investigating Ideas for reducing lag on servers (moved fro #general in discord)

[Sararainmaker]

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Sararainmaker:

@Death about increasing the upkeep... I am not sure that will discourage the larger base builders from making huge bases. We went ALL-OUT this wipe, and even if it were doubled we would not have issues with keeping it stocked. Getting materials has never really been an issue. Perhaps making a rule in which the Admins are empowered to do something about the large, lag causing bases, come up with some guidelines for them, and have something that can actually be enforced, as well as having actual rules for us to be able to follow might help better with the issues?

Del and I created a fairly large town, and have done everything in our power to keep the lag to a minimum, and even with Olmy's base in the same grid, other bases half the size create twice the lag for the surrounding area that it's almost been unplayable for them due to having an extreme amount of wind turbines and other lag-causing issues.

Also, having the admins be able to do something about the lag-causing bases might just encourage people to listen to them when they approach them on the subject. (Sorry for the novel.)

 

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alexanightfire:

What if there was a way to limit the amount of foundations and floors a player can place? Or increase the TC range so that you at least don't have as much TC-spam of towers and 1x1's (therefore less entities), and somewhat forces people to build farther apart?

 

[Sararainmaker]

Some (possibly) prgrammable ideas on restrictions that could help in the reduction of lag on the servers:

• As @alexanightfire mentioned above: limiting foundations placed could be a good place to start, also lowering the height cap on building if there is such a thing.

• With the limiting of foundations add an increase of the range of the TC (while removing any overlap if possible) to decrease the crowding of buildings.

• Place a cap on how many wind turbines can be placed on a single TC while increasing the power cost of ceiling lights will encourage players to find more creative and less laggy ways to power their base, while also removing any issues with turbine lag. 5 turbines should be more than enough to power any base and solar power is always a less laggy alternative.

• Limit the amount of frames and signs to one per wall (while I don't like this one, I understand the necessity for it).

• Adding entity limits per player or TC as seen here, and here. While I would prefer the limits be TC based instead of player based, this is an alternative to it. TC based restrictions would allow players who want to build more to spread out their large builds, reducing lag without reducing the creativity aspect of the game too much.

• While I know that this is one of the money-makers of the server, limiting the number of pumpjacks placeable to 1 or 2 per person.

Some ideas for enforceable rules and guidelines that admins can have:

• if some of the above programmable ideas are not possible, clear, defined rules on entity limits and build limits that can be enforced by the admins.

• If a base is found to cause significant lag, even if they are somehow within entity limits either programmed or set by rules, admins can request the players reduce the amount of entities or the size of their build. Non-compliance to the request means the admin can take the matter into their own hands and remove offending entities or reduce the base size as required. Constantly rebuilding or replacing of the items would be a banable offense.

Some ideas for map generation that could impact lag and player crowding:

• Increasing the amount of rivers and lakes on a map, perhaps more, smaller rivers and lakes.

• Reducing the size of snowy areas while increasing the size of forested and desert areas.

• Spreading out monuments more evenly on the map, so there isn't a cluster of bases where the most monuments can be found.

• Adding more road areas/side roads, some that may go nowhere, to give more desirable locations to build.

Edited August 18, 2020 by Sararainmaker

[RepeatPete]

All the while I played, and was even admin...I was never much of a creative/RP builder. I was king of the box base - just a place to hang my hat, I rarely even had electricity. Our admin builds were built so far out as to not even render from any point on any shoreline.

On the topic of lag, it's difficult to gauge. What lags Player A's computer might not even make Player B & C's computer hiccup. Based on system specs, lag may or may not always be perceived by players equally. There were only ever 2 build types that happened on the server that ever caused me lag, or even a DC with packet floods.

