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Dev blog: HED-GP Technical Retrospective

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ISD Ezwal
ISD Community Communications Liaisons
ISD Alliance
#101 - 2014-01-25 00:38:44 UTC
I have removed some rule breaking posts and those quoting them. As always I let some edge cases stay.
Please people, keep it on topic and above all civil!

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Off-topic posting is permitted within reason, as sometimes a single comment may color or lighten the tone of discussion. However, excessive posting of off-topic remarks in an attempt to derail a thread may result in the thread being locked, or a forum warning being issued.

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ISD Ezwal Community Communication Liaisons (CCLs)
stoicfaux
#102 - 2014-01-25 01:14:53 UTC
Getting back to drone swarms (aka drone grouping to reduce lag,) homogeneous drone grouping (launching the same type of drones) could be encouraged by providing a "synergy" bonus for such groups. If you launch 5 Warrior IIs as a group, you get a 10% buff to their stats.

Optionally, (or not so optionally nowadays,) if you launch mixed drone types or launch them individually, then you get a 20% de-buff to their stats.

Pon Farr Memorial: once every 7 years, all the carebears in high-sec must PvP or they will be temp-banned.
Jessica Danikov
Network Danikov
#103 - 2014-01-25 02:22:27 UTC
I'm not sure why a synergy is needed to encourage the practice that 99% of pilots already use- launch 5 drones of the same type at once all of the same type. The only reason you'd see large groups using deliberate maximum mixes of drones would be in an obvious, bannable attempt to cause lag, and at smaller scales it makes no difference (not to mention makes very little sense).
PopplerRo
#104 - 2014-01-25 02:22:51 UTC
Not entirely sure how the server handles the drone calculations, but would something such as averaging the damage/tracking/optimal/signature resolution of all assisted drones and then doing one calculation of their collective stats rather than multiple calculations be beneficial?

I do like the idea of limiting drone assist to a squad/wing commander to mildly limit the effectiveness of drone assist but that would be a different thread.
Michael Harari
Genos Occidere
HYDRA RELOADED
#105 - 2014-01-25 05:04:12 UTC
What are the things that have loads not mitigated by tidi?
Cori Fera
Imperial Shipment
Amarr Empire
#106 - 2014-01-25 09:10:48 UTC
stoicfaux wrote:
Getting back to drone swarms (aka drone grouping to reduce lag,) homogeneous drone grouping (launching the same type of drones) could be encouraged by providing a "synergy" bonus for such groups. If you launch 5 Warrior IIs as a group, you get a 10% buff to their stats.

Optionally, (or not so optionally nowadays,) if you launch mixed drone types or launch them individually, then you get a 20% de-buff to their stats.




Not a bad idea, but it would end up being a major nerf for ships that have oddball bandwidth numbers (like all the ships with 75 Mbit/sec or 100 Mbit/sec drone bandwidth). If you want to maximize your hitting power, you'd send out a mixed bag of drone sizes. Changing all the ships to have 25/50/125 bandwidths would be a major rebalancing activity that actually makes the universe a lot blander.
Gabriel Karade
Coreli Corporation
Pandemic Legion
#107 - 2014-01-25 09:46:42 UTC
Frostys Virpio wrote:
Steve Ronuken wrote:
The only way to stop blobs, is to remove the big timers.

Turn Sov fights into /lots/ of little fights, which have to happen over time.

Which is grinding. And this impacts on fun levels. (Though the current blob system isn't so much fun either. Or so it appears. I'm not involved)


You still need an objective to shoot and it will have a timer to prevent people from using the other side's weak TZ to plow through countless systems...
Do you?

Hitting the enemy when they are weakest is kind of the point of [real] warfare, should it be any different in Eve?

Given that no-one can be strong in every TZ, in every system, if you pulled timers completely (as part of a thorough re-evaluation of what sovereignty 'is') it would eventually sort itself out.

I've always felt timers in general were immersion breaking.

War Machine: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=386293
Lucas Quaan
DEMONS OF THE HIDDEN MIST
TRUTH. HONOUR. LIGHT.
#108 - 2014-01-25 09:54:03 UTC
Roddex wrote:
CCP Veritas wrote:
Frostys Virpio wrote:
How about entirely removing the auto attack behavior of drones

Yeah, a separate drone setting for that makes sense to me. I know I'd use it as a player for sure.


Is this not what the Aggressive/Passive option does?

