Just to let everyone know daddog and sling will be passing on things to HiTech. Last night probably was a combination of several things and it will take for them to look into each and check out all the variables and then fix it.
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- It could be something with the code for 1.10. It might not be .. will take a little bit of time for them to do some investigation in this area. This is possible since people have said MA has been a bit sluggish also.
- It could be a bandwidth thing. Again they will be checking into this. I don't personally know their setup but its possible that 190 - 200 pilots are pushing the allocated bandwidth for SEA to the max. However, I don't know if SEA is on a seperate pipe or on the same pipe as the other arenas.
- It could be a server issue. I have notice in MA when you come within 50 of maxing out the arena it starts to get funky. Last night we at first came very close to hitting 200 people in SEA. 189 actually tried to launch last night (and then there was me sitting on sidelines). So we came close to maxing out the arena.
Now outside of these issues there are several specific things done in TOD that causes a massive server hit and FE hit on your machines side.
- A large number of planes spawning and upping at the same time will cause a server hit. This usually doesn't happen in the MA because people log on when they get there. They don't all wait to up in a mass of planes.
Now even with rolling starts we were still probably having something like 40 or more trying to up at the exact same time. And then while they were upping and forming up another large group spawning. This probably cause the system resources on the SEA server to spike in several successions.
- On your computer FE side upping all from one location probably through it into fits trying to interpret 40 - 90 planes worth information in a small area.
So Nifty and I discussed and Sling and Daddog and Skernsk on CM's boards and others and there are several things we are going to try to manage system resource spikes on the server.
- First we will make sure to have several launch CVs instead of just one. Then the other launch CVs (the non target ones) will then be moved out of the combat area after everyone ups.
- Two we might more formalize launch groups. Meaning I will call out for GROUP 1 GO GO GO. Then wait a set time to make sure everyone is up and has some seperation from field and then call GROUP 2 GO GO GO.
What this should accomplish is to better break up the number of people spawning at the same time and try to better prevent the server from spiking.
Basically we have say 3 to 4 smaller spikes / request for system resouces caused by planes spawning. Instead of 1 long extended spike. Also by seperating out the groups a bit we prevent your FE from spike try to interpet all the data for X many planes.
This is an idea I just had and will submit to other CMs.
- Lastly we need to prevent downloads happening at the beginning of the frame. Obviously nothing could be done about last nights update patch. But when we switch to a new map it become critical for everyone to download it before TOD. Several TODs in the past had first frames that were attrocious because of downloading maps and then the second and third frame were better.
But as I said these are just things to try to minimize the SEA starting to max out.
Now and before people start getting on a rant for HiTech to increase the server capacity and bandwidth as far as I know they might be doing that. However, remember guys a new server costs money .. they might be looking into a new server or maybe they just need to re-allocate resources on the current server.
We ran into similiar problems over in AW when the Scenarios server basically maxed out. Over there we (the participants) had a talk about actually pitching in like $10 each to get a new server. Before we start a rant here about equipment and such and needing to increase it .. would the TOD community and Scenario community consider offering a one time charge say like $10 - $20 toward a SEA seperate server or so? Just a thought and its my own thought not something from the other CMs or HiTech.
Oh, and I do know its in HiTech's plans to increase the capacity of the SEA. Just don't know when. The above is just something to consider and in no way means HiTech is having problems covering equipment costs. Its just stems from my AW days when we all talked about pitching in to get a seperate server for our scenarios.
