North American Sandbox Servers - NASS Main (Artificial Vanilla Config)

[Lecic]

I think your server is down, friend.

 

[MossyStone48]

In the future could you PM this sort of thing to me? I actually get those alerts.

 

[DrTarDIS]

WARNING: My humor might be hard to follow. Just take this post with a grain of salt and slice of lemon.
_snip snip_
This might change. But I'll make sure it's something cute and annoying rather than a Heavy Cruiser showing up in your front yard. Some scrubby little drone. Turret fodder at best.

So we get to the good bit. I'm here for suggestions from people who plan to use NASS. Some suggestions I'll take seriously and others I'll ignore for w/e reason. I'm not going to even try to be fair about this. I'm looking for good and well thought out ideas. After all some of us prefer our corn on the cob and some of us prefer it nuked from orbit. That's not to say I won't consider a bad/trolly idea. Some of those work out great. Just don't expect this to be even remotely democratic. Fair warning? Cool :3.

Depending on how often the pirate stations are spawning in, consider replacing them(or adding to) with a station that's only dockers, a lil logic, and warheads.

dock a bunch of "cute but trolly" ships (like no-shields armor tanks, or no-shields system tanks) to the station, and save it with it's "fuse lit" from an analog clock.(one of the docks is a rotator -> linked to fuse). That way x% of pirate stations spawn in a single-time fleet-action, AND clean up the spawn location from the database (leaving a chance-to-spawn there again...until player drops a 1-block "no, mien" or better station)

 

[MossyStone48]

That's really creative. No joke I love the idea. I just don't see a need for it. I've watched players assaulting pirate bases doing... dismally. With the mine multiplier as low as it is the losses they suffer are already bad enough. Truly the loot from a base is really the scrap from the structure itself and not anything found inside. That's more than enough to make repairs and build up a good bit if they add roid mining to the mix to manufacture themselves the more advanced blocks.

NASS is a slow but steady upward battle against mostly environmental factors. Essentially PvE. Once people are better established we might see some limited warfare but I doubt anyone is going to commit a fleet. It's just too expensive. PvP will likely be a handful of ships against a similar battle group in pre-arrange combat. There might be the odd player-pirate trying to hunt down a miner or someone making a trading run. But losing a mining drone or a freight shuttle is nothing to losing a battleship or even a gunboat. Once some users have established themselves and can really arm their single duty vessels we might see NPC pirates employ some drones.

As it is now I'm seeing too many folks getting discouraged trying to take out turrets on bases. So... not yet. But this idea is still damn good. We might implement something like it via Shadow Script.

 

[DrTarDIS]

Oh, also: Allow more than one station per sector. with rotation "off" it's totally an awesome thing.
->warpgate relay nexus(with nav markers!)
->"trade hub"

Edit: Totally get your reasoning why not as a general rule, not worth a new post to mention my advanced reasoning on it and the few special-cases it's really useful without being personally invested. *If* it ever comes to a point I can/do build a "nexus" as i envision, we'll talk and see if you'll adminspawn/move existing (or100% filled blueprints) into one sector for "ease of use" and/or lag-reduction.

 

[MossyStone48]

Ok most definitely not more than one station per sector. The other servers have suffered enabling nearly everything requested. One sector. One Station. That's it. Our sectors are default size. Other stations are already super close. No call for more than one per sector.

Warp gates are really a user thing. I'd rather let the factions build their own networks. Whether they share them or not is their call.

I did attempt a trade hub once. What happened was a total lack of interest.

Sorry to shoot these down. We've tried a few already.

 

[Comr4de]

You can install multiple warpgates to a station, btw

 

[MossyStone48]

Still not doing it. You faction types go nuts. The NASS spawn warp gate is just for decoration for now.

Maybe later. But not now.

 

[Comr4de]

Yeah, that was directed more at the concept of a warpgate hub. You don't need multiple stations to pull it off.

On the note of actual pirates, are you sure that you don't want to enable any? If you don't actually configure pirates in a wave they won't spawn in Sim groups. If you just have ships enabled for use as pirates they'll only respond to station incursions. I'm not talking about anything too big, but I know there are packs of fighter-sized pirates lying around.

 

[DrTarDIS]

Yeah, that was directed more at the concept of a warpgate hub. You don't need multiple stations to pull it off.

