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Time to Warp, Time to Lock, and Server Ticks
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Nafre Attano
Doomheim
#1 - 2016-08-04 21:50:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Nafre Attano
Below is what I believe to be an accurate scenario based on my understanding of game and server mechanics, whereby the server checks once per second (Tick) to see if a command has been issued. Will someone please confirm and/or elaborate on anything I am missing or not understanding? Thanks in advance!!!!!

I jump through a gate, and arrive in the middle of a gate camp.

Between Tick 0 and Tick 1: I enter a command to initiate warping.

At Tick 1: I start to accelerate, and lose my gate jump cloak. Other players can see me.

Between Tick 1 and Tick 2: A gate camper enters a command to target me.

At Tick 2: I am a full second into acceleration, and the gate camper just now begins to target me.

So, discounting lag, player response time, bubbles, bumping, and so on: A gate runner's Time to Warp can be a full second longer than a gate camper's Time to Lock, and the game runner will always be able to escape.
Yang Aurilen
State War Academy
Caldari State
#2 - 2016-08-04 22:49:22 UTC
Nafre Attano wrote:
Below is what I believe to be an accurate scenario based on my understanding of game and server mechanics, whereby the server checks once per second (Tick) to see if a command has been issued. Will someone please confirm and/or elaborate on anything I am missing or not understanding? Thanks in advance!!!!!

I jump through a gate, and arrive in the middle of a gate camp.

Between Tick 0 and Tick 1: I enter a command to initiate warping.

At Tick 1: I start to accelerate, and lose my gate jump cloak. Other players can see me.

Between Tick 1 and Tick 2: A gate camper enters a command to target me.

At Tick 2: I am a full second into acceleration, and the gate camper just now begins to target me.

So, discounting lag, player response time, bubbles, bumping, and so on: A gate runner's Time to Warp can be a full second longer than a gate camper's Time to Lock, and the game runner will always be able to escape.


I wouldn't discount lag and player response time. Those are pretty much part of the equation on whether or not you lose your ship to that insta svipul/thrasher.

Post with your NPC alt main and not your main main alt!
Doc Fury
Furious Enterprises
#3 - 2016-08-04 23:30:01 UTC
Desync is a thing again.



☼

There's a million angry citizens looking down their tubes..at me.
Paranoid Loyd
#4 - 2016-08-04 23:40:22 UTC  |  Edited by: Paranoid Loyd
Understanding the math is fine (yours looks right), counting on the math to be reality is a no go.
My friend in Australia used to tell me how his friend in the UK could blap someone before he even showed up on the Aussie's overview.

This was a fairly decent article.

"There is only one authority in this game, and that my friend is violence. The supreme authority upon which all other authority is derived." ISD Max Trix

Fix the Prospect!
Nafre Attano
Doomheim
#5 - 2016-08-05 00:00:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Nafre Attano
Paranoid Loyd wrote:
Understanding the math is fine (yours looks right), counting on the math to be reality is a no go.
My friend in Australia used to tell me how his friend in the UK could blap someone before he even showed up on the Aussie's overview.

This was a fairly decent article.


Thanks, Loyd. It was a useful article (although it left me feeling like Austin Powers: "Oh, no, I've gone cross-eyed.").

It did confirm other posts that claim due to server Ticks occurring once per second, there is no merit to decreasing inertia/agility unless it decreases Time to Warp to below the next full-second time. In other words, going from 3.8 sec to 3.1 sec Time to Warp will offer no real benefit; you would have to reduce it to 2.9 sec to see a benefit.

But, taking into account all those non-math and not-according-to-Hoyle possibilities, perhaps one should simply fit for the best time possible?

Now I'm reading that time-zones are another variable that affect game play and timing.

How many folks agonize over these details, optimizing fits to certain time intervals and such, and how many folks just fit for the best stats that are important to them?
Mephiztopheleze
Laphroaig Inc.
#6 - 2016-08-05 00:00:56 UTC
Paranoid Loyd wrote:
My friend in Australia used to tell me how his friend in the UK could blap someone before he even showed up on the Aussie's overview.


I can confirm that this is possible. No amount of scan resolution from the other side of the planet can compete with physically being within 1,000km of the server.

I get around 400-500ms of lag to the TQ servers from my home in outback Queensland. ~100ms of this lag is due to the sheer distance involved. I once wrote THIS something on the topic.

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Paranoid Loyd
#7 - 2016-08-05 04:02:09 UTC  |  Edited by: Paranoid Loyd
Nafre Attano wrote:
Now I'm reading that time-zones are another variable that affect game play and timing.
It's not timezones, it's the connection speed and quality of the routing between you and the server or to somewhat over simplify it, distance.

Nafre Attano wrote:
How many folks agonize over these details, optimizing fits to certain time intervals and such, and how many folks just fit for the best stats that are important to them?
With the knowledge the math is unreliable due to variables you or CCP can't control, it's not really worth worrying about. Go with a fit, test it for a while, if you don't think that's the best way to go after giving a fair amount of time to test, try your other theory. Maybe it works better, maybe it's just luck, but if it works it works. A good portion of the fun of this game or any game really, at least to me, is testing the mechanics, don't agonize over it, make testing it part of the fun.

"There is only one authority in this game, and that my friend is violence. The supreme authority upon which all other authority is derived." ISD Max Trix

Fix the Prospect!
May Arethusa
Junction Systems
#8 - 2016-08-05 04:24:58 UTC
Paranoid Loyd wrote:
Understanding the math is fine (yours looks right), counting on the math to be reality is a no go.
My friend in Australia used to tell me how his friend in the UK could blap someone before he even showed up on the Aussie's overview.

