CPC (Commands Per Cycle) at least thats what I assume it stands for. Anyone know how long a actual server cycle is?

From the "H" editor on max command/cycle -- A cycle is typically 1 second, and can be set with "Processing Interval" option"


0 is an unlimited command/cycle - stock is 4 I believe. Typically I set it to 50.

[Edit]If you look at Y-City's game bang, you will see that they have it set to 255 which is nice for unlim players - actually about anyone. Shame more people don't list the settings for their games - make it easier on the players.[/Edit]

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

So its reasonable to assume; one can create artificial lag for a player by reducing CPC and forcing a script to work within boundaries.

Yes, you could reduce the CPC or increase the cycle time, or both. It induces lag for both macros and scripts, as well as fast players. The funny thing about that stuff is... it never has quite the intended effect. I think cpc=0 results in some weird timing bugs.

So would tailoring a script around a server's cpc net any gains.

Prolly depend on the script. There's only so much you can do, really. I have found some benefit to changing my gridder settings based on the CPC tho, like choosing whether to drop figs or not.

In a couple of scripts I have, the entire run is sent as one macro string that could contain a several thousand commands. I don't know networks and packets so this may not be efficient - "seems" to be though. This type of use may also get some unwanted attention if it starts lagging a server. The BTW mode of proEcolonizer does this and that is why you best make sure no one can take out your base fighters or moves the planet.

I agree with Sing tho, its effect would prob depend on what your script is doing.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

At the very least it would seem if CPC's were common knowledge you could build in another check prior to the next packet(Macro).
My best guess is that we would see very minimal increase in speed to tailoring a script around cpc settings. Guess im just curious if its a First Come First Serve basis and ques the commands or if it allows for a overflow.

CPC is per player, so it's just a FIFO queue. It appears to take in a large burst, cache it, break it into smaller per-cycle chunks and then process each chunk over time.

Not sure if you can get more precise timing than the game itself, so I doubt there'd be much speed improvement. But that doesn't mean you can't improve the net result... with a gridding script for instance, or a torping script, or whatever, you can change up the command burst a bit to reduce the amount of time you're sitting vulnerable... which counts for something.

That's why I usually like to make things options. A torper w/ a holoscanning option, so you can turn it off and not get counter-torped because of a slow CPC. A gridder that can lay mines and figs, or not, so you can smooth out the command queue. Sometimes scripts lend themselves to these little mods, sometimes they don't. For instance a turns game w/ a gridder that doesn't lay figs... not so useful really, not a good thing to turn on regardless of CPC.

Like for a colonizer, I can't think of any way at the moment that you'd be able to speed that up... I mean either you run the necessary commands or you don't. Maybe just come up with some colonizer styles that don't need to send as much per loop, I dunno.

More curiousity than any consideration to adding cpc specific macros.

Thanks for the replies.