Who is hosting missions that even work well with 10+ connected clients

[JaBoG32_Prinzartus]

Hi Server-Admins,

 

Who of you is successfully hosting missions that have more than 10 (like 15+) clients connected at a time?

 

Background info:

On our (vJaBoG322) servers we are starting to experience join issues on the client side for players that join the server and click "FLY" after there are already 10 or so client slots filled.

 

It happened to various clients already. It seems as if the last one or two that join (at the time we have about 8-12 people participating in our trainings), are having issues like the following:

 

-> After picking an aircraft and clicking "fly" they find themselves on the F10-MAP screen and don't get the 3d-cockpit.

 

So we thought about a software issue or so that only is notable with 10+ clients. It can easily be wiped if there are servers, that successfully host to 15+ connected clients.

[Speed]

Hi Server-Admins,

 

Who of you is successfully hosting missions that have more than 10 (like 15+) clients connected at a time?

 

Background info:

On our (vJaBoG322) servers we are starting to experience join issues on the client side for players that join the server and click "FLY" after there are already 10 or so client slots filled.

 

It happened to various clients already. It seems as if the last one or two that join (at the time we have about 8-12 people participating in our trainings), are having issues like the following:

 

-> After picking an aircraft and clicking "fly" they find themselves on the F10-MAP screen and don't get the 3d-cockpit.

 

So we thought about a software issue or so that only is notable with 10+ clients. It can easily be wiped if there are servers, that successfully host to 15+ connected clients.

 

Servers have no problems hosting more than 10 people if the server's bandwidth is high enough to do it.

 

Upload the mission. This sounds like perhaps some of the aircraft further down the list don't have their start times set correctly. If you have a humanable aircraft that has a start time set for after mission start, then until that start time is reached, the aircraft will show up as an available multiplayer slot, but if you try to actually join it and fly, you will just be stuck staring at the F10 map.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Speed

[Moa]

Hi Prinzartus, LockOn/DCS events have been held that have had dozens of people (some with 60+ squadron players for LockOn).

 

There are a couple of things you can do to help with large numbers of players:

1) your 'upload' bandwidth is a big factor in the number of players you can host. You get around 8 players/MB upload speed, but it is a bit better if you have half that. So for a 32 player server you want a 4-8 MB upload speed. When I hosted the A-10C Fly-Ins I could get up to 16 players on a 2 MB/s up connection (which I'm now in the process of upgrading to be much faster).

 

2) don't run the game server in 3D mode. You get around 10% CPU saving if you leave the server on the F10 map view (the exact amount depends on the CPU). You also get a big saving in CPU if you edit the server's graphics configuration to limit the server frame rate to 10-20 fps. That stops the server wasting time rendering frames (that admins hardly ever look at) and gives it more time to process messages from clients (or run cooler).

[Mustang]

One other big factor, the amounts of AI units you have in a mission especially if some of them are moving - all that information has to be relayed to the clients which in turn uses up alot of upload bandwidth.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Mustang

[HiJack]

I have a new mission running 8 players for A-10C now and it works well with 2 moving columns simultaneously, 2 AI aircrafts as AFAC, and some SAM sites activated. Once I added a rotor group and added 2 Mi-24's the mission crashed after 1.5 hours. There is a very fine line between success and failure at present version. When doing mission for your server you must carefully add units and test mission with all players to see stability over time, really a big job actually. When I removed the rotor group the mission runs fine again. Scheduled now to add more ground units at each level (currently 8 levels, 4-6 hours play) and add 2 more players. All is welcome onboard to enjoy the mission, check out HiJack’s casa :)

 

The server seems to work fine over several hours when using the internal “load mission” function to reload the same mission when all tasks is done.

 

(HJ)

Edited April 20, 2012 by HiJack

[nomdeplume]

You could try moving the clients that are causing problems to a different FARP/airfield? I had a similar problem when I was testing a mission I originally designed for SP A-10 in BS2 - added a Ka-50 client and ran it multiplayer and it just wouldn't spawn my aircraft. The FARP it was operating from had 3 AI helos at it so it should've had a spare pad, but evidently the game didn't want to use it.

 

If it's A-10 slots causing the problem, it might still be having problems picking a parking area for some reason. So could be worth trying a different airfield, just to rule in/out the possibility.

 

Also: does the problem seem to be dependent on the number of people connected, or the number of slots used by clients (as opposed to spectators), or just the particular aircraft slot being selected?

[Dejjvid]

Network speed to LAN fixed our problems.

[july865]

Network speed to LAN fixed our problems.

even with this there are still issues. its not a fix, although with this done, it does lessen the amount of disconnects. but the root issue still remains.

we're just waiting for a hot fix OR SOMETHING...... ED!!!!