TEST Squadron, Gather Round......and hear a story

[Black Sunder]

I had something akin to a gaming religious experience tonight in SC.

After a very bad day of frustration in disconnects, crashes, client hangs, and never once getting back to where I was when the game decided to say FUCK YOU to me and losing me money on cargo and other things I got very, very, very discouraged.

Enter Space Jesus: Mr_Muteman(@Will C.) who is a fine member of TEST Squadron and whom I've played with a few times before. He tells me he is on a server with only 9 other people. Reluctantly i get on knowing what happens eventually to these good servers. I get on, super low ping, and great 40-50 FPS.

And it stayed like that for 2 hours that I played. I slowly made my money back up to the level it was before the last crash and even beyond. It was a soothing experience. Drained the anger and frustration right out. Put me back in the black and its all thanks to a server that wasn't overloaded beyond its capability and worked right for all of us.

Moral of the story, The game works and works really good, CIG is just severely overloading the instances with 50 people on each. We should go back to 12 per instance imo.

 

[Vavrik]

The game really is good, and it is mostly issues caused by overloading, but CIG is overloading the servers on purpose - AND out of necessity. There is really no other way to stress test a program, and figure out what needs to be optimized than by having thousands of people hammer on it.

That's also why the Reclaimer was included this round too, I think, and one of the reasons so many pirates used to use Drake Caterpillars. It loads the clients, which are currently using synchronous draw calls, so they can tell what gets impacted - so they know what needs to change when they switch to asynchronous draw calls.

 

[marcsand2]

Moral of the story, The game works and works really good, CIG is just severely overloading the instances with 50 people on each. We should go back to 12 per instance imo.

Nope, keep those instances at full overload...

because of this...

The game really is good, and it is mostly issues caused by overloading, but CIG is overloading the servers on purpose - AND out of necessity.

Yes, I was in the same instance, methinks, and at the end I even couldn't quantum jump or zoom at the starmap, but it has it's purpose. I CIG manages to get the server more stable at full overload, they can step up the amount of people per instance.

 

[Beerjerker]

Last weekend, I stumbled into a possibly empty sever. No one in chat, no one at Ollie, no one at Grimmers. It was eerily quiet, no one showed up for my entire stay on the server. Just bots staring at walls, probably plotting to grind me up into bot food... Was nice to actually explore, I hadn't been on in a long long time. And things ran way better, fps-wise.

But definitely had more fun in a Freelancer loaded up with hydrogen I'd spent all of my space bucks on, while getting chased down by a vicious player in a Glaive. Big chase and fight, all at 8-10 frames per second. RIP my hydrogen... but I did not explode without a fight!

Hope they keep pushing up the numbers, but that's surely where a lot of the glitchiness is coming from.

 

[marcsand2]

while getting chased down by a vicious player in a Glaive

It wasn't me, I haven't flown the Glaive for a while now. Glaive you said? @Montoya s favorite ship!!! Are you sure that it was just some random player trying to steal your hydrogen or was it maybe our Glorious leader spanking you for not showing up for such a long time :thinking:

 

[Wolfy]

I can't even join a server with more than 20 people. Severely limits my plan to spread the TEST creed and hand out free space kittens to all.

 

[MaxRedacted]

I'm still kinda amazed that CIG doesn't add more servers to their pool during these Fly Free Weekends. I got 4 buddies to create accounts this weekend and they all had issues, I had a lot more issues than normal. It's downright embarrassing with how much I've been hyping up this game to them. This game is decently playable at times. But I'm routinely trying to join 48/50 servers with friends, getting disconnects, and crashes.. and yes - it's alpha. but again - for the sake of new pilots bump up the server capacity on free fly weekends! /rant

:beers:

 

[StdDev]

I stumbled into a possibly empty sever. No one in chat, no one at Ollie, no one at Grimmers. It was eerily quiet, no one showed up for my entire stay on the server. Just bots staring at walls, probably plotting to grind me up into bot food..

Sounds a bit like an old Twilight Zone episode....

 

[Radegast74]

I'm still kinda amazed that CIG doesn't add more servers to their pool during these Fly Free Weekends. I got 4 buddies to create accounts this weekend and they all had issues, I had a lot more issues than normal. It's downright embarrassing with how much I've been hyping up this game to them.

That is an issue I think about also...we want to get our friends to join & buy a package, but then what you mentioned is the experience. But, again, it is still alpha.

As I was telling some people, "Free Fly Weekend" = "Extreme Server Stress Testing." It is just reality, but ultimately the game will be better for it, sooner rather than later.

A possible solution to cargo & CTD's ==> somebody on chat mentioned that for high value cargo runs, he takes along a friend as a co-pilot, as if he has a CTD, there is a chance the co-pilot won't and the cargo will still be safe. We can try that sometime, we should let people know our availability and then look for each other when we log in. We might be able to peek at the server loads too, when we try to join with friends.

