Weapons and Omnibots

I added the flamethrower and sten to all the players a few days ago, but after reading some of the server logs I see a lot of people are complaining about them. Apparently most people cannot hit the number 3 more than once, or they cannot simply scroll their mouse wheel the opposite direction to get back to the panzer after they shoot it. It seems to be very frustrating to a lot of people having so many weapons to use. So I removed them just now, and it is just the panzer, the satchel and the poison gas like it was before.


Also I adjusted the bots a couple days ago to make them smarter. I did not raise the difficulty, they are still on 3, as always. Instead I increased their field of vision to 360 degrees. This will prevent them from running past players anymore. So they will be much smarter without reacting any faster. More human like.

Another thing is that on the really big open maps I had to lower the number of omnibots so they do not lag, otherwise they lag so bad that they suck and are no fun. Baserace desert is the best example. Anyway, I see players are adding bots to these maps, and then other players are whining about the resulting lag, and this defeats the purpose of reducing the number of bots if people are going to then add 22 omnibots when it was 16 by default. So I had to take out baserace desert. Baserace desert always lags, and always will lag, due to the nature of the map. We can't run maps that lag out half the players. I lag on baserace desert and I have a 15MB download internet connection and I am about 1000 miles away from the server, so it must be ten times worse for the European players.

When I added bots to baserace there were only 10 player slots so that is not 16 by default. You must have decreased and forgot or someone else decreased. It was not 16.

No I lowered it to 10 by a map-specific config just for baserace so it would not lag. Then you raised it to 22.

The real problem here is this that map lags, and when we add jaymod with all the custom stuff it drives players away. People were whining about the lag every time that map comes up in the logs. That's why I set the bots down to 10.

I can understand some of the players frustration with the extra weapons, i felt the same way the first time I was presented with all the choices. After awhile I was able to adjust my play and adapted to it pretty well myself. I hate to see baserace removed though, one of my favorite maps, but I can understand if it is lagging badly for players. I'm on a 1.5 DSL connection and it usually ran pretty good for me with occasional lag at times.

I would prefer to run baserace desert on silent mod. Given the exact same conditions, a jaymod server will add 10-30 milliseconds of lag to your connection (the ping number you see when you hit TAB). Jaymod lags more on a big map than silent mod running the same map.

Baserace desert is a great map and we all love it or we wouldn't be here. It is a lot of fun with 20 or 30 players. It can be voted for on the Flight School server.

Good, glad to hear it is still there. I had been trying to get on Flight School from a shortcut I had put on the desktop, only problem was it was the old ip, lol. Got on the correct address other day and got my name straightened out and set the level as per your email. Hope I did it correctly.

Too bad you can't duplicate the Beginner settings and switch it to silent adding the trip mines etc.

The ideal would to have the ranking of NQ, smooth running of silent with trip mines, and weapon mods of Jaymod and some cool skins.

Along with more vsays and vsay for spec. Just saying. Guess you can't have everything.

Baserace sucks with 10 slots. So you are right to take it out.

Nothing is impossible with ET. It's an open source game, and if you throw enough time and/or money at it you can make it do anything. But then you get lots of unforeseen bugs and unexpected effects. So then you have to fix all the new problems when you change things. And you have to think about how players react, which is unpredictable.

What looks like a great idea at the programmer level often looks stupid at the player level once people figure out how to exploit it.

I've been wondering the same thing Friedrich. Who knows it may run better then it ever could on Jaymod.

Hmm, desert doesnt lag for my people, possibly a host issue there?

booger wrote:Hmm, desert doesnt lag for my people, possibly a host issue there?

We have a lot of extra weapons too, enhanced mod, qagame tweaks, weapon skins, extra rate of fire, tweaked omnibots (5 second memory for example so they play more like humans), etc etc. So we get more lag in general.

The server host is ok, a lot better than our old one. It could be better if it wasn't in New York, Chicago has a better network, but then the Euro players are farther away. Nuclear Fallout has better CPUs for the money but then we have to totally manage security ourselves, and our current provider knows a lot about ET security (a LOT more than I do lol). So it is a tradeoff.

Also we have fast shotguns and a lot more arty and airstrikes, so that causes lag when the server gets full of players. baserace seems to magnify this problem since a lot of players hide in the corners and spam arty across the map the entire game.

Booger I have seen that "FL crazy baserace" server you had running so I know what server you are talking about.

I’m well aware that you have been there lol, the settings I’m running are similar to yours, things may have changed since your last visit. I'm simply pointing out that I don’t think its a map issue.
Would both servers having the same address make a difference?
I realize there’s a lot going on from a server load standpoint, I'm just not seeing a lot of lag on that map, whether or not location is a factor there I cant say, I can say that my guys haven't reported any to me.
As for tweaks, well lets just say there’s plenty of em.

