Your View: War And Lag

[Dizzy771 900]

Hail everyone. Going to keep this short and to the point. As everyone knows, LotC has some extreme lag issues when it comes to war claims and large scale battles. Today Tythus came to the GM team and started talking about several options to fix this issue.

 

 

What exactly is the issue?:

This is a simplified answer, for the non-techy folks. Basically, whenever we have a large battle a player needs the server to send over the information of over 100 other players all at once. Do that over 100 times for every other player and the issue rises exponentially. As Tythus explained to me "4 players = 16 packets, 5 players = 25 packets, and so forth"

 

 

Some options:

To alleviate the lag we need to have less players in direct contact with one and other at the same time. Some options we have thought of are

 

1. Split the battle into objectives. Bassically force the battle to have multiple different objectives which you must capture, claim, destroy, etc, in order to achieve victory. Of the options listed this is probably one of the harder to pull off as it also takes a large amount of player co-operation in order for it to run smoothly.

 

2. Instancing smaller battles. Lets say there is a war between Team A and Team B. Team A has 200 men and Team B has 100. We can probably handle about 100 people in an area before it gets really laggy, so we split the battle up in different instances, likely in the build world or elsewhere. So instead of 1 big battle of 200 vs 100 it would be 4 smaller battles of 50 vs 25. Once each smaller battle is concluded the survivors may of course re-group and continue fighting in a new instance until all forces of one side are exhausted.

 

3. Reinforcements with smaller battles. Bassically the same as instancing, but instead of having many areas of combat we only have 1 and as the forces of 1 side deplete they get reinforcements. Lets say both side A and B have 100 men, and it's a 50 vs 50 fight. Side A loses 25 men, so they get 25 more men brought in from their reserve pool. This continues until 1 sides forces are depleted. Very similar to the game “Mount and Blade”

 

 

These are some of the options we’ve devised, and would like to hear your opinions on them. If you have an idea yourself, feel free to post it as well.

 

 

 

EDIT:

 

In response to the many times this question/idea may be said

The issue is not the server, actually, its the way Minecraft handles its packets. Moving our battles to a new world or even a new server would not fix the issue. You would still have to split the fighting one way or another.

 

 

EDIT #2: 

There is also the option of simply just putting up with the lag and carrying on as we have been in the past. Let us know what you think of this option as well, as it has been suggested by a few GM's.

[GodEmperorFlam 3447]

I'm a fan of 3. Less lag that way. With number 2, there are still multiple battles which will contribute to an overall lag, imo. I could be wrong, but that's how I see it.

[Hiebe 2493]

Do objectives way more role play sense then the others

[Tythus 1307]

I'm a fan of 3. Less lag that way. With number 2, there are still multiple battles which will contribute to an overall lag, imo. I could be wrong, but that's how I see it.

It's less of an issue with the pvp and more of that how many players each user can see number 2 shouldn't be noticeably more laggy

[NirvashTypeZero 1]

I'm down for objectives.

[JCmarine 12]

1. It does introduce much more logic then these other ones. also 5th. maybe.

[DarkSoundwave 70]

Option 3 sounds best.

[Arteh 1837]

Don't alter the style of war, it's not war that's the issue. It's the server.

 

Make an alternate server used for Warclaims and PvP. A portal linking to it 10 minutes prior to the start. Once everyone is geared and prepared they can go in, be warped to the secondary world and begin fighting. 

[Faelond 25]

I'm for Objectives.

2 and 3 would be a bummer for a lot of people. Warclaims are really fun things to do and it'd be very sad for the people who aren't allowed to participate because theyre not the best at pvp etc.

[Crowbill 493]

Options 2. and 3. sound best for me.

 

(Btw M&b should sue for copyright)

[christian2142 79]

I imagine that when posts like this are made, and people like Tythus are observing the thread, the face of approval lights up as it's evaluated.

Seriously though; I like option 3 the most. Might force larger armies to tactically plan their reinforcements, and initial force. i.e. start with heavy infantry, and keep cavalry in reserve for reinforcement later on.

[Billy5691 43]

Option 4: A second server only for warclaims? 

[Cpt_Noobman 1954]

Set battle location to oc.tc. jk. I like option number 1 with certain objectives. Perhaps battles shouldn't decide wars alone. I think it would be interesting if there were a number of ways to contribute to a "war score" per say, like CK2. Maybe have each small scale raid contribute to something, a nations total wealth, espionage and assassinations. Each of these little things could take away from the enemies score, and contribute to your own. Of course, battles following one of these options would still help, but I think it would be fun to break away from this warclaim system a bit.

 

EDIT: most wars weren't won by battles anyways. A large number of factors contribute to a nations downfall.

[Dougstalicious 721]

objectives don't make sense when the objective is to defeat and annihilate the enemy army, i'd like to just keep war the same

[Flapman 625]

My preference would go out to option 1 or option 3! I really like the idea of option 1, but I understand this will be difficult. I would say option 1 sounds most interesting, but option 3 would be fine aswell. Maybe it's an idea to use option 3 for field battles and option 1 for sieges? It would make more sense to have different objectives during a siege.