A Solution To Flying Spaghetti Monsters

[Zyrr]

Matt_Bradock

I'd make a fair wager my computer is less powerful than yours. It's just very silly to imply that spaghetti ships are any different client performance from the hordes of poorly designed titans that infest the four remaining multiplayer servers like malignant tumors. Matt of all people should remember the goddamn Lovecraftian horror of trying to render particular homebases on Illusive, EE1 and SS that had similar amounts of exposed faces. Not only that, but nightrune deliberately creates a strawman here - Veilith specifies there's no difference in server performance, which is correct, and nightrune then comments on client performance, which is a different bag of worms and was not being discussed and therefore is not relevant to the discussion.

But if we're going to create a discussion on client performance issues, let's include the important things, right? Like how large amounts of entities (100-256+ depending on how nice your computer is) will stress out clients and cause crashes without even necessarily doing anything, let alone them being active AI like PD turrets? Or, perhaps, let's include how block removal from lots of DPS weapons like b/c will ruin client FPS without even touching server performance? Or how large logic connections will massacre FPS without them actually doing anything?

Client performance is a joke in StarMade. Implying that encouraging denser ships will somehow magically alleviate exposed block face performance hits is nonsensical and demonstrably inaccurate if not downright misleading in an attempt to diffuse and redirect from a serious issue that Schine is doing their utmost to not properly address. Log on to LvD sometime and take a gander through some of the homebases if you don't believe me. Complexity in StarMade will always result in poor performance - it's just a fact of life.

 

[kulbolen]

I can actually confirm that, I have encountered that issue at the first time I encountered Veilith's massive spaghetti bowl,

the thing youre talking about isnt in any way spaghetti, its an entirely different issue of the game rendering non exposed blocks if theyre on separate entities. it doesnt know theyre not really exposed and draws them anyway.

I tend not to comment on most things, but this isn't true either. No not harder on the server, but harder on clients. Ships like the fair and balanced have more exposed sides of blocks. Making it graphically more intensive. There are many reasons to force ship sizes down and more dense.

i said servers; you called me wrong but then agreed its not harder on servers, but clients...

i also said ships of comparable complexity. if i make a 5k mass spaghetti ship, its going to be fighting and comparable to like 59k mass ships, itll just cost less.

ftr, i think spaghetti is stupid and should be fixed, but youre going in the opposite direction with a lot of your dev changes. why are you making it so people need to build bigger ships with more exposed surfaces if bigger ships with more exposed surfaces are bad?

 

[Ithirahad]

I tend not to comment on most things, but this isn't true either. No not harder on the server, but harder on clients. Ships like the fair and balanced have more exposed sides of blocks. Making it graphically more intensive. There are many reasons to force ship sizes down and more dense.

Then why are we forcing people to throw tons of empty space (with all the extra polys that come with it) in their hulls now if they don't want to build stick shapes? :P

 

[Jojomo]

Implying that encouraging denser ships will somehow magically alleviate exposed block face performance hits is nonsensical and demonstrably inaccurate if not downright misleading......

No it's not, it's entirely accurate.

No one has said or implied it's a complete solution to all client performance issues.

 

[Zyrr]

You want to play the "iamverysmart" role, and that's fine, but let's be real, because interpreting things literally just so you have something to say is a way to garner attention and very little else.

You mean here that I said it's a solution to all client performance issues, which I didn't - amusing in the context of what you're saying, an implication in itself, which I'm sure you're going to debate. I said, as you can see in the quote, that the implication was that making ships denser would magically alleviate exposed block face performance hits - which is exactly what is being implied here;

... but harder on clients. Ships like the fair and balanced have more exposed sides of blocks. Making it graphically more intensive. There are many reasons to force ship sizes down and more dense.

To explain, since it seems to be necessary - he states that spaced out ships have more exposed faces, which is graphically intensive, and then follows with a vague sentence, "there are many reasons to force ship sizes down and more dense". Literally, they have no connection, but obviously the intention was for the reader to read into the implication being made, just said in reverse - the more we reduce spaced out ships, the more we reduce graphical intensiveness. This is because (from his point of view) a dense ship is the opposite of a spaced out ship - meaning that somehow, where a spaced out ship has many exposed block faces, a dense ship does not.

This is a lot of words to describe to you something you already know and acknowledge and something I expect nearly everyone who has read it knows and acknowledges. To reiterate the point I was making and still am - assuming that by forcing ships to be denser you're going to alleviate performance loss from rendered block faces is wrong.

 

[Jojomo]

YTo reiterate the point I was making and still am - assuming that by forcing ships to be denser you're going to alleviate performance loss from rendered block faces is wrong.

No, it is correct, in that it would avoid spaghetti, which are close to the worst possible cases of block face rendering performance issues.