The Beginner and the Flight School servers are running on an 8-CPU server. There are four or five ET servers altogether running on this 8-CPU machine. I have access as a poweruser so I can see everything but root on this machine. So I know it is not slammed with a bunch of other game servers. So it should have plenty of capacity.

The Flight School server runs smoother than the Beginner server. It is running silent mod and is less modified. So I run more open space maps on Flight School and tighter maps on Beginner. I have Minas and Baserace Desert running over and over all day on it and people love it.

I think if I could do it over I would have rented in a different city. I chose new York to keep the Euros happy but now I get the New York network lag. Changing hosts and IPs is a very messy process, so I try to reduce lag by running smoother maps on jaymod. If I reduce the weapons instead then my Inbox fills with complaints.

Tough situation. I'm not aware of any really quality hosts across the pond though. I did use an intel-specific .so for the qa game, honestly didnt see any difference.

Copied your server?
I went there to tell phlox because he was having problems
Connecting, after reading the issues you were having with the map I did everything i could think of to re create the issue without success , so yea call it a copy if ya want, or call it help, matters little to me, its only one server.

I deleted the post already, right after I posted it, to avoid causing trouble.

I was reading the logs like I always do, and I was mad when I saw [FL]Boob was coming on our server to tell [FL] Phlox that you had added the panzers and satchels. I didn't know who [FL] Boob was so I looked up the IP, and it was not from Arizona, so I did not know if it was you anyway. I hate to accuse without proof. It always looks like you come here to get ideas and you go to our server to round up your clan members when they play here. I really wish you didn't do that. I don't go to other servers and look for my clan members.

Booger you rub people the wrong way sometimes.

Hunting down FL guys playing on FUNBOY and prompting them to leave is rude and not acceptable behavior. I have ignored it without saying anything.

Some of our guys would suggest banning you from everything for doing something like that, I know one in particular that has made just that suggestion.

So chill out and just be polite and upfront when dealing with us and you will foster more goodwill.

If FL guys choose to play the server do not come on and get them to leave.

If you feel you need to do so just don't do it on the server where our guys see it and get pissed at you for overstepping your bounds.

Only our admins have the right to tell players what to do on our server.

Friedrich wrote:Booger you rub people the wrong way sometimes.

Hunting down FL guys playing on FUNBOY and prompting them to leave is rude and not acceptable behavior. I have ignored it without saying anything.

Some of our guys would suggest banning you from everything for doing something like that, I know one in particular that has made just that suggestion.

So chill out and just be polite and upfront when dealing with us and you will foster more goodwill.

If FL guys choose to play the server do not come on and get them to leave.

If you feel you need to do so just don't do it on the server where our guys see it and get pissed at you for overstepping your bounds.

Only our admins have the right to tell players what to do on our server.

Well I see he isnt telling you the whole story, I come to your 'server' twice or maybe three times in a year and now I'm hunting fl guys? Seriously?
I came here for two reasons really, one is I run those maps a lot and if there are issues I'd like to know them, and two, phlox has been having connection issues with us off and on for a while now, and we were working on getting him connected, hence the reference to ts.
But it seems that’s considered taboo coming here and talking to my clan people about our issues isn't it?
I'll tell you something that doesn’t happen on az servers, admins don't sit up nights reading server logs because they're concerned about what someone might or might not be PRIVATE MESSAGING about, no one, including me even has that flag turned on on any server I've ever run. Do you seriously want me to believe that if it was joeschmoe, you would have had any interest in what was said?
Every time I've even tried to help this guy, I got shit on, thanks guys. I don’t care about popularity, I do care about issues that affect the stability of my servers.
So if you want to run around accusing me of copying settings, go for it, but in the long run, you gain nothing.
Az and FL will go on, because the vast majority of us are old enough not to give a rats ass about this stuff anyway.
This is an argument I cant possibly win here, but you need to know that someone removed his post, unfortunately after I had seen it, possibly because he realized the shit it might cause.

Yes I removed the post where I posted the log with someone named [FL]Boob telling Phlox that the FL server has panzerfausts and satchels on it now. Are you [FL]Boob? Your IP address seems to point to New York so I was confused. Why don't you have an Arizona IP?

I removed it about ten minutes after I posted it. I thought about it and my anger faded and I wanted to avoid this type of situation. Because I knew it would turn into this. Also you are right it was a private message so I should not post it.

And yes when I get time I actually sit down and read everything said in the server logs. I have to make time to do this. It is a key part of running a clan effectively. Server logs don't lie.

Also people whine about things on the server and they won't say anything directly here on the forum. So this is a great way to get feedback about the server.

Why don't you work with us instead of copying us? I could use help with linux issues. I have tons of skins and qagame editors and stuff like that. I could really use some help with server facade.