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1.481 Fixes for 3/8/2004 [Delayed until Tuesday]... |
Faustus Marshal Palestar
Joined: May 29, 2001 Posts: 2748 From: Austin, Texas
| Posted: 2004-03-06 21:31  
The following update will be finished on monday containing the following fixes and changes..
- Ship storage is now locked to the shipyard/gate that was last used. This will stop exploiting of shipyards in the MV.
- The load-balancing code has been improved to take in account the actual CPU load. The old balance code, balanced the servers based off total noun counts for a zone, which aparently is not working that well. This should fix the last remaining lag issues with the MV.
- New client command "/focusarea", which allows the client to set their default focus area (the space around their ship for which is considered local). Also, the focus area for each client will dynamically be set based on the clients BPS (bytes per second) transfer rate. Currently, all clients have a focus area of 5,000 gu, which is causing some players on modems to lag out quite a bit. The new code, will lower the focus area to 2,500 gu for clients with low BPS settings (i.e. modem users).
The old code did this as well, but I removed that functionality as I thought the verb priority system would compensate for the increase in bandwidth usage.
- Spawn selection map has been implemented, showing a mini-navigation map on the spawn selection screen. This should make it MUCH easier to find out where the battles in the MV are occuring, and picking a spawn point to get yourself into the battle without having to go in-game and ask players what system.
-Richard
[edit - changed title to reflect new release date]
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Richard -Faustus- Lyle
Lead Programmer - DarkSpace
www.darkspace.net / www.palestar.com
[ This Message was edited by: Shigernafy on 2004-03-08 16:55 ]
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MrSparkle Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001 Posts: 1912 From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2004-03-06 21:42  
Hmm how will spawn selection work with this shipyard change? Seems easy to just pick a new shipyard to make it the last one used, then just reuse the previous one. Each time would change the 'last one' used right? Or does this mean shipyards have their own garages and we can't interchange them (that would really suck).
EDIT: I don't really understand what the exploit was, so I don't understand what this change is gonna do. Can you elaborate?
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"My father taught me many things ... keep your friends close, but your enemies closer" -Michael Corleone
[ This Message was edited by: MrSparkle on 2004-03-06 21:44 ]
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Southpark Admiral
Joined: February 25, 2004 Posts: 132 From: Texas
| Posted: 2004-03-06 21:48  
i don't understand the locking part of the "fix" either, but wouldn't a delay on the docking time for SY be more reasonable?(takes 1 min to dock a ship etc.) if the exploit he's talking about is the SY hide and seek game, then a delay on dock/undock time would be more reasonable..
anyhow, my other question is: what happens if the last shipyard you "used" is destroyed, or captured.. is your ship now lost?
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Demorian Fleet Admiral Galactic Navy
Joined: October 06, 2001 Posts: 3406 From: Charlotte, North Carolina
| Posted: 2004-03-06 22:01  
The exploit was that shipyards were being used for mass transit, which is not their purpose... now, they are literally "docks"... when you're done playing, you dock at the shipyard. When you come back, you spawn *only* at that shipyard. Not necessarily the same ship... but that's where you come back. Period.
-Dem
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MrSparkle Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001 Posts: 1912 From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2004-03-06 22:02  
Another good question Southpark. I guess that depends on what he means by 'locked'
I'm wondering if the shipyard exploit is the ability to get troops from somewhere else quickly through the shipyard? But I don't know, I've never thought of any of that as an exploit. I just thought of shipyards as jumpgates on a planet, not an actual place where ships are actually built. I always thought the ships were built in those 3 mysterious home systems our home gates send us to (but we never get to see), and that shipyards were, like I said, a sort of planet-based jumpgate system.
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MrSparkle Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001 Posts: 1912 From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2004-03-06 22:08  
Bleh that's a terrible system Demorian, I hope it's not true! Shipyards being used as mass transit was a good thing IMO. Nobody likes to have to travel all around the MV to find action, and that's one of the main reasons why scenario was always so much more popular than the MV.
Shipyards only needed minor fixing, such as requiring proper tech levels. The didn't need this drastic change.
If you only use the shipyard now when entering/exiting the game, people are gonna migrate to GA. Shipyards were THE savior of the MV I think. They just need minor fixes like proper tech levels.
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Demorian Fleet Admiral Galactic Navy
Joined: October 06, 2001 Posts: 3406 From: Charlotte, North Carolina
| Posted: 2004-03-06 22:09  
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Bleh that's a terrible system Demorian, I hope it's not true! Shipyards being used as mass transit was a good thing IMO. Nobody likes to have to travel all around the MV to find action, and that's one of the main reasons why scenario was always so much more popular than the MV.