 

[Zyrr]

But that's also wrong - in fact, it's pretty much the opposite of correct. Spaghetti isn't the worst possible case of performance hits from block rendering, and really it's not even that close. Considerably complex dense ships exist that are significantly worse on performance than "spaghetti" ships, and they're not nearly as rare as these "spaghetti" ships. Try again.

 

[Jojomo]

Considerably complex dense ships exist that are significantly worse on performance than "spaghetti" ships, and they're not nearly as rare as these "spaghetti" ships.

A huge claim. How to you plan to show that it's true?

 

[Zyrr]

If you played on multiplayer servers you'd be well aware, which is really the crux of the overarching argument of "theory versus practice" that has come up now that, suddenly, everyone and their mother is an expert in the so-called "spaghetti ships". If you'd like to test it, be my guest - take a normal ship, turn the hull into a docked entity. Start giving it a big interior. Etc.

 

[kulbolen]

No it's not, it's entirely accurate.

No one has said or implied it's a complete solution to all client performance issues.

this is called a bandaid solution. trying to discourage something from being used instead of addressing the problems with the reason its used in the first place.

also

"Implying that encouraging denser ships will somehow magically alleviate exposed block face performance hits is nonsensical and demonstrably inaccurate if not downright misleading......

No it's not, it's entirely accurate."

what? just because someone encourages you to make a denser ship doesnt mean the perfromance hit from a less dense ship is any different. its still broken, youre just hoping people wont do it.

No, it is correct, in that it would avoid spaghetti, which are close to the worst possible cases of block face rendering performance issues.

youve basically said that because people dont need to do something, they wont do it.

A huge claim. How to you plan to show that it's true?

probably the same way youre expected to show what youve claimed to be true. youre not. at all.


docked entities are the worst offenders, and people use them whether for performance or for interesting quirky shit. all of the above should be fixed, but schema himself just recently said he prefers to fix source issues and not bandaid them. soooooo.

 

[Jojomo]

If you played on multiplayer servers you'd be well aware, which is really the crux of the overarching argument of "theory versus practice" that has come up now that, suddenly, everyone and their mother is an expert in the so-called "spaghetti ships". If you'd like to test it, be my guest - take a normal ship, turn the hull into a docked entity. Start giving it a big interior. Etc.

So you won't be demonstrating any non-spaghetti ships with worse block face rendering issues than spaghetti ships then.
As I expected.

 

[Zyrr]

Log onto LvD or Brierie and fly around some, visit some homebases. It's not my responsibility to explain to you things you would and should already know as a prerequisite for discussion.

 

[kulbolen]

No, it is correct, in that it would avoid spaghetti, which are close to the worst possible cases of block face rendering performance issues.

how do you plan on proving this claim?

...
semi related, if youre interested in learning and spreading information and not just arguing over semantics... whyd you include "close to the worst" then try to argue about how something else isnt worse lol


spaghetti is a performance hit. its bad. fix it. lots of docked entities are a performance hit. theyre bad. fix em.
encouraging people to not build that way is a bandaid.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Matt_Bradock

I'd make a fair wager my computer is less powerful than yours. It's just very silly to imply that spaghetti ships are any different client performance from the hordes of poorly designed titans that infest the four remaining multiplayer servers like malignant tumors. Matt of all people should remember the goddamn Lovecraftian horror of trying to render particular homebases on Illusive, EE1 and SS that had similar amounts of exposed faces. Not only that, but nightrune deliberately creates a strawman here - Veilith specifies there's no difference in server performance, which is correct, and nightrune then comments on client performance, which is a different bag of worms and was not being discussed and therefore is not relevant to the discussion.

But if we're going to create a discussion on client performance issues, let's include the important things, right? Like how large amounts of entities (100-256+ depending on how nice your computer is) will stress out clients and cause crashes without even necessarily doing anything, let alone them being active AI like PD turrets? Or, perhaps, let's include how block removal from lots of DPS weapons like b/c will ruin client FPS without even touching server performance? Or how large logic connections will massacre FPS without them actually doing anything?

Client performance is a joke in StarMade. Implying that encouraging denser ships will somehow magically alleviate exposed block face performance hits is nonsensical and demonstrably inaccurate if not downright misleading in an attempt to diffuse and redirect from a serious issue that Schine is doing their utmost to not properly address. Log on to LvD sometime and take a gander through some of the homebases if you don't believe me. Complexity in StarMade will always result in poor performance - it's just a fact of life.

I usually love to argue with Zyrr, but goddamn this time I was had, and I have to agree. Yes, I do remember the Lovecraftian horror of trying to render homebases of larger factions on EE and SS... it was bad to a point I simply had to avoid some even in war because I instacrashed or my game outright froze from the sheer load - and then there were the collision bounding boxes, which could break the server too, not just the client.

