Warfare & Tactics

Good Day,

I don't know if a similar thread was already posted before, but lately I have stepped on a problem several times:
After I successfully lock a target and hyperspam my point, it often just does nothing for ~500ms, just to give me the "Warp interrupts bla bla lock not possible" message and my target's safely cuddling with it's warp bubble.

Question is, does EVE really have such a giant Ping?
Or am I just doing it wrong?

What's the fasted way to lock a target?
Manually lock it with CTRL+Click then point, or click point first and then directly on the target? (Auto lock N point)

I like missed >that< much kills just because of this "delay".

Oh, and another question:
After the lock timer ran out, the animation says "Locked" and is blinking like a rabbit for like another 0.5 seconds.
Is this intended? Like a fixed 0.5 seconds on top of your locktime?

Sorry if my questions were answered somewhere before, but I could not find any thread yet :c

Ah thanks, I'll try it that way now.

Well this is interesting.
Does the server compute in one-second ticks or communicate in that interval?

This must also be the reason for i.e. the Movement Speed of Vessels only updating every Second.

But thanks for that info, that clears up a lot!

The server computes in one second internals, it communicates constantly. This may be wrong/over simplified, but I think the problem boils down server ticks. Assume all the processing happens at integer numbers and commands are sent/received during real numbers. If you request to activate a point on a locked target at time 1.000000001, then that request won't be processed until time 2. If the target is supposed to enter warp at time 1.9999, then the target is gone when the server processes the point command. In essence, the target warps off at the same exact time you try to point him.

Somebody did a good write up of Eve server ticks in a PDF document that I remember reading. Try Googling for "Eve server ticks" or something and maybe you can find it.

CTRLCTRLCTRLCTRLCTRLCTRLCTRLCTRLCTRCLFUCK!!! repeat

^^ This

Every second the server will receive any new (series of) commands, process them, and update your client in the following second. This is why align times (in to warp) that are under 2 seconds are effectively "unlockable" (unless you are living right next to the servers in London).

There was a DEV blog about this a LOOOOOOOONG time ago detailing how the server functions and what its Achilles heel*** is.
In a way, this 1Hz speed is good because it allows for so many people to function at the same time in the same general area without many problems. However it is frustrating when dealing with very fine maneuvers.


*** EVE's coding architecture can't make use multi-core processors due to its single threaded design (it was built before multi-cores) and time sensitive nature of the information. The former is being worked on as we speak though. The latter can't really be helped.