military system (that was in 1990) so I know what I am talking about. I even coded in C a radar tracking system (for a Defence company) that was kind of like the radar we have in this game. I am sorry to bring this up, but I know what netcode is and I know what lag is.

This was way more than lag. The game reported absolutely nothing to my PC about the attack. That is not lag, that is a failure in the network code; either the client, the server or the P2P comms.

If it was not that, and simply that I was matched with a player on - what, a 3200 baud modem? - then we should never have been matched in the same instance.

Maybe it was just that proverbial 'ghost in the machine' and will never happen again; I will try to remain optimistic about that. Kinda hard though.

Maybe it was someone cheating through saturating their uplink? I haven't heard of this being tried in ED yet but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

I wish FD had put the whole game on servers, but seeing the cost of the EVE cluster I can understand why they didn't. Shame though, the instancing system does cause some limitation which are now becoming apparent.

 

[gumbie]

I think expecting your internet to be good enough for open play in a third world country thousands of miles from the majority of the player base is a bit much.

 

[Hypermaniak]

Hey hypermaniak, I recently played on a 3Mb connection and on launch night at lave station could see a dozen players in the same instance, I don't think your connection will be the problem. I am in the uk and regularly see players from all over Europe and the states.
However, I did get problems like you describe very early in the beta.

Maybe worth getting on a chat channel with others and coordinating a meet up to test? The lave radio one is friendly and plenty of others to choose from in the groups thread. I won't be back online till next week but if you friend me in game we can try meeting up and testing.

Good luck.

Thanks Steed. Sent you a friend request (Cmdr BloodZero)

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

I don't think the connection speed had anything to do with it.

During Beta testing there were several similar reported cases of two commanders in an instance, A able to see and affect B, B unable to see and affect A. AFAIK these were isolated incidents they couldn't reproduce.

I think Hypermaniak just got unlucky and ended up in a similar situation

Now that is interesting. Thanks for posting that. I guess we will never know if they cannot reproduce it.

 

[Hexen]

Sorry Hexen but I am not exaggerating. What possible reason could I have to do that?

I expect lag. I coded a space combat multiplayer game on a UK military system (that was in 1990) so I know what I am talking about. I even coded in C a radar tracking system (for a Defence company) that was kind of like the radar we have in this game. I am sorry to bring this up, but I know what netcode is and I know what lag is.

This was way more than lag. The game reported absolutely nothing to my PC about the attack. That is not lag, that is a failure in the network code; either the client, the server or the P2P comms.

If it was not that, and simply that I was matched with a player on - what, a 3200 baud modem? - then we should never have been matched in the same instance.

Maybe it was just that proverbial 'ghost in the machine' and will never happen again; I will try to remain optimistic about that. Kinda hard though.

Well If you actually tracked net exchange - agree. And apologies, I guess in that case I'm much less competent than you. Thanx for mention.

My guess - matchmaking issues, need more fine tuning. It will be much worse if it's actually something along the inserver transactions. P2P? Might be but less likely. This technology been around for quite some time already.

 

[Hypermaniak]

I had some PvP issues in the Beta with invisible enemies from other instances, could this be some sort of instancing thing?

Thanks for sharing that - so I am not alone. What part of the world are you in might I ask?

 

[Maruun]

I am from the UK, and '84er like many of you reading this. I have waited for this reincarnation of the original for 30 years.

I had to move to Vietnam this year, where I have a less than illustrious internet connection.

Today, this happened:

Logged in, and dropped into a Nav Beacon in an Anarchy system.

Another player was there and as usual we flew with scanning distance of one another. I scanned him. He was obviously scanning me, but I received no 'scan report'....hmm, that's odd I thought, maybe a bug?

He already had hardpoints deployed, but didn't start firing. So I flew past him to go look for some pirates.

As I did so, he turned to follow and I thought...oh oh, looks like an attack run. There were no sound effects, nothing, and suddenly my 1st layer of shields were gone. Ok, lag I thought. He has fired on me so I pop a shield cell and boost some more. I boost several times and when I stop boosting he is so far out of range he is not even on my scanner.

I suddenly come to a halt - cannot boost - message 'Engines Disabled'. No shields and my hull is at 35%. So I wait for him to appear and finish me off, but he doesn't. Maybe he lost me, but I doubt it, he was right on my six the whole time. Did I just 'disconnect' from him perhaps? Whatever happened, it was totally out of whack. I don't mind getting killed, I can afford it. I WANT to fight other players, that's why I backed the game.

It made me really sad that I am clearly not going to be able to dogfight other players...and this is a 7MB ADSL connection with a 15ms ping to the ISP, so it's not THAT bad a connection.

That is some seriously bad network lag or network code or Peer 2 Peer something weird going on.

So now, for the first time, I have to commit a selfie.