This was a fairly decent article.


This. I live about a hundred miles from London, my ping is super low, my typical insta-locking ships run 3k+ scan res. People still make it through a gate camp. Now and then my "uncatchable" travel 'ceptor will get caught. I've also managed to catch pods warping from gates, and lock cloaky haulers before they can cloak. While the math has been tried and tested, there are so many different variables at work that mechanical quirks such as the Cloak/MWD trick and the T3 mode switch are more reliable than a sub two second align time. Your ping increases and decreases with your performance, and similarly spikes when jumping systems. Breaking your gate cloak immediately often puts the camper at an advantage unless they have also jumped to chase you.

Aligning below that two second threshold increases your survivability significantly, but it isn't infallible.
Brokk Witgenstein
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#9 - 2016-08-05 07:36:02 UTC
Math checks out to the best of my understanding yes.

Additional question concerning activating an MWD to burn off though: can't activate them while still under gatecloak so I must assume these only activate on tick #2 as well?
Zakks
CSR NAVY
Citizen's Star Republic
#10 - 2016-08-05 10:12:21 UTC
Brokk Witgenstein wrote:
Math checks out to the best of my understanding yes.

Additional question concerning activating an MWD to burn off though: can't activate them while still under gatecloak so I must assume these only activate on tick #2 as well?


It is my experience that you can do multiple instructions within the same tick. Just gotta be quick about it.
Elenahina
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#11 - 2016-08-05 14:18:20 UTC
Zakks wrote:
Brokk Witgenstein wrote:
Math checks out to the best of my understanding yes.

Additional question concerning activating an MWD to burn off though: can't activate them while still under gatecloak so I must assume these only activate on tick #2 as well?


It is my experience that you can do multiple instructions within the same tick. Just gotta be quick about it.


This is true. You can click Align, Mash F1 (MWD), F2 (Cloak), and if your lag is low enough, all three will hit the server in the same tick.

Eve is like an addiction; you can't quit it until it quits you. Also, iderno
Memphis Baas
#12 - 2016-08-05 15:12:10 UTC
As above, it's not the timezone that matters, it's how much internet delay between your computer and the servers. Typically this is 0.1 - 0.5 seconds each way.

So if it takes 0.5 seconds for your commands to reach the server, and another 0.5 seconds for the server response to reach your computer, the internet is adding a full tick of delay to everything you do. Meanwhile the guy who's in Iceland and only has 0.1 s delay can squeeze his commands and reaction time within the same tick, beating you in the server processing queue.

Meanwhile your EVE client is trying to give you a smooth gameplay experience, so it shows you cloaking or aligning as soon as you press the button, even if the server hasn't received your command yet, hasn't said "ok".

You can sometimes see an example of this if there's a smartbombing battleship waiting on a gate: you arrive from warp at 0, you see yourself immediately jump through, and then your client gets a message from the server: "no, you got killed by the smartbombs", so all of a sudden you rubber-band back to the previous system and see your pod get killed, then you load the medical station where your clone is.
March rabbit
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#13 - 2016-08-05 15:37:04 UTC  |  Edited by: March rabbit
Once i was 'pirating' in Caldari Space and killing FW haulers and stuff. Usually i watched station and when hauler undocks i was following it and trying to catch at some gate.
At some point of time it became almost impossible. After i lost another target being couple kilometers away and being unable to lock it and point before it warped out i wrote a petition. GM answered that i started to act 8(!!!) seconds after this player initiated warp. On my end i started approach, target and preheated point as soon as he appeared in my overview.

So yeah.... 1 second tick and all this stuff..... What?

The Mittani: "the inappropriate drunked joke"
Elenahina
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#14 - 2016-08-05 15:41:03 UTC
Memphis Baas wrote:
As above, it's not the timezone that matters, it's how much internet delay between your computer and the servers. Typically this is 0.1 - 0.5 seconds each way.

So if it takes 0.5 seconds for your commands to reach the server, and another 0.5 seconds for the server response to reach your computer, the internet is adding a full tick of delay to everything you do. Meanwhile the guy who's in Iceland and only has 0.1 s delay can squeeze his commands and reaction time within the same tick, beating you in the server processing queue.

Meanwhile your EVE client is trying to give you a smooth gameplay experience, so it shows you cloaking or aligning as soon as you press the button, even if the server hasn't received your command yet, hasn't said "ok".

You can sometimes see an example of this if there's a smartbombing battleship waiting on a gate: you arrive from warp at 0, you see yourself immediately jump through, and then your client gets a message from the server: "no, you got killed by the smartbombs", so all of a sudden you rubber-band back to the previous system and see your pod get killed, then you load the medical station where your clone is.


Can I just say I love my Fiber connection? My ping is so low it's (nearly) as good as being in England.

Eve is like an addiction; you can't quit it until it quits you. Also, iderno
Eternus8lux8lucis
Guardians of the Gate
RAZOR Alliance
#15 - 2016-08-05 19:15:46 UTC
Yeah and +1 to a lot of the explanations in the thread so far.

Do a ping trace as well as it will show you where along the route to the server you get the most lag. I am west coast Canada and I find that as I hit a switch in NY somewhere I double my ping to the server going across the pond.

Ive ran the exact same boosted instalocking fits as others and often I cannot compete with Euros at all. Ironically I can figure out usually from if I can beat you instalocking where your from in the world without asking you if I scan your fit beforehand to check. Kinda same with running camps. If you find someone with a good ping they have a much greater chance of catching you than a lower ping. Knowledge is power.

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You said it's all circling the drain, the whole universe. Right?

That's right.

Had to end sometime.