I'm not sure even the one who programmed that feature knows what it actually does. :)
Highfield
Vanishing Point.
The Initiative.
#109 - 2014-01-25 10:39:02 UTC
CCP Veritas wrote:
Allright, post-nap replyathon!
Highfield wrote:
Would stripping sentry drones from all movement capabilties (ie. turning them into deployed turrets) help solve some of the lag related to them? After all, it takes all movement calculations out of the equations while nobody is going to miss that 1m/s..

Yes. Removing their desire to approach and orbit would reduce the amount of messages they generate.


Let me be more explicit: is this an easy stopgap measure we can expect to appear on TQ?
TrouserDeagle
Beyond Divinity Inc
Shadow Cartel
#110 - 2014-01-25 11:32:39 UTC
when is drone assist being removed
Desert Ice78
Gryphons of the Western Wind
#111 - 2014-01-25 11:41:58 UTC
TrouserDeagle wrote:
when is drone assist being removed


When every goon ship has been destroyed.

I am a pod pilot: http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/DesertIce/POD.jpg

CCP Zulu: Came expecting a discussion about computer monitors, left confused.
Anthar Thebess
#112 - 2014-01-25 11:51:29 UTC
Why not assign fighter drone mechanic to all drones ?
So you can control as many drones as you can use at current ship capabilities.

The only reason why people are using drones - is current drone assist mechanic.

If servers are overloaded by sentry doctrines why not to change this assist mechanic for sentry drones.
This will again make gun doctrines primary ones and as we all know they are manageable by servers.



Current status from logical perspective is strange.
AI drones - that require control and bandwidth - you can assign as many of them to a ceptor as you want. Thousands - no problem.

Fighters - in game piloted by pilots - you can assign only 5 to a subcap.

Stop discrimination, help in a fight against terrorists

Show your support to The Cause!
Highfield
Vanishing Point.
The Initiative.
#113 - 2014-01-25 13:37:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Highfield
Anthar Thebess wrote:
Why not assign fighter drone mechanic to all drones ?
So you can control as many drones as you can use at current ship capabilities.

The only reason why people are using drones - is current drone assist mechanic.

If servers are overloaded by sentry doctrines why not to change this assist mechanic for sentry drones.
This will again make gun doctrines primary ones and as we all know they are manageable by servers.



Current status from logical perspective is strange.
AI drones - that require control and bandwidth - you can assign as many of them to a ceptor as you want. Thousands - no problem.

Fighters - in game piloted by pilots - you can assign only 5 to a subcap.


Your argument is solid, but the explanation is a bit meh. You mean to say, that the amount of drones a pilot can get assisted to him should be limited to the amount of drones he can control himself based on his skills (just like with fighters). Obviously, right now the amount of drones on the field equals the amount of pilots*5 for subcaps and *10 for carriers (roughly), with your proposal this stays the same. The added benefit of perfect alpha (which makes drones so powerful now) disappears in your plan, which removes the benefit that drones currently have over other weapon systems.

More in general.

For the server, the problem is the amount of drones on grid, not the assist-mechanic. Even if everybody controlled their own drones, the amount of them doesn't change so the server doesn't mind (significantly). So, how to keep the server alive?

1) Fix the lag that drones create. This is a backend thing, but requires significant efforts with unknown results. CCP did this before with missiles when drakedoctrines were a thing

2) Make drone setups less viable. This is a frontend change, which aims to impact player behaviour. By reducing the thing that makes drone setups so powerful (perfect alpha by assignment), other setups which involve guns and missiles return to be a decent option. Hopefully this steers people away from the drone setups currently used, therefore reducing server load. As I mentioned before, if people stick with sentry doctrines like they do now this isn't going to impact the server load so much.

I do however wonder how the servers can cope with 4000 people duking it out in turret/missile based ships, let alone the load that the inevitable appearance of fighterbombers from supers and drones from slowcat doctrines will bring..
CCP Explorer
C C P
C C P Alliance
#114 - 2014-01-25 14:19:55 UTC
Evelgrivion wrote:
Kismeteer wrote:
The worst lag was when people were jumping in, wouldn't reopening the Brian in the Box idea really have helped in this instance? I think we're all used to module lag, and lag moving about etc, it's the reappearance of the black screen of death that was majorly concerning.

When you can't load grid, you can't turn on hardeners, and you're alpha'd off the field before it loads. That's not fun game play.
As far as I know, Brain in a Box was never closed; the hold-up is in unraveling the legacy spaghetti-code, whose voodoo underpins the existing systems.
It was never closed, but there now more people working on it.

Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson | Senior Development Director | EVE Online // CCP Games | @CCP_Explorer
CCP Explorer
C C P
C C P Alliance
#115 - 2014-01-25 14:21:09 UTC
Rommiee wrote:
Perhaps get the people from Team Super Friends to give a hand...they aren't doing anything constructive atm.
What is the relevance to this devblog and forum thread? Please stay on topic.

Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson | Senior Development Director | EVE Online // CCP Games | @CCP_Explorer
CCP Explorer
C C P
C C P Alliance
#116 - 2014-01-25 14:25:53 UTC
Jowen Datloran wrote:
Ah, so when the system approach 10% TiDi, all drones recall automatically due to "system interference" which would even be true.

Would also encourage peeps to stop using those idiotic ships.
See reply here: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4149338#post4149338

Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson | Senior Development Director | EVE Online // CCP Games | @CCP_Explorer
CCP Explorer
C C P
C C P Alliance
#117 - 2014-01-25 14:30:16 UTC
PinkPanter wrote:
Highfield wrote:
Would stripping sentry drones from all movement capabilties (ie. turning them into deployed turrets) help solve some of the lag related to them? After all, it takes all movement calculations out of the equations while nobody is going to miss that 1m/s..
You mean so they are treated as guns? They still need to be targetable but at least what you say makes sense :)
Note that there are two calculations / two systems in play here: "Destiny" the physics simulation and "Dogma" the battle/damage/attribute simulation.

Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson | Senior Development Director | EVE Online // CCP Games | @CCP_Explorer
CCP Explorer
C C P
C C P Alliance
#118 - 2014-01-25 14:33:38 UTC
Aryth wrote:
Prior to the fight CCP had to take down G-0 (our staging) and HED. This was because they were both located on the same node. This has occurred many times and has been escalated before. Why have more nodes not been put in the reinforcement pool?
No, we did not live remap HED-GP. We only live remapped G-0Q86 because it was on the same node as HED-GP.

(We also live remapped Rens and Hysera at a similar time, but for completely different reasons.)

Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson | Senior Development Director | EVE Online // CCP Games | @CCP_Explorer
CCP Explorer
C C P
C C P Alliance
#119 - 2014-01-25 14:36:29 UTC
Veldar Reku wrote:
Quote:
This is one of the bounding scaling factors in large fleet fights, the unavoidable O(n2) situation where n people do things that n people need to see...


Unavoidable O(n^2) things don't exist. Certainly not in a game. You can always optimize and compromise to avoid them.

So what can you do to avoid these n^2 problems? How about turning off collision detection (except with POS force field, for example) when TiDi is above some limit? I'm assuming you do not do collision detection with warp bubbles already unless warp attempt is actually initiated.

Everything else in EVE is not O(n^2) complex since there are limits - lock limits, watch list limits, etc. Because those limits exist, interaction complexity should not be O(n^2). Network traffic may still scale at O(n^2), but that can be managed and optimized at other nodes, not grid node (for example, I don't care if ship at 100km updates its position as frequently as a ship at 15km)

The only event that a client needs to be told is when the ship dies. Player X does not care that a drone is orbiting player B, especially when drones are not visible to player B! Sort and compromise so things scale. Send aggregate updates to clients that actually need to know about sum of events, not specific event. Player X does not care that Drone 123 hit for 5 dmg and Drone 154 hit for 20. It only cares that Player X sustained 25 damage in a given tick *iff* Player X is either locked by player B or is in Player B's watchlist. If Player B does not lock player X (and not in watch list), then Player B does not care that player X sustains damage.


There is no need or reason to be able to see (or be notified of) drone fire, laser fire, nos effects, etc. when there is TiDi on a server. Simplify and compromise algorithms so you do not have O(n^2) under TiDi.
See reply here: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4149338#post4149338

Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson | Senior Development Director | EVE Online // CCP Games | @CCP_Explorer
Gilbaron
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#120 - 2014-01-25 15:06:35 UTC
Didn't veritas say that reworking (parts) of the physics simulation was a possible thing to do for team gridlock after brain in a Box? Mainly because it is something that works well with multi core CPUs (other than the dogma simulation)?

Would that be more or less helpful than the drone code rework? I guess more since it always helps, other than the drone rework that only helps when drones are around, but I don't know how much of the load on the server is actually physics.