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Unread post Re: Next update
Add 50ms to the planet and 50ms to Bwarp and 50ms to move delay and it will prob work out fine.
adding 50ms to Planet and leaving Move delay at 250 will make things much easier for the gridder.

The Defender needs to GET the Message then REACT. Connection speed and latency as well as the speed of your computer all come into play.SLowing EVERYTHING down by the same amount will prob make for a better game Only if the balance is maintained.

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Wed Nov 10, 2010 3:50 am
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Unread post Re: Next update
John Pritchett wrote:
Let's try 50 ms and see if it effects the balance. Honestly, if the timing of these events is that tight, then it's going to be highly dependent on things like CPU and connection speed, so you're not getting consistent behavior over a variety of game sites anyway. If we can get this right with some actual timing, we stand a much better chance of it being consistent and remaining consistent over the next decade.


These days, most major servers don't run slow CPUs. Past a
certain threshold, the delay due to processing is relatively
small. So that doesn't factor in to being such an issue.

Connection speed, also referred to as "ping" by people here,
is a crucial aspect of grid defense. We play as a team, each
running a bot with basic defense ability. When we need a
grid defender, we can test the ping of every player and load
a torper on the fastest player. In HHT, for instance, most of
our ping was in the 150 area, some in the 140s, and our torp
guy was in the 110-120 range. You can determine this number
by running prome or CK's ping script.

That is how we're able to get consistent performance over
multiple games and servers. However you will still see groups
of players focusing on one or two specific servers. This is
because their location gives them a ping advantage. This is
why, when SG was looking for a server for twgs.classictw.com,
I recommended theplanet as a host. They're a multi-homed
co-loc facility with serious network infrastructure. Because of
its multiple backbone connections, a lot more people can get
good 140-160 range pings. This makes the server a much
better experience for everyone, and means more people will
play there.

There a 'game delay" and an "effective delay" issue here too.
Even if you add a 50ms delay, if that delay also passes out
the clock cycle to other things during the delay, it might end
up averaging out to nothing... or it might average out to be
even worse. We cannot know exactly the impact of this w/o
testing. But, as phead suggested, it might be necessary to
increase the delay on everything. There is some benefit to that
approach, since a wider move delay would allow slower pings
to still be effective grid defenders. A 350 move delay, followed
by a 100 or 150 pwarp and bwarp delay, could change the need
for such tight pings.

But before we can determine that, we need a list of all items
that have delays added to them. That way we can test what
the results are, exactly.

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Wed Nov 10, 2010 7:05 am
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Unread post Re: Next update
I'm in favor of that (addressing all delays uniformly), and I would definitely like to have substantial enough delays here that they would tend to dominate over CPU and ping. Even if it slows things down somewhat, wouldn't it be worth it if the gameplay can be more consistent in a variety of environments?

There's an easy way to do this. I can simply add, say, 100 ms to all move delays. So if I pass in 250 ms currently, it'll end up 350 ms, and if I do 0 ms currently, it'll end up being 100 ms. But let's look at the list of delayed actions and make sure that list is complete or see if it needs something added to it to keep all timings consistent.

Currently (in the latest update I just posted), here are the delays (when set to Zero delay):

Planetary Transwarp = 50 ms (was 0 ms)
Ship Movement = 250 ms
Etherprobe Delay (if enabled) = 250 ms
Landing/Taking off = 50 ms (was 0 ms)
Transporting (ship or plan) = 50 ms (was 0 ms)

If the proposed uniform delay change is implemented at 100 ms, here is what the delays would be:

Planetary Transwarp = 100 ms
Ship Movement = 350 ms
Etherprobe Delay (if enabled) = 350 ms
Landing/Taking off = 100 ms
Transporting (ship or plan) = 100 ms

Anything else that needs to be on the list to keep everything relatively consistent?

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Wed Nov 10, 2010 10:44 am
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Unread post Re: Next update
John Pritchett wrote:
I'm in favor of that (addressing all delays uniformly), and I would definitely like to have substantial enough delays here that they would tend to dominate over CPU and ping. Even if it slows things down somewhat, wouldn't it be worth it if the gameplay can be more consistent in a variety of environments?


If it's too slow, it'll feel very sluggish and people won't play it. The
snappy feel is definitely a big plus. That's even assuming all of the
delays are balanced. But a small increase in the delays across the
board, say 50ms, would give slower ping people a chance to play
more competitively... and that would not be a bad thing.

John Pritchett wrote:
Planetary Transwarp = 50 ms (was 0 ms)
Ship Movement = 250 ms
Etherprobe Delay (if enabled) = 250 ms
Landing/Taking off = 50 ms (was 0 ms)
Transporting (ship or plan) = 50 ms (was 0 ms)


Tpad has a 50ms delay? That's a balance problem then, since
slowing down ships too much makes a direct tpad torp too
effective.

Will need to get a beta game where I can tedit and run some
planet and torp tests to determine balance.