One of the mainstays of PVE servers is allowing players the creativity to build without the concern that some 13 year old jacked up on mountain dew will come by and level your base at 3am. The core community of RustEZ are no different. Many are very decent folks who just like the ability to build to their creative potential. I personally think if that were hampered, you could stand to lose them. You lose players, you lose server support over time. I played on a server and the owner, well...was an idiot. He attempted to curb the build lag by making some insane rule about teams could only own 3 TCs. Quick revolt and he removed that limitation. In the end, he still attempted to institute moronic rule sets, and lost a considerable chunk of his player base. 

Asking admins to police builds would be a nightmare. For those who are, and have been admins can vouch for me on that one. Then if they were expected to start carving off parts of someone's base - drama would ensue. Admins no like drama.

Map generation is procgen. Sure when we picked maps we mainly verified all monuments were present and there was a decent road system. I'm sure the admins could run through several seeds to hope for better monument placement that's more evenly spread out, but they don't have hardly any granular control of it since it's procgen.

[Sararainmaker]

@RepeatPete I am one of those creative builders. I have loved being able to build the massive town that I made this wipe, HOWEVER, the lag that it, and the surrounding builds, have caused, at one time, caused people to crash upon loading it, including myself who has a decent gaming rig. Me and a fellow neighbor reduced entities until that stopped, but the power to do that is still there... and IMO it wasn't even an obnoxious amount of entities that were causing the issue.

Rust is not a very finely-tuned game as far as efficiency is concerned. It's not meant for what we are using it for. It's sad, because it's actually AMAZINGLY FUN to build in it like that.

3TC's per person was, frankly, a dumb idea on the part of that server owner. Instead of trying to slowly cap things and find a balance, he chose a tiny number and went with it. In fact, just limiting TC's would not have even solved the issue of lag at all (our massive town is on 4 TC's, and only because we chose to have it that way, to try and reduce lag a little bit). The key here is to find a balance and to find what items in the game cause the most lag and limit them.

Wind-turbines seem to be a major source of lag when a lot of them are placed in a small area, limiting them to, perhaps 5 or 6 per TC isn't likely to cause an outrage among players, as it is uncommon to see more than 5 of them per base. Also increasing the range of TC's will help to spread the usage of them out more, so that 17 of them aren't spawning it at one time and crashing mini's or games.

Frames seem to also be one of the largest sources of lag, as they are all spawning in as entities as well as loading whatever picture or image is in them. Limiting the amount of frames a person can place, would very likely cause an outrage, however limiting the amount of frames placeable on a singular wall probably wouldn't, especially if that number is 2 or 3 instead of 1.

As for admins, They are already fielding complaints about builds, and having been an admin on other games, the worst feeling is being powerless to help. Asking them to go around policing every build would probably drive off every admin on the EZ servers, but I think giving them the authority to do something about builds that have created a lot of complaints is reasonable. Again the key is to find balance, Admins do NOT have easy jobs, and the hope is to make their job a little bit easier, not more difficult. They already have the power to remove bases that block caves, and because there are rules for players to follow, it happens only very rarely and usually the player complies... however not having any rules or standards on lag causing bases leaves them powerless to do anything about obnoxious builds, so they are getting all these complaints and unable to do anything about it... if it were me, that would cause quite a bit of frustration, especially when you see players leaving because the server is too laggy for them.

I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that there were certain settings in map generation that could control the type of map that comes out? Maybe not. Still when selecting maps for the next wipes, things like access to water close to roads, desired biomes, roads and the spread of monuments are definitely things that need to be considered. Spreading out where people want to build will help with issues like we have on (US)Scourge this wipe where there are essentially only two areas where the majority of the players built on.

[Dicko A La Mode]

To be fair Pete, there was also a 10 pookie limit implemented that started the uprising..

Give me one minute here, let me just drag this rotting dead horse out of the closet so I can beat it some more...

Quarries make it too easy for players to maintain upkeep on massive builds.

  

9 hours ago, RepeatPete said:

 

Asking admins to police builds would be a nightmare. For those who are, and have been admins can vouch for me on that one. Then if they were expected to start carving off parts of someone's base - drama would ensue. Admins no like drama.

