FLServer is not multithreaded software, that is our current bottleneck. Whether or not the cap could be raised regardless is a question for @Kazinsal and @Alex.
The Discovery server had a cap of 255 6 years ago, so I don't want to hear any more garbage about not being sure if it can handle it, unless you've downgraded your hosting computer.
I remember the server lagging and straining sometimes when it was 230-255 players, but when it was at its usual 120-180 players, there was no lag.
As for whether or not the cap should be raised, I think having enough space for players to join the server should take priority over lowering the cap to make it "look" full. What do you want, to have more players, or just to look as if you have more players while they can't even log in?
At least raise the cap temporarily for events, if anything.
(12-03-2018, 08:42 PM)Lythrilux Wrote: Actually there's something I find odd. Why is the server more laggy at peaks these days when back in the past it could handle those fine?
(12-03-2018, 09:12 PM)TLI-Inferno Wrote: I suspect they've downgraded their server to get some money back on parts after people stopped playing as much.
I'm fairly certain we're a lot more heavy on the FLHook plugins and PoBs. Those were not present back in the old days when we had 200 people. Unless ofc I'm wrong and the FLHookery runs on a different Core from the rest of the server?
We're actually spending more money than ever - back when Discovery had a player cap of 200 it ran on a single core machine out of @majkp's kitchen, hosted basically for free. It's difficult for us to go back to something like that though due to hosting laws and the potential for DDoS attacks.
Also something people are discounting here is that 80 players were rarely in any one system at a time back when the server was 200/200, and when that did happen, oh yes, performance absolutely tanked. Hard. I'm actually astounded that the server only experienced one crash during that entire fight.
(12-03-2018, 08:16 PM)TLI-Inferno Wrote: The Discovery server had a cap of 255 6 years ago, so I don't want to hear any more garbage about not being sure if it can handle it, unless you've downgraded your hosting computer.
What you're not understanding is that a modern day hardware upgrade is a downgrade for FLServer - which can only utilize one processor thread - because each individual CPU core on multi core machines is weaker than in old powerful single core machines.
I also didn't say we couldn't raise the cap. I said that I don't know if we can. I suspect we actually probably could, but again, defer to @Kazinsal or @Alex. I can tell you for a fact however that the cap being lowered to make the server look "full" is an outright lie, so if people could stop throwing that one around it would be nice.
TLI-Inferno: Did you read and try to understand my post? It seemed not.
To make it easy:
Old Hardware: 1 Core with 3,5Ghz: 100% Power 6 Years ago
actual Hardware: 1 Core with 2,7Ghz: 77% Power today
And additional many mor objects (BOB, more Systems, more Bases, ...) it is not enought power for 250 players.
Was this easy enought?
And one more question: Maybe i'm online to the wong tiomes, but i had never die point where the server was full so i can't login. So why are we talking about raising the maximum player online?
If there would be some days per month with more than 100 People online we could talk about a server with a maxed Single-Core-Power (should cost about 1500-2500€ inkl. backup and Windows-Server) but who will pay that? And what are we doing in 5 years, when the hardware is old and it is time for new hardware?
And as far as i know it is nearly impossible to make change the software to a multi-core-software...
I reaaaaally don't have the time to explain why clock speed is a worthless metric when comparing between processor generations.
The lag we experienced during that event was simply because there were that many people in one system all firing missiles, CDs, mines, CMs, thousands of gunshots per second, et cetera. If we had had 110 or more people on the server but not in that condition you wouldn't have seen any lag.
And FLHook be damned, it was that bad when we had battles of that size in 4.85 and 4.86. It was honestly worse, because we had lag that bad and FLHook wasn't doing nearly as much work ensuring various things happen in the combat pipeline as it does now.
(12-03-2018, 08:42 PM)Lythrilux Wrote: Actually there's something I find odd. Why is the server more laggy at peaks these days when back in the past it could handle those fine?
I actually can confirm that I noticed the same thing. Or I could say it's the same lag as it was back with 250 players. So I'm not sure how limiting server cap helped at all.