 

[marcsand2]

But I'm routinely trying to join 48/50 servers with friends, getting disconnects, and crashes.. and yes - it's alpha. but again - for the sake of new pilots bump up the server capacity on free fly weekends! /rant

Yeap, the Free Fly weekends are a good reason to open more servers and put the stress testing on a hold.

If you want to get a group of players in an instance, party up before you start. When the party leader goes into PU, an instance with enough room for the whole party will be selected and all party members get an join-instance message. This room for the party will stay reserved for a limited time, even if a party member crashes out. After crashing and relaunching the game, the party members should be able to stay in the same instance.

 

[Black Sunder]

Disaster strikes tonight. Tried carting a 4/5 full caterpillar of iodine from Levski to Olisar. Disconnected on approach to land at olisar. :(

Luckily I had a Constellation of Waste as insurance and I hadn't completely filled the Cat so I still had 3300 before the connie run.

 

[EVPilot]

Can we pick up cargo and leave it in the ship and return it to a port? Also can we load up say the connie then log out from a bed and return with the cargo still inside? My gaming is typically brief periods of about 45 minutes so sometimes I can't finish a run or mission.

 

[Black Sunder]

Can we pick up cargo and leave it in the ship and return it to a port? Also can we load up say the connie then log out from a bed and return with the cargo still inside? My gaming is typically brief periods of about 45 minutes so sometimes I can't finish a run or mission.

Not really, you can't resell things you bought at the place you buy them from and persistence doesn't really work atm regardless what they say. You'd be better off running Waste from Olisar to GH or Iodine from Benson/Arcorp on Yela to GH for money. It makes a good profit, Iodine gives 25% return. Or you can try and sell drugs from the lab on Yela to Grimhex if you don't have much time.

Update! I'm back to 21K aUEC thanks to a run I did this morning.

 

[Bambooza]

It seems trading is way to wonky to make profitable on the meek margins. I'm finding doing the courier or recovery missions in an Aurora to be just as profitable with non of the risk due to crashes/disconnects.

 

[Black Sunder]

It seems trading is way to wonky to make profitable on the meek margins. I'm finding doing the courier or recovery missions in an Aurora to be just as profitable with non of the risk due to crashes/disconnects.

Drugs are the only commodity that makes major profit in small quantities. And you can do it in an Aurora MR/CL easily.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Yeap, the Free Fly weekends are a good reason to open more servers and put the stress testing on a hold.

If you want to get a group of players in an instance, party up before you start. When the party leader goes into PU, an instance with enough room for the whole party will be selected and all party members get an join-instance message. This room for the party will stay reserved for a limited time, even if a party member crashes out. After crashing and relaunching the game, the party members should be able to stay in the same instance.

". . .the party members should be able. . ." meaning that is the system's design or what you would like to see?

Update! I'm back to 21K aUEC thanks to a run I did this morning.

Is it still true mission running is like $7k/mission and they take about 10 minutes? How long did it take to run your transport? Am I comparing apples to apples--they pay is in the same pesos?

It seems trading is way too wonky to make profitable on the meek margins. I'm finding doing the courier or recovery missions in an Aurora to be just as profitable with none of the risk due to crashes/disconnects.

That is exactly what I am curious about. If what you want to do is fly transports in game, then doing it now makes good sense, but the missions do teach about the universe, so seem to me would be a wise choice. Personally, I think it is probably worth keeping an electronic notebook so you can look up previous connections with various NPC's, locations, etc. Knowledge is power. Does the game keep adequate detail of past missions?

 

[Black Sunder]

Is it still true mission running is like $7k/mission and they take about 10 minutes? How long did it take to run your transport? Am I comparing apples to apples--they pay is in the same pesos?

I don't see how 230-410 a mission is the same as 7K.

 

[Bambooza]

230-410 a mission

This is what I have been making and most of these missions take anywhere between 15 to 20 mins to complete. No where near the 200k every 30 mins I was making during the medical supply milk run of 2.6.1.

@Black Sunder Have you found any location that sells large volumes of commodities like Iodine or Hydrogen?
I tried Agricium and Laranite but they never seem to be in high enough volume to fill any cargo with.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

I don't see how 230-410 a mission is the same as 7K.

Yeah well, I'm not the guy to respond to that as I can't play at all yet. I was just told it was 7k/mission for the simplest ones, and I think I saw some vids that supported that notion some months ago. I think also at that time people were saying even for placing last in racing was something like 5k? So it seemed CIG was trying to balance the various efforts as near equal--trading, mission running and racing--but then there were also some huge numbers people were reporting with early trading running tens or hundreds of thousands. I think marcsand2 once reported a balance over 1M aUEC? But since I don't play I can't keep the different kinds of cash straight and never know for sure if all these reports are of the same kinds of cash.

Fact is, how you earn cash now doesn't much matter since you can't keep it, but one does want to develop the kinds of skills one would use later on. If you plan to transport and trade with a Conny, seems now is a great time to do that.

 

[Printimus]

how will this ever be a true MMO if there are only 12 people playing together?