John Pritchett wrote:
Planetary Transwarp = 100 ms
Ship Movement = 350 ms
Etherprobe Delay (if enabled) = 350 ms
Landing/Taking off = 100 ms
Transporting (ship or plan) = 100 ms


That may be a bit much, but we'd have to test it to see.

John Pritchett wrote:
Anything else that needs to be on the list to keep everything relatively consistent?


Not sure. Will need to think about it, get some more input. There
are probably things I'm forgetting.

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Wed Nov 10, 2010 10:51 am
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Unread post Re: Next update
Seems like transporting needs to be included here. If it isn't, there will be changes resulting from slowing down other actions relative to transport.

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Wed Nov 10, 2010 11:12 am
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Unread post Re: Next update
Oh, I forget to include attacks in this list. Currently, fighter attacks against a ship will have a 250 ms delay.

Of course, there are other attacks. I hadn't considered adding a small delay to these actions to keep them consistent with other actions. Various kinds of attacks include:

Sector fighters
Planetary fighters
Launch Photon

Any others?

BTW, Sing made the point about CPU speed being less of a factor than ping. Ping is only really a factor in triggers. If you get a trigger, then you send a command, the ping is more of a factor in how long it takes to issue that command than the CPU delay of the action itself. But if you're sending a macro and stringing lots of actions together, there is no delay associated with ping between those actions. The only delay is either one imposed by the game or one associated with the speed of the CPU (and this is effected by server load). The delay related to CPU is pretty small, but if it's the only delay, it can't be ignored. If CPU speed doubles or even changes by a factor of 10, actions that are only paced by CPU are going to continue to speed up. Burst macro actions will continue to get faster. It seems like a reasonable goal to try to lock these actions in at a fast but consistent pace. If done correctly, gameplay won't change significantly from what it is today, and it won't change significantly in the future.

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Wed Nov 10, 2010 11:36 am
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Unread post Re: Next update
Ok, a couple things on the latest release...

Macro: m20102^M m9183^M m9724^M m14699^M m18317^M
Timing: 1863ms

That's 372 per sector on "no" move delay.

Macro: p7632^M y c p y 20102^M ^M q
Timing: 0ms

So... uhm... hehe

There is no effective planet delay, but there's a big move
delay.

If you add a photon delay, you will have to take it out
of tpad, pwarp and twarp delay. Otherwise the balance is
lost again.

Triggers are really important in this balance. If you don't
provide for a way to defend one's grid, then there's no
sense in defending it. That makes the game all about grid
offensive, which means planets won't develop very far.
This is why, to make the game playable, there needs to be
a balance between defense and offense.

I don't mind imposing a fixed delay, as long as it doesn't
imbalance play.

JP, if you want me to test stuff, pop it up on classic and
let me know. If you use IRC, we have an IRC chan you can
pop into, or you can ICQ me. I've got a test game setup there
and we can run any particular tests we need.

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Wed Nov 10, 2010 12:35 pm
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Unread post Re: Next update
Just a suggestion here... Would it not make sense to have the major delay times configurable by the sysop within a specified range??? There are people who think ships should move fast, planets should move slow, and everything else happens at a speed in between... There are also people who think everything to move at the same speed... And it could be entertaining to see what a game where planets move faster than ships would play like...

Just my $0.03 worth... (damned inflation)

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Wed Nov 10, 2010 12:58 pm
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Unread post Re: Next update
Sing, how long does it take before you get hit with the photon after you have touched the sector fighter? Ping times would affect this and would be different for different players. Seems like most player/server combinations yield ping times in the 150-190 range, with the outliers being in the 130 and 200+. The key is "most" because I know Vid's ping isn't good and mine isn't good on his, or Archy's, server because of distance.

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Wed Nov 10, 2010 1:01 pm
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Unread post Re: Next update
Promethius wrote:
Sing, how long does it take before you get hit with the photon after you have touched the sector fighter? Ping times would affect this and would be different for different players. Seems like most player/server combinations yield ping times in the 150-190 range, with the outliers being in the 130 and 200+. The key is "most" because I know Vid's ping isn't good and mine isn't good on his, or Archy's, server because of distance.


I'll have to setup a trigger that measures entry in various ways
and the torped msg, and figure out the difference.

I'll also need to test a standard hit-twarp.

If you guys want to come up with some possible tests, I can
run them and post the results.

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3. Open IRC chat @ irc.freenode.net:6667 #twchan
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Wed Nov 10, 2010 1:06 pm
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Unread post Re: Next update
@HiTech, we're dealing with "zero delay" right now. There are already settings to provide different delays for different ship types, and I'd be willing to include these other actions like planet movement and transporting in those delays. But the main priority right now is to handle zero delay pacing so the game remains balanced.

