Single Player Sector 'Simulation'

[SneakyTacts]

How does the out-of-sector simulation, updating, or loading stuff work in single player? User Ravien claimed that plenty of sectors can be simulated at once in single player (as in 500, but I only care for maybe a couple dozen). Is that true?

 

If it is, then I have another question. I leave my past ships in sectors by themselves, but they're never attacked. Is that because all sectors are safe from pirate- and alien- warp-in attacks? I know that sectors with enemies will be updated and fighting will take place, but will enemies never warp into any of my sectors, whether they have my ships or stations-to-come?

[Ravien]

Pirate and Xsotan attacks don't happen in sectors a player is not in, so your ships in other sectors should be safe in single player, as long as nothing buggy happens.

[Kamo]

Yep. Random attacks on your assets aren't implemented yet (which is why space is pretty secure for player freighters, stations and autominers as long as you don't leave them with enemies).

 

But before those things are implemented, we'll need the two-level (loaded and unloaded) simulation, which would be able to "free up" loaded sector slots, so remote events would happen by loading those sectors (those events would also need to be exceptional (as in rare and unusual) to not bog down the player).

Right now, the loaded sector simulation works nicely, but once a sector is unloaded it is the subject of no simulation at all, which causes issues like this.

In multiplayer the loaded sector cap is 5 per player, and in single player (which works like solo multiplayer) the loaded sector cap is at 500 as a placeholder (I had to reduce it to 20 after having serious server lag problems, so I think 5 per gigabyte of RAM works fine), because when it was put in place the devs didn't think much about map orders yet (a single player roaming in the galaxy would probably awaken five or ten sectors tops).

 

But now it means not many people get hit with the problems I have, as you'd need to be both a successful empire-builder and hit your rig's limits to start having server lag problems, reducing the load by reducing the cap, then start having unloaded sector problems as a logical result.

For me it's particularily egregious because I have much more than 20 sectors with stations, so I'm permanently stuck at the 20 loaded sector cap, so my freighters and miners are 100% prone to stumble into unloaded sectors. I also guess people using map orders in multiplayer will rapidly get aware of the problems.

 

I wonder how much work it will be for the devs to address the issue. It may need a relatively small amount of tweaks, or to rewrite a big portion of the game, depending on how the framework of the simulations is laid out.

[SneakyTacts]

Thanks, you two.

 

Kamo, I’ve read that other page before and I agree with you about having a slower tick-rate and less-precise simulation. I haven’t built stations yet, but I don’t want a slow game when I do. Nor do I want servers to experience slow performance because each player gets a measly limit on active sectors (and cannot run AI ships on trade routes in the upcoming version).