5 ms·

Eve online looks so fun. But the problem is massive battles like this the server 'slows down', and runs at 1/50th to 1/100th real time speed. The in-game lore s

Eve online looks so fun. But the problem is massive battles like this the server 'slows down', and runs at 1/50th to 1/100th real time speed. The in-game lore says its time dilation based on player reaction speeds increasing in times of crisis for the computer aided implants. So while it sounds like a 22 hour long epic battle the vast majority was likely spent browsing youtube and reddit, doing house work, homework, sleeping, etc. There likely wasn't hundreds of player manning their computers for the entire duration in heated combat.

nb4hnp 13y ago
That bit about the time dilation is a funny bit of canon to add to real-world technological limits as they are perceived by players. It reminds me of the "area of interest" in World of Warcraft, which was roughly 100 in-game yards or so, depending on how fast you were moving. The area of influence defines which creatures showed up on your client based on your location. This would lead to T. Rex creatures sneaking up on people (by walking in from behind while the player is preoccupied) when they should be able to be perceived from very far away.
bhhaskin 13y ago
To some extent you are correct. There is a lot of waiting around, but the time dilation only effects that system. Behind the sence there is a ton of logistics and other operations such as system lockdowns, resupplying, intell gathering, and planning.
- warfangle 13y ago
  It only affects that system because they can host one solar system on one server at a time; their server engine does not, unfortunately, provide for scaling a single solar system across several servers. They can put several solar systems on one server, though. They like to get a heads up from players when a battle like this is going to happen, so they can pre-balance the servers. Symptom of the game being 11 (!) years old.
  - Guvante 13y ago
    > Symptom of the game being 11 (!) years old. Actually it is because they don't shard the world. Every other MMO has the exact same scaling problems. Many non-MMOs can manage more players by avoiding direct contact (which turns your linear scaling problem into a quadratic one, since everyone has to know about everyone else).
    - Dylan16807 13y ago
      As far as I know the server is CPU bound, and the lack of multithreaded simulation isn't because of sharding decisions.
      - valarauca1 13y ago
        The problem is if you shard it out you'll run into issues keeping each shard synchronized to within <100ms precision.
        Dylan16807 13y ago
        I'm not suggesting sharding it, I'm suggesting that almost everything in the sim can be set up in an embarrassingly parallel way, take advantage of 4/12/whatever cores, and lower the amount of slowdown.
        rcxdude 13y ago
        physics simulations like that in EVE are far from embarrassingly parallel. Especially because the 'balls in space' physics simulation needs to be deterministic and synchronised between server and client.
        warfangle 13y ago
        There isn't much physics simulation besides direct user-induced velocity modification (or macro'd velocity modification, e.g, orbit-at-n-kilometers). It's not like they're calculating n-body gravity here.
fabian2k 13y ago
Time dilation is officially capped at 1/10th of regular speed. Of course even beyond that threshold the additional load can have an effect. These big battles are the exception, and they certainly get the outside attention, but there are many more smaller fights for every one of these big ones. And the small ones are typically over far more quickly and aren't fought in time dilation.

nb4hnp 13y ago

That bit about the time dilation is a funny bit of canon to add to real-world technological limits as they are perceived by players. It reminds me of the "area of interest" in World of Warcraft, which was roughly 100 in-game yards or so, depending on how fast you were moving. The area of influence defines which creatures showed up on your client based on your location. This would lead to T. Rex creatures sneaking up on people (by walking in from behind while the player is preoccupied) when they should be able to be perceived from very far away.

bhhaskin 13y ago

To some extent you are correct. There is a lot of waiting around, but the time dilation only effects that system. Behind the sence there is a ton of logistics and other operations such as system lockdowns, resupplying, intell gathering, and planning.

warfangle 13y ago
It only affects that system because they can host one solar system on one server at a time; their server engine does not, unfortunately, provide for scaling a single solar system across several servers. They can put several solar systems on one server, though. They like to get a heads up from players when a battle like this is going to happen, so they can pre-balance the servers. Symptom of the game being 11 (!) years old.
- Guvante 13y ago
  > Symptom of the game being 11 (!) years old. Actually it is because they don't shard the world. Every other MMO has the exact same scaling problems. Many non-MMOs can manage more players by avoiding direct contact (which turns your linear scaling problem into a quadratic one, since everyone has to know about everyone else).
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    As far as I know the server is CPU bound, and the lack of multithreaded simulation isn't because of sharding decisions.
    - valarauca1 13y ago
      The problem is if you shard it out you'll run into issues keeping each shard synchronized to within <100ms precision.
      - Dylan16807 13y ago
        I'm not suggesting sharding it, I'm suggesting that almost everything in the sim can be set up in an embarrassingly parallel way, take advantage of 4/12/whatever cores, and lower the amount of slowdown.
        rcxdude 13y ago
        physics simulations like that in EVE are far from embarrassingly parallel. Especially because the 'balls in space' physics simulation needs to be deterministic and synchronised between server and client.
        warfangle 13y ago
        There isn't much physics simulation besides direct user-induced velocity modification (or macro'd velocity modification, e.g, orbit-at-n-kilometers). It's not like they're calculating n-body gravity here.

fabian2k 13y ago

Time dilation is officially capped at 1/10th of regular speed. Of course even beyond that threshold the additional load can have an effect. These big battles are the exception, and they certainly get the outside attention, but there are many more smaller fights for every one of these big ones. And the small ones are typically over far more quickly and aren't fought in time dilation.