It could be that he lost you, ther signatur drops immensly when you lose engines. To the point he nearly has to be around 200m to target you. The next thing you still keep your momentum when you engines are off so you just drift away, with nearly zero signature and no hope of avoiding death at that moment. Why giving you the last shot when you arent a threat anymore.

The next thing is the peer-to-peer. You can have the best internet connections in the world but that doesnt help you if the other player has a bad and is on the other side of the world. Because you will have a ping of aroudn 10-300ms depending on both position on the world.

It could be a peer-to-peer "ghost" problem we had that sometimes in beta because of bad peer-to-peer connection to another player.

 

[Hypermaniak]

Well If you actually tracked net exchange - agree. And apologies, I guess in that case I'm much less competent than you. Thanx for mention.

My guess - matchmaking issues, need more fine tuning. It will be much worse if it's actually something along the inserver transactions. P2P? Might be but less likely. This technology been around for quite some time already.

No need to apologise and anyway according to our profiles we are both Competent. I think the word you meant was 'knowledgeable'. Well my knowledge is old and out of date but the network theory is the same.

Between his PC and my PC we are going to lose data due to the nature of the net. But what is wrong is that my PC did not report anything whatsoever about the attack. That is quite a lot of information being lost. It seems that after I stopped boosting to gain clearance and recharge my shields, we completely disappeared from one another - like we had both left the instance.

In simple terms:
he presses the trigger, a message should end up at my PC with the packet of data about that attack. My HUD is updated accordingly.

How many times must that message have been sent to get me from full shields to 0% thrusters and 30% hull? He must have pressed the trigger a lot (normal in battle) so what happened to all those 'attack' messages?

That is a LOT of network data to just not arrive at my client. That is flawed code, no other conclusion is possible. Is the server just throwing the data away because it cannot find me anymore? No, of course not. It is recording that I am being damanged, because I can see that my shields are gone, my HUD too ... but the update to my HUD arrived in one single packet: saying that my status is now '30% hull' etc.

What happened to the data in-between? Why did my client not show the animations and sound effects for being attacked. Was my client never informed it was being attacked until the very last message arrived?

You see what I mean? There is something not working right here.

 

[xyphic]

This was way more than lag. The game reported absolutely nothing to my PC about the attack. That is not lag, that is a failure in the network code; either the client, the server or the P2P comms.

I'd suggest raising a support ticket detailing when / where the encounter took place, including the commander name (if you remember it). I know that the game sends some telemetry to the matchmaking server, so it's possible they have some server logs to get an idea about what was going on. But unless you tell them, they won't know to go looking. If you're able to find the network log -- and if not, someone here should be able to tell you where to look -- that might also contain useful information so attach it to the ticket.

 

[insidah]

I am from the UK, and '84er like many of you reading this. I have waited for this reincarnation of the original for 30 years.

I had to move to Vietnam this year, where I have a less than illustrious internet connection.

Today, this happened:

Logged in, and dropped into a Nav Beacon in an Anarchy system.

Another player was there and as usual we flew with scanning distance of one another. I scanned him. He was obviously scanning me, but I received no 'scan report'....hmm, that's odd I thought, maybe a bug?

He already had hardpoints deployed, but didn't start firing. So I flew past him to go look for some pirates.

As I did so, he turned to follow and I thought...oh oh, looks like an attack run. There were no sound effects, nothing, and suddenly my 1st layer of shields were gone. Ok, lag I thought. He has fired on me so I pop a shield cell and boost some more. I boost several times and when I stop boosting he is so far out of range he is not even on my scanner.

I suddenly come to a halt - cannot boost - message 'Engines Disabled'. No shields and my hull is at 35%. So I wait for him to appear and finish me off, but he doesn't. Maybe he lost me, but I doubt it, he was right on my six the whole time. Did I just 'disconnect' from him perhaps? Whatever happened, it was totally out of whack. I don't mind getting killed, I can afford it. I WANT to fight other players, that's why I backed the game.

It made me really sad that I am clearly not going to be able to dogfight other players...and this is a 7MB ADSL connection with a 15ms ping to the ISP, so it's not THAT bad a connection.

That is some seriously bad network lag or network code or Peer 2 Peer something weird going on.

So now, for the first time, I have to commit a selfie.

LOL - network code.


They are probably using UDP, hence the drop outs.

 

[xyphic]

They are probably using UDP, hence the drop outs.

Of course they're using UDP. No guarantee that any particular packet makes it to the destination, and no guarantee that the ones that do arrive in the correct order. ED's P2P stack is designed to cope with those conditions as best it can. What the OP describes is clearly not the normal packet loss that you might expect.

It wouldn't surprise me if the matchmaking server arbitrates the damage states (hull, shields, modules perhaps) but the P2P stack deals with client positional updates. Part of me wonders like OVMorat whether this could be an exploit (in which case FD really need to know about it).