On the note of actual pirates, are you sure that you don't want to enable any? If you don't actually configure pirates in a wave they won't spawn in Sim groups. If you just have ships enabled for use as pirates they'll only respond to station incursions. I'm not talking about anything too big, but I know there are packs of fighter-sized pirates lying around.

"can do" yes, you can also wrap a gate in P or F modules, or do that to it's computer with a chest of marker beams to it. Kluge like that is inelegant for use.
I also "can" make up to 8 starship gates 'really close" by riding the corner of sector, but that's inelegant for man-sized ones.
I also "can" Try it out with a small planet as "nexus", It "works" too. (to get the nav markers for ship-sized gates)
Reason to use multiple:
-use nav-marker and nav window for navigation to/from each separate entity. Signage is nice, but game-mechanic-leveraged signage is better IMHO. I like to "sort" things.
-on exiting a warpgate you "appear" outside a collision-check bounding box for the entire entity. so any single-entity hub outputs you well-away from the "gate" and most likely the other gate(s) too. Especially apparent if you make humanoid-only gates for fast-travel(atleast the last time I did it).
Like i say in my edit, that's really a "special case" argument that isn't applicable until well after I actually join NASS. That'll wait till when I have the time to dedicate to bootstrapping a mining fleet.

 

[MossyStone48]

Spoiler: Moved to main post.

After some recent issues with the server we're considering a MAJOR upgrade. The real issue is the expense. Doomsider is shouldering all the rental burden himself. He could use some help and we're considering offering donor incentives. Nothing game breaking just convenient.

We have a server we're looking at in NY. It is beastly. It should be able to handle several simultaneous 'faction sized' mining ops.

I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.

The subject here was tweaks to config and load out for newbies. I'm also adding whether or not we should move forward with this upgrade and gauge how much support from the players we can count on to offset the new monthly financial strain on Doomer's personal cheque book.
Also a sticky point; What should the incentives be?

HERE is the schedule as it stands: (All quantities in USD)
1 -4: Shadow Rankup unlocking access to addition starter ships (time limit applies)
5-9: 1 Protected Sector adjacent to your faction's homebase. Plus Shadow Rankup.
10: Second Home. IE: a 2nd protected sector where ever you want it. Includes 1st Protected Sector + Shadow Rankup.
(All benefits expire after 1 month on a set date)

These are still up for discussion so we're not accepting b̶r̶i̶b̶e̶s̶ donations yet.

With a total of 40 USD of support we can offset the costs. That's 4 Second Home supporters.

Specs of target server:
Dual L5630 XEONs - thasa 16 cores total
32gb ram - prolly DDR3
240gb SSD - bcos SSDs are pure love
1 GBPS - pretty standard these days

ONCE we open up donations you can use the paypal link on NASSzone. Not gonna link the donation box here. It's not there right now anyhow but will reappear when all this is hammered out. Just make sure to message me and I'll dbl chk with el jefe. W/e incentives we settle on I'll then apply manually once all's verified.

 

[Lecic]

I would suggest having a rule against putting your second homebase in someone elses territory. Other than that, these sound fair.

 

[Comr4de]

Is there anyways to increase the RAM used by the server atm or are you boys maxed out? I checked out nasszone and it seems that the starmade server is the only one on the box? Or am I mistaken.

 

[MossyStone48]

We're near maxed. And that sort of tweak I -can- make but is really el jefe's domain.

 

[Lecic]

Combat is completely unplayable with these microscopic sector sizes. Please increase them. Thanks.

 

[MossyStone48]

No.
Git Gewd.

 

[Lecic]

Oh, I'm sorry, do you like "SERVER UNDER HEAVY LOAD" to constantly play in the background of combat from constant sector switching and sudden unavoidable collisions?

 

[MossyStone48]

oh sassy. much salt. very tasty. wow.
if you are smacking into things and lagging the server you need to grow some real (video game) piloting skills and use a smaller vessel.

just because you got beat fairly and you can't fathom yourself being the issue doesn't mean you need to find excuses for how you lost. YOU lost. YOU. Either learn from your mistake or be bound to them for life.

 

[Lecic]

I wasn't flying a large ship and the only reason I smacked into things was because the server was already lagging, but hey, whatever fits your twisted narrative.

The one who needs to learn from their mistakes here is YOU. YOU have the sector sizes too small for combat to be playable, and the server is suffering because of it.

 

[BDLS]

I know I'm biased since he's a faction mate, but the server is under heavy load more often than not, and was during their entire combat operation.

Hopefully with the upcoming upgrade things will be silky smooth~