As a previous US Scourge admin I also vouch for this.  It would also start complaints on favoritism which cultivates a toxic environment.  

Edited August 19, 2020 by Dicko A La Mode

[Sararainmaker]

17 minutes ago, Dicko A La Mode said:

To be fair Pete, there was also a 10 pookie limit implemented that started the uprising..

What kind of MONSTER implements a 10 pookie limit?!

[Sararainmaker]

19 minutes ago, Dicko A La Mode said:

Quarries make it too easy for players to maintain upkeep on massive builds.

And there is the balance thing again. You have to balance the benefits of quarries for those who can't play frequently, to the detriment of making it too easy for other players to make massive bases. Also you have to consider that quarries take away a lot of the (sometimes toxic) competition for the limited materials out in the field. forests would never grow, rocks would be impossible to find, and you'd probably STILL have people who'd build massive bases, and without PvP you are basically limited to getting your resources the difficult way... I am betting taking quarries and pumpjacks off of the EZ servers would cause a noticeable exodus, and the benefits would not be as great as people think it would be.

The massive bases are only a part of the problem, and I don't even think they are even the biggest part. Player concentration, certain entities (Wind-Turbines and frames) and entity concentration have quite a bit to do with lag. I mean look at Hentai Tower a few wipes back. It was tall, but it wasn't massive by any standards, the major problem that base had was the sheer concentration of different images and entities being generated upon loading.

19 minutes ago, Dicko A La Mode said:

As a previous US Scourge admin I also vouch for this.  It would also start complaints on favoritism which cultivates a toxic environment.  

I could see that being an issue, but if the rules are clearly displayed and defined, for example: "No more than 2 frames or signs per wall with a limit of 30 per base", or "no more than 5 wind turbines per base" that takes away the cries of favoritism, as long as they are applied to everyone. I am not saying give them carte blanche, as that would, in fact, cause issues... just give them SOME way of being able to deal with the issues at hand.

 

[Dicko A La Mode]

45 minutes ago, Sararainmaker said:

And there is the balance thing again. You have to balance the benefits of quarries for those who can't play frequently, to the detriment of making it too easy for other players to make massive bases. Also you have to consider that quarries take away a lot of the (sometimes toxic) competition for the limited materials out in the field. forests would never grow, rocks would be impossible to find, and you'd probably STILL have people who'd build massive bases, and without PvP you are basically limited to getting your resources the difficult way... I am betting taking quarries and pumpjacks off of the EZ servers would cause a noticeable exodus, and the benefits would not be as great as people think it would be.

The massive bases are only a part of the problem, and I don't even think they are even the biggest part. Player concentration, certain entities (Wind-Turbines and frames) and entity concentration have quite a bit to do with lag. I mean look at Hentai Tower a few wipes back. It was tall, but it wasn't massive by any standards, the major problem that base had was the sheer concentration of different images and entities being generated upon loading.

Quarries are new to Scourge within the year (Nov 11 2019 from what I can see).  Prior to them sure there was a resource rush but that is Rust.  That is farming.  

45 minutes ago, Sararainmaker said:

I could see that being an issue, but if the rules are clearly displayed and defined, for example: "No more than 2 frames or signs per wall with a limit of 30 per base", or "no more than 5 wind turbines per base" that takes away the cries of favoritism, as long as they are applied to everyone. I am not saying give them carte blanche, as that would, in fact, cause issues... just give them SOME way of being able to deal with the issues at hand.

 

You will still have players complain that admins didn't check so and so's base enough or often enough.  And I promise you the server will lose admins if they have to fly around conducting searches for illegal picture frame counts.

 

At the end of the day Rust is Rust, not Minecraft.  Yes, this is a PvE community and toxic behavior is not welcomed.  But there is still a grind to it.  Look Rust up in the Steam store and see what very first tag is... Survival.  It is supposed to have elements of gathering and that isn't always the easiest.  Having creative and cool builds does not always mean MASSIVE builds.  Some of the coolest builds I see are not huge and completely manageable for someone who plays a few hours a week.  

