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Reasonable approaches to reducing large fleet fight lag
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Clyde Frogg
Majesta Empire Holding Corporation
#1 - 2014-02-20 04:04:36 UTC  |  Edited by: Clyde Frogg
So we all know that huge fights create massive strain on the node and make it slow down to an unfun pace. There are a number of strategies that CCP could use to help diminish this effect, albeit not completely I'll list a couple of my ideas and feel free to post some of yours as well.

-Make a settings option to auto self-destruct your pod upon losing your ship if tidi is past X percent: This change could have a serious impact on tidi fights. For the average non-cap pilot in a fight like this, his individual pod is rarely worth more than 100 million isk. For the vast majority in large tidi fights, self destruct is the easiest way home, yet it takes roughly 20 minutes in 10% tidi to self destruct, and in fights with 3000+ players its possible for the self destruct button to not even work. The proposed option would allow players to instantly leave the fight when their ship is destroyed, aiding in players leaving the fight, helping slightly to reduce the strain on the server.

-Any non fighter/fighterbomber drones are destroyed when abandoned or their controlling ship is destroyed when tidi reaches 10%: One of the most notorious causes of overwhelming strain on the node is the rise of sentry doctrines, especially carriers which have the ability to store huge amounts of sentries and abandon old drones at will. While drones that are no longer active don't take as much server resources as active ones do (seeing as the server must calculate tracking, damage, optimal range etc for active), they still represent one additional object for the server to keep track of. By having abandoned drones disappear in extreme tidi fights, overall lag can be improved. Drones disappearing when controlling ships die would also aid in this. Though there is a significant amount of isk that would just be disappearing in these circumstances, the benefit of any server alleviation outweighs this concern.

-Remove the +5 drones controlled from carriers and implement a 100% drone damage/health bonus instead: This change speaks for itself; carrier sentry doctrines are immensely popular and likely will still be used despite the recent drone assist changes. This change could cut down on the amount of drones the server has to keep track of by half.

Bear in mind I'm not 100% sure how much change number 2 would help since I don't know exactly what kind of strain abandoned drones have on the server.
Yolo
Unknown Nation
#2 - 2014-02-20 04:28:55 UTC
Simply pushing drones into a stable orbit around a planet or moon in the system would solve the problem.
You can scan them down, no ISK is lost. Tho in time they will decay and disappear.

I would support the auto-pod destruction if two things happened:
  • Clone prices was reduced to zero.
  • Those who destroy the ship, automatically gets the kill for the pod.

    • - since 2003, bitches
    Linkxsc162534
    Silent Scourge
    #3 - 2014-02-20 04:45:03 UTC
    Yolo wrote:

  • Those who destroy the ship, automatically gets the kill for the pod.



    • ^ works in my book
    Xe'Cara'eos
    A Big Enough Lever
    #4 - 2014-02-20 04:58:43 UTC
    never been in a big fight myself, but seems reasonable.....

    For posting an idea into F&I: come up with idea, try and think how people could abuse this, try to fix your idea - loop the process until you can't see how it could be abused, then post to the forums to let us figure out how to abuse it..... If your idea can be abused, it [u]WILL[/u] be.
    Alvatore DiMarco
    Capricious Endeavours Ltd
    #5 - 2014-02-20 05:02:09 UTC
    Is there some legitimate reason to abandon your drones?

    No, deliberately increasing server load is not legitimate.
    Linkxsc162534
    Silent Scourge
    #6 - 2014-02-20 05:22:08 UTC
    Clyde Frogg wrote:

    -Remove the +5 drones controlled from carriers and implement a 100% drone damage/health bonus instead: This change speaks for itself; carrier sentry doctrines are immensely popular and likely will still be used despite the recent drone assist changes. This change could cut down on the amount of drones the server has to keep track of by half.

    Bear in mind I'm not 100% sure how much change number 2 would help since I don't know exactly what kind of strain abandoned drones have on the server.


    From how some of the devblogs talk about them, dead drones are quite a large strain on the server. Or if anything, they're quite demanding to players trying to load grid (even just warping to the battlefields on SISI with their hundreds of drones around makes my desktop's gears grind for about 5-10 seconds)

    So... carriers would replace their +1drone/level bonus for a +20% drone damage/health bonus. A la the dominix's bonus jsut doubled

    How would that scale for Drone Control Units? Because with this change a carrier with 5 DCUs (probably a rarity, though 1-2 DCUs isn't unheard of) would now have effectively 20 drones rather than their original 15 (not actually bad. A carrier with no DCUs would still have 10drones effectiveness, perhaps could be a light push to more carriers packing DCUs)

    Also would this scale with fighter/FBs?
    (actually a carrier dropping 5 fighters that equal 10 of them actually wouldn't be so bad since they'll start countering their own damage application issues.)
    Note that if it scaled for fighters, this would push the Thanny into an even higher demand because it already gets a 5%/level bonus to fighter damage


    Also how about supercarriers? They would still deploy 5 fighter/bombers, but get a 80%/level bonus to them?
    Then with 5 DCUs and carrier 5, they'd be seeing effectively 40 drones (that seems a little broken)

    Perhaps let them get up to 10 fighters but they get a 40% perleve bonus. This way, with 10 drones they have effectively 20 (like now) and with 5 DCUs they effectively get 30.


    I dunno, I'm just throwing numbers around. I don't really see a problem myself with limiting drones on field because... well it would do a lot to help the lag, but balance always comes into question.
    Secret Squirrell
    Allied Press Intergalactic
    #7 - 2014-02-20 06:50:59 UTC
    Alvatore DiMarco wrote:
    Is there some legitimate reason to abandon your drones?

    No, deliberately increasing server load is not legitimate.


    Large fleet fights are basically all sentry drones, even assuming your not intentionally moving, (its common to orbit even capitals) your likely to get inadvertently bumped out of recovery range of your sentry drones. When the time comes to change drones, typically for range, but sometimes also damage type, you have a choice: Spend a few minutes trying to recover your out of range drones, or abandon them and immediately deploy new drones.

    If your including other ways to loose your still living drones beyond hitting the actual abandon button, warpouts are another big one.


    Clyde Frogg wrote:
    -Remove the +5 drones controlled from carriers and implement a 100% drone damage/health bonus instead: This change speaks for itself; carrier sentry doctrines are immensely popular and likely will still be used despite the recent drone assist changes. This change could cut down on the amount of drones the server has to keep track of by half.


    The issue here is that a buff to both damage and hp is a nerf to bombers. Currently it takes about half a wave of bombers to clear the field of sentry drones, and 2-3 waves to clear off fighter bombers. Now it could take more then a wave for sentries, and 4-6 waves to FBs. The problem is that if you don't buff the HP, it becomes even easier to blap the drones off field, which is done even now.

    Also the problem with auto-pod, is that you presume the battle will be over more quickly for the podded player. What happens when instead, they reship, burn back out of tidi, and re-enter the fight about the same time thier pod would have died without auto-pod.