 

[Hypermaniak]

Of course they're using UDP. No guarantee that any particular packet makes it to the destination, and no guarantee that the ones that do arrive in the correct order. ED's P2P stack is designed to cope with those conditions as best it can. What the OP describes is clearly not the normal packet loss that you might expect.

It wouldn't surprise me if the matchmaking server arbitrates the damage states (hull, shields, modules perhaps) but the P2P stack deals with client positional updates. Part of me wonders like OVMorat whether this could be an exploit (in which case FD really need to know about it).

Thank you! Someone understands. I cannot help wonder the same as you, and suspect that the server does the damage state arbitration; so it was getting messages from him, updating state, but not updating me. Or it was updating me but the packets never arrived. I only got a final message saying 'you are in this state now'.

I will ticket it and see what response I get.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

I'd suggest raising a support ticket detailing when / where the encounter took place, including the commander name (if you remember it). I know that the game sends some telemetry to the matchmaking server, so it's possible they have some server logs to get an idea about what was going on. But unless you tell them, they won't know to go looking. If you're able to find the network log -- and if not, someone here should be able to tell you where to look -- that might also contain useful information so attach it to the ticket.

Thanks, I'll do that.

 

[bassman]

True I suspect, I am sure dedicated servers have shorter quicker routes between players, but there is no technical reason I can see for P2P to be much more problematic, in theory it should even be faster as its a direct route between players, no middle man...

Most routes between clients are not especially direct since traffic will generally have go via the core "tier 1" network via inter ISP peering and transit connections. Since the tier 1 network is for the most part blinding quick and reliable it will make little difference if the traffic has to go via dedicated server since that server will generally have a very good connection to the tier 1 network. For example if ping google via my dedicated VPN server it adds a whopping 1 or 2 ms to my ping vs a direct ping. The disadvantages of peer to peer are threefold: firstly your client has to send separate state update to all other clients rather than just a single server, secondly (at least in ED) the integrity of the instance becomes more fragile with more peers since they are sharing control of non-player game entities such as NPCs, and thirdly establishing UDP routes between peers is much more complex and prone to failure than with a dedicated server "close" to the tier 1 network.

 

[Hypermaniak]

So I found the network logs and had a look at quite a few of them. I found the following at the exact time this happened (there are about 50 NonFatalErrors like this at this point, so I have just pasted the last few):

{14:25:39} OBJSES letter: NonFatalError:Sender isn't authority for object FuelTank 0x000004da1b793383 State=Live
{14:25:39} OBJSES letter: NonFatalError:Sender isn't authority for object ShipArmour 0x000004da1b79337c State=Live
{14:25:39} OBJSES letter: NonFatalError:Sender isn't authority for object SideWinder_SuperCruise 0x000004da1b793373 State=Live
{14:25:39} OBJSES letter: NonFatalError:Sender isn't authority for object AIPilot 0x000004da1b793374 State=Live
{14:25:39} OBJSES letter: NonFatalError:Sender isn't authority for object ShipPowerDistributor 0x000004da1b793381 State=Live
{14:25:39} LeftSession(3): 0x000004da1ef75fae: 68.113.195.234:64711 x 64 Name Unknown
{14:25:40} Discard old FragU packet: 51dd0002: 3/4
{14:25:41} Discard old FragU packet: eabb0003: 2/3
{14:25:41} Discard old FragU packet: 2009002a: 2/3
{14:25:43} Discard old FragU packet: 92870005: 2/65535
{14:25:45} Discard old FragU packet: f8b70007: 2/3
{14:25:46} Discard old FragU packet: adc70009: 2/65535
{14:25:47} Discard old FragU packet: 1341002e: 1/65535
{14:25:48} Discard old FragU packet: 558b002f: 1/65535
{14:25:49} Discard old FragU packet: 181d0031: 2/65535
{14:25:50} Discard old FragU packet: 5917000c: 2/65535
{14:25:50} Discard old FragU packet: 546d000d: 1/65535
{14:25:50} Discard old FragU packet: cf96000f: 1/2
{14:25:52} Discard old FragU packet: a1570012: 1/2
{14:25:52} Discard old FragU packet: 09020014: 1/65535
{14:25:53} Discard old FragU packet: f2fd0013: 1/2
{14:25:54} Discard old FragU packet: 29d70035: 2/3
{14:25:55} Discard old FragU packet: 91890016: 1/65535
{14:25:56} Discard old FragU packet: 45410038: 1/65535
{14:25:57} Discard old FragU packet: f1880019: 1/2

All my older logs do not show this NonFatalError....although it was a fatal error for my ship, lol

 

[Trickle]

Your thread title suggests something more extreme, click bait?

Yeah, thread should have had a better subject.