Still, the fact that a FSM (Flying Spaghetti Monster) of less than half my ship's block count can freak my laptop out like my own could never, is one more reason to do something about it, because at this point, it is a tactic on its own to spaz the enemy's client out to the point he's forced to play and fight with 5-6 FPS, while your siide is OK since you don't feel the # of blocks rendered neither any server load because there isn't much. Spaghettis in this regard, are another form of lagbomb, just far more localized and targeted.

EDIT: In this case, however, the task of punishment and regulation shouldmaybe also fall onto the server admins. I understand the devs don't want to limit creativity. The serveradmins, however, in favor of playability, could, and should. Mass limits in Starmade are often treated as socialism in the USA: as an insult. But it's no different than Space Engineers and Empyrion, servers of both games limit maximum ship size allowed on server more often than not. Sure many people will get upset if certain design choices are prohibited. But you can never make everyone happy. You can, however, save your servers from becoming clusterf***s.

 

[OfficialCoding]

[Simply having a rule that all blocks must touch at least one other block would also achieve something similar in regard of Spaghetti maybe]

I really like the extra dynamics of conduits suggested here, particularly because it relates to fundamental principles in energy and physics; - But would it be feasible in game with 1m size blocks ?:/.

Also i like the freedom to imagine that various kinds of power might be used - like some kind of 'stabilizers', maybe conduits can be used to buff or fully maximize power, rather than as fundamental requirement. In this concept, exotic alien spaghetti-entities are possible (ie good for diversity) but much lacking in power/danger as an actual war ship.

For those not aware, the current meta, in both power 1.0 and power 2.0, is kilometer wide ships made of "spaghetti strands" of power reactors or conduits with the rest of the systems spread widely in small segments, the majority of the ship's volume being composed of vacuum.

Here's my proposal to fix this up.

Step One: Give a maximum range as well as a minimum range to stabilizers so there is a range they must actually be placed in to work. This makes it so the reactor and stabilizer must be a combined unit, making it harder to spread the ship out into spaghetti strands. Compare this to something like the internals and inert protective shell of a real world nuclear reactor.

Step Two: Conduits should follow the resistance rules of real wires. Longer and thinner conduits should have increased resistance, reducing the amount of power that gets to their system. For an average normal ship, which might be roughly 30x30x300 and weigh a few tens of thousands of mass, this isn't a problem as they can just make their conduits a little thicker for their systems on the absolute far end of the ship. For a 30k mass spaghetti ship that might cover a kilometer and a half, however, this is hellish abuse on power efficiency or on their thin profile when they need to make their conduits into 10 meter thick columns to cross such a vast distance.

Step Three: All systems (weapons, shields, thrusters, turret docks and enhancers, etc) should require a conduit connection. This is the final nail in the spaghetti monster's coffin, as it can no longer rely using gulfs of empty space between each individual thruster and shield. Each system group would need its own thick conduit leading to it or it will have to rely on "wireless power" which will have heavy debuffs or efficiency loss, and if they have to lead conduits to all their spread out groups in the first place there's no longer a reason to build spaghetti, because it's become so solid with conduit lines that it would be more efficient and "meta" to just build a normal ship.

So, what do you think? Good way to get rid of this fellow?

But what if you want to create a massive ship with tonnes of weapons? How will that work?

 

[GnomeKing]

perhaps that gets increasing hard to achieve - as 'massive' and 'tonnes' should probably be hard to achieve, no ?

conduits or similar concepts can replace/supplement reliance of 'Reactor HP' or other simplistic statistic ( :/ ) by having a ship fail in more interesting ways .... especially 'massive' ones :>

 

[Lecic]

But what if you want to create a massive ship with tonnes of weapons? How will that work?

What do you mean by this? In what ways does my proposal prevent the creation of a big ship with lots of guns?

 

[JinM]

Only skimmed this thread, so correct me if I'm missing something here.

This sounds more alike an administrative problem rather than a game engine issue, sure it's an exploit that annoying players are using to play like complete assholes, but if it happened on my server it would result in a perma-ban. Not saying it'll stop this crap from happening, some trolls expect to get banned, but it would help reduce it.

This idea is way too mature. No trolling intended. The most people here don't want to even consider that pvp in Starmade needs extra extra server side rules.

 

[The_Owl]

This idea is way too mature. No trolling intended. The most people here don't want to even consider that pvp in Starmade needs extra extra server side rules.

If a games PvP needs players to make rules to make it balanced, it needs to be fixed. End of.

 

[JinM]

If a games PvP needs players to make rules to make it balanced, it needs to be fixed. End of.

So where I am wrong when I say that you don't even consider that Starmade pvp needs serverside rules?