Fix networking. e.g broadcast ranges.

[RabidBat]

I think the biggest issue with this games stability when running a multiplayer server is that every little action seems to be broadcast server wide.
Seems to be, not sure it is, but hey when some guy is fighting Pirates and it brings down everyone else on the other side of the universe or the new NPC factions decide to have a turn with no players any where near them, it begins to give that impression.

So I think it needs to be looked at restricting information to say a 2 or 3 sector radius. So only those present in the area get the info of what is happening.

If Jimmy fires a bullet in the sector 5 5 5, then only the adjoining sectors, let's call it visible range, should be informed, Fred in sector 100 100 100 and the other 19 players not in the region doesn't need to know Jimmy fired that bullet. But Tim who is in Sector 5 5 6 does. So Jimmy and Timmy get that info nobody else.

If Jimmy fighting the pirates is lagging him out because he decided 50 pirates and counting spawned in 2 minutes was just fine and dandy, then Jimmy needs to crash out or lag, not the entire server.
(I mean pirates could be made to not to spawn instantly and infinitely, like a timed cool down or say a check like "if 5 pirates, stop spawning, if 3 pirates, continue until 5." which would make sense to me, but hey, I'm no game dev am I? )

I dunno, maybe I have it all wrong, and maybe what I propose is not possible, but if I am right and everything is broadcast to everyone, even game breaking events, and it is possible to stop such server wide broadcasts then it is something that should definitely be looked at and improvised.

I dunno, we have some long standing bugs like this, and we really need such major issues fixed sooner than later. Even if it is as simple as making NPC factions simpler and doing something about pirates and tradeguild flood spawning.

 

[Drakkart]

yeah lots of games put players in bubbles which limit their influence. the problem is though that to achieve this you need to trut your client and clientside dta can be manipulated by memory altering... CS headshot hack, wallhack etc. WoW warping around to spawnpoints ... also the decision if someone hit someone else never must fall into clients hands ... the server has to be judge for that

 

[RabidBat]

yeah lots of games put players in bubbles which limit their influence. the problem is though that to achieve this you need to trut your client and clientside dta can be manipulated by memory altering... CS headshot hack, wallhack etc. WoW warping around to spawnpoints ... also the decision if someone hit someone else never must fall into clients hands ... the server has to be judge for that

Locks only stop honest people.
Thankfully not yet encountered an obvious hack in this game.

Best tool as with any server, game or otherwise, is active moderation. I'd rather manually banhammer idiots than have to deal with servers crashing every 5 minutes.