@Sing, there seem to be some other things impacting your time measurements. I have internal timers I can use, and they show that movement is within a few milliseconds of specified, meaning 250 ms per sector moved, not 370 ms, and 50 ms for planet movement, not 0 ms. This is very strange because on the one hand, you're reading a longer delay time than actual, and on the other, you're reading less. I know we need to look at actual delays, taking into account all factors and not just game delays, but if we're looking at a situation where the actual delays are far more impacted by factors outside of the game, then we really don't have any control over timing at all right now. So if I do nothing here, there's certainly no guarantee that the game will continue to be balanced. A 370 ms actual delay with a 250 ms intended delay is a very big difference. That's an increase of 50% over the target.

To try to improve our ability to track these timings, I added an output line to the @ command. Whenever you issue an @, it will save the current time. Next time you hit @, it will show the time elapsed since the last @. So if you want to time a macro, bracket it with @s. The second @ will show your elapsed time. Using this, I sent a course of 10 sectors and got an elapsed time of 252.7 ms per sector. That's actually within margin of error of 250 ms for the timer resolution.

I'll upload this to classictw.com and we can start studying these timings and work this out. If we just can't work this out, we'll leave it like it was. But I honestly don't believe that leaving it unchanged is an option. If I do nothing, relative timings will continue to change with technology. Think about the fact that CPUs were like 100 Mhz and connections were 2400 baud when this game came out. These timings should have been locked in a LONG time ago. Maybe those timings should be sped up over time, but the point is, it needs to be controlled, not just left to chance.

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Wed Nov 10, 2010 3:50 pm
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Unread post Re: Next update
John Pritchett wrote:
@Sing, there seem to be some other things impacting your time measurements. I have internal timers I can use, and they show that movement is within a few milliseconds of specified, meaning 250 ms per sector moved, not 370 ms, and 50 ms for planet movement, not 0 ms. This is very strange because on the one hand, you're reading a longer delay time than actual, and on the other, you're reading less. I know we need to look at actual delays, taking into account all factors and not just game delays, but if we're looking at a situation where the actual delays are far more impacted by factors outside of the game, then we really don't have any control over timing at all right now. So if I do nothing here, there's certainly no guarantee that the game will continue to be balanced. A 370 ms actual delay with a 250 ms intended delay is a very big difference. That's an increase of 50% over the target.


I'm using a very simple script, you can get it here:
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=30567

It sends a burst macro and records the timing between 2
triggers. Since the first trigger isn't hit until the text is at
the server, the resultant timing should be server side plus
one ping.

But because the entire 5 sectors are sent as a burst, it
shouldn't register as more than 40ms extra per. 370 is a
big disparity. As for the 0 delay, is it possible that packets
are getting glued together somewhere?

I don't think it's possible to micromanage all of the delays,
but we can get them as balanced as possible.

It doesn't look like the @ changes are on the current server,
but I can easily mod my script to use @ for bracketing and
display both timers. Just let me know when that's ready, it
isn't at the moment.

John Pritchett wrote:
I'll upload this to classictw.com and we can start studying these timings and work this out. If we just can't work this out, we'll leave it like it was. But I honestly don't believe that leaving it unchanged is an option. If I do nothing, relative timings will continue to change with technology. Think about the fact that CPUs were like 100 Mhz and connections were 2400 baud when this game came out. These timings should have been locked in a LONG time ago. Maybe those timings should be sped up over time, but the point is, it needs to be controlled, not just left to chance.


There's nothing we can do about connection speeds. Server
processing is the big question mark. If you simply want to
emulate a processing delay, I don't see a problem w/ that as
long as everything is balanced.

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Wed Nov 10, 2010 4:04 pm
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Unread post Re: Next update
Ok. Things are now much more accurate after the update...

Some results:
Macro: m20102^M m9183^M m9724^M m14699^M m18317^M
Script timing: 1292 ms
Game timing: 1297 ms

Macro: p7632^M y c p y 20102^M ^M q p21555^M y
Script timing: 0 ms
Game timing: 31 ms

Oh, and I really like this @ timing feature. Can we keep that after
the beta? :)

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Wed Nov 10, 2010 4:54 pm
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Unread post Re: Next update
"Oh, and I really like this @ timing feature. Can we keep that after
the beta?""

Sure. I can't see it having an effect on gameplay, so why not.

Good to see your timing is matching the game timing. There are definitely going to be anomalous readings, but on the average, I think we can expect to see close to the defined delays here. I did some tests on classictw.com and on my first run of a 15 sector macro, it averaged out to 291 ms per move, but then the next several passes averaged out to 267 ms per move.

I forget to say that on this update I restored the 0 ms move delay for planets, landing, taking off, and transports so we can test the current timings for various activities, then check them with new delays to see how they compare relative to one another.

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Wed Nov 10, 2010 5:10 pm
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Unread post Re: Next update
I agree with Sing on the @ usage - that will be a nice thing to have for feedback without having to write code to retrieve it. Thanks for leaving that in the TWGS.

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