If someone still has a problem with upkeep and not being able to build massive bases then maybe Scourge isn't right for them and they should explore Survival which has no upkeep.  Scourge means suffering, make it that way.

I can feel Deaths eyes rolling at my ban quarry rants starting up again.

[Rygoat]

Playing devils advocate for a moment but on AU Scourge we only have one admin as it is and they have no time to do scheduled events of any kind, so throwing this monster of a task at him seems kind of harsh.  
We would need a larger admin team to even stand a chance of keeping on top of a ruling like that.

[Sararainmaker]

3 hours ago, Rygoat said:

Playing devils advocate for a moment but on AU Scourge we only have one admin as it is and they have no time to do scheduled events of any kind, so throwing this monster of a task at him seems kind of harsh.  
We would need a larger admin team to even stand a chance of keeping on top of a ruling like that.

True. it sounds like they have it rough over there. I'd offer to help, but I promised myself no more being an admin

not to mention most of the server plays when I am asleep...

Edited August 20, 2020 by Sararainmaker

[Sararainmaker]

The admins, and death all know these (apparently) age-old arguments, and are equipped to deal with them, though.

I guess my point in making this post was to get new ideas to help with the lag issues that are happening, and perhaps find some balance between allowing the creativity to flourish and having a lag bog.

As facepunch continues to add new features without adding any extra optimization, the lag is only going to get worse on servers like ours, and we need to equip ourselves now for the eventuality that these PvE servers might become unplayable if left alone. PvE is not a priority for Facepunch, and on the PvP servers these kinds of issues resolve themselves as bases are destroyed frequently, and people build for protection, not creative fun and community. They have very little incentive to optimize, so we have to find a way to do it here, somehow.

 

[GoRiLLa]

Some very good stuff here... Some great suggestions.... Some not so much lol.... 

I'm in total 100 percent agreement that something has to be done. What that something is I'm not 100 percent on that as well. I've been on RustEz servers with @Death for some years now... Back when he flew around like superman to save the day. Break walls, help with a build etc. I've been hooked ever since. 

1. I think the communities cause massive amounts of render lag especially when flying over... Or just be that guy who happens to be near one spin around in a circle and watch your fps tank when looking towards said community..... but We love the little communities so asking ppl to break them up would maybe drive away the player base. So maybe it's the amount of entities with that given area? 

2. PumpJack's and Quarries.. I thought only a certain amt. was allowed per player anyways? Though I agree with @Dicko A La Mode and was here before the quarries and remember the grind of the game when you couldn't find a single node for hours.... We complain about nodes.... Not enough etc etc.. But I loved it, I loved farming and the competition. Fast forward... I'm also the guy that works 60+ hours a week swing shift 12 hrs and quarries and pumpjacks were a blessing. I max both out first go of a wipe now.. So 1 each physically. I even went with generators this wipe to try and help with the turbine issue... Which is BTW one thing I would love to be craftable and get rid of turbines all together lol 

3. Policing the players builds, picture count, rug count etc... Sighs... My opinion it would be very taxing on Admins and very time consuming. Don't even know if it would be physically possible for them to fly around checking bases everytime they log in. Consider this, offending base has x complaints. Admin is asked to check it.. Admin goes from room to room counting frames, entities etc. room1 8,  room 2 13, I get a headache thinking about it... Plus again you would possibly drive off players... Favoritism would be a thing as mentioned. So... Mehhh don't think that's the way to go about it either... It would be a nightmare on both ends. 

 I hear people with massive bases complain on upkeep 30k per day etc. etc... So maybe a exponential upkeep increase would further discourage these huge monster bases? I dunno... I think as mentioned we are just pushing the absolute limits of what the game can do... It's still not optimized well even to this day. Better... But we can obvisouly push it to the max very quickly lol. Awesome topic! Glad I was pointed here as it's been a thorn for a very long time lol

[Sararainmaker]

6 minutes ago, GoRiLLa said:

 I hear people with massive bases complain on upkeep 30k per day etc. etc... So maybe a exponential upkeep increase would further discourage these huge monster bases?