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Sorry, that's why there are jump drives.
-Dem
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Thrie Fleet Admiral Raven Warriors
Joined: October 28, 2002 Posts: 760
| Posted: 2004-03-06 22:19  
and Worm Holes
_________________ [Fleet Admiral] Thrie \"The Tiger\" Barton of [C.S.S. Armor Tiger]
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MrSparkle Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001 Posts: 1912 From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2004-03-06 22:21  
Well watch what happens to the MV. Mark my words in this thread, the MV will die again as the old one died. I understand shipyards needed changing, but that's only because they were totally unlimited.
The only change shipyards need is to require the proper amount of resources and tech for the ships. So long as the planet has them, you can spawn. If not, you can't. Plain and simple.
But restricting it too much will kill the MV! GA server will be the popular server again.
EDIT: sorry, I meant that you have to SPEND the resources our ships say they require, as well as have the proper tech level, which is almost always 80-100 tech which very few shipyard planets actually have right now.
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"My father taught me many things ... keep your friends close, but your enemies closer" -Michael Corleone
[ This Message was edited by: MrSparkle on 2004-03-06 22:47 ]
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AdmBito Grand Admiral Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: October 04, 2002 Posts: 1249 From: Its hard out here for a pimp
| Posted: 2004-03-06 22:43  
I have to agree with Sparkle. Locking ships in a shipyard is silly. What happens if we log off in deep space? Or get discoed in a fight? And then the planet gets capped? We are screwed.
Shipyards need restrctions, but not a lock down like this one placed upon them.
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Specterx Fleet Admiral Pitch Black
Joined: December 09, 2001 Posts: 547 From: Virginia/California
| Posted: 2004-03-06 22:46  
Why not just disallow spawning at a shipyard within x gu of an enemy ship? That would fix the "warp 5000 ships to the planet under attack and then respawn infinitely" problem.
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Smith Fleet Admiral
Joined: October 13, 2002 Posts: 320 From: Pittsburgh
| Posted: 2004-03-06 22:48  
so r we gonna have a garage at each individual shipyard?
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AdmBito Grand Admiral Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: October 04, 2002 Posts: 1249 From: Its hard out here for a pimp
| Posted: 2004-03-06 22:53  
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On 2004-03-06 22:48, Smith wrote:
so r we gonna have a garage at each individual shipyard?
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Maybe not an individual shipyard, but how about an expanded one, if this goes into effect?
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MrSparkle Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001 Posts: 1912 From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2004-03-06 22:54  
Specterx, what would solve that is having to spend the required resources AND having the proper tech levels. So far, I've only seen 1 enemy shipyard planet with 100 tech. I build every Kluth shipyard planet with 100 tech. Seems silly right now as it's not needed, but it should be needed! Cruisers take, what, 75 tech? Dreads maybe 95? I don't remember exactly, but that's a very limiting factor when coupled with resource spending.
EDIT: and I should say, a newly captured shipyard won't likely have new resources pouring in from the starport. So it's indeed limited. And it makes the planets with those rare resources and a shipyard VERY valuable, and worth guarding closely.
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"My father taught me many things ... keep your friends close, but your enemies closer" -Michael Corleone
[ This Message was edited by: MrSparkle on 2004-03-06 22:58 ]
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Pentara Cadet
Joined: April 20, 2002 Posts: 327
| Posted: 2004-03-06 23:21  
If I understand this new system right and each ship will now have only 1 spawn location in the mv (the sy used to store it), then I'm sorry to say that this new system really stinks.
I understand the exploit being used, but there are alternative ways to solve this problem.
A) Travel times between SY. If I go in at SY 1 and want to come out at SY 2, it takes a MINIMUM of 60 seconds to spawn there and a TOTAL time of distance/2xspeed of AM JD.
B) Inf cannot be stored. A bad system, but less worst than this idea.
C) Any ship taken out of storage from an INVADED planet has it's INF removed. This is also a great idea as it leaves the current SY system intact, but solves the exploit problem.
D) Same as C except, any ship taken out of storage in a SYSTEM with a planet INVADED has it's infantry removed.
Even in the previous patch, you could take a small ship to your farthest owned system, crash it and pull a new ship from storage. If now you have to travel direct with each ship you have in storage to use them, well all I can say is this is VERY VERY VERY BAD. Please reconsider using ANY of the above mentioned solutions instead Faustus.
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