What if everyone turns up at Earth at the same time?

So will the instances be created on the fly as required. Example, 10 "earth" instances are already running each at max capacity. If my squad of 4 decides to go visit earth, is an 11th instance created for us? Or is the number of instances available a set resource?
The only alternative to not creating an 11th instance is to stop you going there until an instance is free. I can't see that happening.
 
So will the instances be created on the fly as required. Example, 10 "earth" instances are already running each at max capacity. If my squad of 4 decides to go visit earth, is an 11th instance created for us? Or is the number of instances available a set resource?

I can't imagine it working any other way! You 4 are in some instance wherever you are - I doubt it matters to the server whether it's Earth-11, Lave-23 or BackOBourke-1.
 
sorry for my totally ignorance and noobish but...

can i have an explanation of the reasons to split in instances ?

i ask that because i remember a game named Ultima online where there wasn't istances at all and the game was always ok even when 1000 ppl were present at the same time (lag apart ofc).

It's only a matter of lag ? or what else ?

thanks in advance for any kind of answer.
 
sorry for my totally ignorance and noobish but...

can i have an explanation of the reasons to split in instances ?

i ask that because i remember a game named Ultima online where there wasn't istances at all and the game was always ok even when 1000 ppl were present at the same time (lag apart ofc).

It's only a matter of lag ? or what else ?

thanks in advance for any kind of answer.

hey Sterlino

Difference between ED and Ultima is that ultima was server client and ED is peer to peer, so the client handle the networking between themselves, so you have to limit the number of players in an instance :)

Well.. at least that is how i understand it.
 

Michael Brookes

Game Director
You mean Alliances? ;) An Alliance will, apparently ensure the other players in the Alliance are in your instance (although Frontier have not told us the size limit of Alliances - if they're > 32 then even that cannot work).

Groups can be hundreds of people strong so will not guarantee being in a same instance... you're more likely to be, simply because you have a smaller population, but there's no guarantee.

Alliances are people in co-operation, but you can also create private groups to play with specific people in that group.

Michael
 
sorry for my totally ignorance and noobish but...

can i have an explanation of the reasons to split in instances ?

i ask that because i remember a game named Ultima online where there wasn't istances at all and the game was always ok even when 1000 ppl were present at the same time (lag apart ofc).

It's only a matter of lag ? or what else ?

thanks in advance for any kind of answer.

Generally, the issue is server lag. All those people hitting the same instance at the same time creates a massive load on the server. When I played EVE a few years ago they used to get real lag issues in fleet battles. You would literally hit the gate to jump into a system, the screen would go blank while it tried to load the systems (where 300 people were currently in battle) and when it finally managed to load, you were already dead and floating in your escape pod (if you were lucky) having not even fired a shot.

They have since implemented some very clever stuff to get around these issues including a way of effectively slowing time for players during these big fleet encounters ( http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/2437 ). I believe they can now have 1000 + people in a fleet battle in one system and it all runs well.
 
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Alliances are people in co-operation, but you can also create private groups to play with specific people in that group.

Michael

Yes, but the question you answered was about co-op friends and instances... and the only way to guarantee you appear in the same instance as someone is with an Alliance... as far as we've been told. :p ;)
 
sorry for my totally ignorance and noobish but...

can i have an explanation of the reasons to split in instances ?

i ask that because i remember a game named Ultima online where there wasn't istances at all and the game was always ok even when 1000 ppl were present at the same time (lag apart ofc).

It's only a matter of lag ? or what else ?

thanks in advance for any kind of answer.

I think the main reason is to reduce the lag and to keep the quality of the players experience as high as possible. If you look at some youtube clips of large fleet combat in Eve Online you'll see its almost like watching a slide show the lag is so bad. And ED is going to be far more CPU/GPU intensive than Eve's combat engine so its just not feasible to have unlimited people in one place.

Hopefully as technology progresses that 32 player limit will steadily rise.
 
Elite: Fringe

Oh don't.... please... that could break a person.... It was bad enough having Olivia sounding like Spock... that was the most horrendous experience of my life... I can't see her now without thinking 'she spoke like Leonard Nimoy for a while'.... Very off-putting... Ugh... *goes into a corner to recover*
 
can i have an explanation of the reasons to split in instances ?

Just to add to what everyone else has said, part of the reason is the control model.

In EVE for example, you select an action and your ship goes and does it. Even if that action takes several seconds to cross the network, it's still going to have the right effect. I guess Ultima Online would have used a similar control model?

Elite: Dangerous is a bit more like an FPS, because you actually control the ship on a moment-to-moment basis. So if you press fire and the message takes several seconds to propagate, your target could be miles away. Unfortunately, that makes it much harder to scale up Elite-style combat to large numbers of players. Instances are a way of restricting groups to a size where the game remains fun to play.
 
Oh don't.... please... that could break a person.... It was bad enough having Olivia sounding like Spock... that was the most horrendous experience of my life... I can't see her now without thinking 'she spoke like Leonard Nimoy for a while'.... Very off-putting... Ugh... *goes into a corner to recover*
AARRGGHH! Spoilerz, dude! I am just starting series 3!
 
So what if 10,000 ED players organise to arrive at Earth at the same time? What will happen to the servers? I get the impression the game expects only a dozen or so individuals to be interacting at any time?

I would expect that they can handle it - given the number of backers they have.
 
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