The only problem I have with this is it's making everyone suffer for the actions of a few, and possibly with less reward for it that people imagine. I know people like to complain about huge bases being lag monsters, but I really think the size of the base is not as laggy as what is inside/outside of it. in almost any online 'sandbox' game, the most common source of lag is entity loading, though with this game there does seem to be issues with some bases causing more lag than others due to some sort of surface rendering/polygonal issue. 

The game also has issues with lighting causing lag, especially consistent lighting, and since their lighting options are limited, and VERY confined, it almost forces people to start causing lag (simple lights, ceiling lights, tuna can lights, christmas lights and skull fireplaces are all known offenders). perhaps the electrification of the spotlight will be a game changer in this area, or perhaps it will be the source of all lag, for that one we have to just wait and see. Sadly, there isn't MUCH that can be done about this that I can think of, short of death creating the ultimate lighting source of awesomeness (I wouldn't put it past him) , or forcing people to live in darkness.

The thing that sucks about this most, is that a lack of planning on the part of facepunch has become an 'emergency' for Death, and in some part, the admins. I adore all of them, I think they are wonderful, and it kills me to see them having to deal with all of this, when absolutely NONE of it is their fault.

[Death]

I'm optimizing and rewriting the back-end as I go through the bug reports which is why most of my attention is on that right now. I'm sharing this to let you know I am actively monitoring this thread and occasionally send a reaction to let you know I seen it.

[Sararainmaker]

8 minutes ago, Death said:

I'm optimizing and rewriting the back-end as I go through the bug reports which is why most of my attention is on that right now. I'm sharing this to let you know I am actively monitoring this thread and occasionally send a reaction to let you know I seen it.

You are awesome! I am amazed at everything you are able to do. Being married to a (very vocal and currently working from home) programmer gives me an interesting perspective on the crap I am sure you have to deal with all the time, especially working with other people's coding. We all appreciate everything you do, and your obvious attentiveness to our wants and needs. ♥

[GoRiLLa]

13 minutes ago, Sararainmaker said:

 

The thing that sucks about this most, is that a lack of planning on the part of facepunch has become an 'emergency' for Death, and in some part, the admins. I adore all of them, I think they are wonderful, and it kills me to see them having to deal with all of this, when absolutely NONE of it is their fault.

I agree wholeheartedly, it's more so the game itself.... I haven't really dove into the engine, how it renders etc. I'm sure there's alot to learn there. I mean in its current state it's not deal breaking at all... I have a monster of a pc, I play on high settings because I mean it is a nice looking game... And it's still playable for me even with above all mentioned..i could always cut my settings down... I'm not really the one to complain, I was just bringing some content of a topic a few of them were having in chat today. Maybe spark some ideas? Who knows...

[GoRiLLa]

5 minutes ago, Sararainmaker said:

You are awesome! I am amazed at everything you are able to do. Being married to a (very vocal and currently working from home) programmer gives me an interesting perspective on the crap I am sure you have to deal with all the time, especially working with other people's coding. We all appreciate everything you do, and your obvious attentiveness to our wants and needs. ♥

Agreed, he's a awesome guy! Always has been 

[ChironIV]

Sometimes you have to think out of the box and into the next zip code.

Another PVE server I had a problem.  They allowed spamming of TC's.  A generous fella put TC's all along the river.  I was unable to place anything near the river other than a 2x2.  So.  One 2x2 in the river, solar panels, large batteries and 9 pumps.  Feed multiple water barrels.  Then run Eight 1x1 cubes with TC, solar panels, fluid pumps, medium batteries and run from one pump to another.  160 meters away I could build my farm.

There is no reason you could not do the same thing to run power from a wind farm to your town.  Wind farm could be anywhere.  I use counters as they pass the power while resetting the cable distance.  This would reduce your lag in the town.

With the reduction in lag you could spam more pookies.