Station, Ships, almost everything not loading.

[Laltonel]

Hello,

Try as I might, i have not been able to get my station, ships, and just about everything i had to load for several weeks now on a small multi player server i play on.

The ships are all found via the /search command, the station still shows on the the galaxy map, but when i go out there, only one ship loads, out of the like 30+ entities that should be there.

I've tried teleporting them to another location using the /teleport_uid_to command. I even tried the /repair sector command (this crashed the server once, but i was also IN the sector when i did it soo... yeah. Still haven't tried this again).

I've also cleared the client cache under the tools options and turned all my graphic settings way up in case of a memory clog.

Any idea on how to recover my stuff? i've seen lots of load sector commands and what not in the command listings. Any help is greatly appreachated.

 

[Batavium]

We need a bit more info on the server. Is this your own server? What settings did you use to create the server map?

Ships found via the /search command. You mean you have a Home Base with ships docked to it and it shows on the map. But once there all you see is one ship.

If it is a Station try and see if you can enter a Buildblock. Then from within the Buildblock open the map pick a location and hit Admin Warp. The Station and everything docked to it should move with you to the new location. The Station will still show up on the map on the old location but after reconnecting thats gone. It's just an echo usefull to port back incase you made a mistake. "don't jump in a star"

The repair_sector command is safe to use. The server will try and repair the sector once it's able you beeing there just delays it's execution.

It is possible you spawned to much or to big stuff for your server. This happends a lot! Starmade is very cpu intensive and because something loads at one point that doesn't mean it won't cause trouble somewhere else. Example you spawned a big ship in an empty sector. The ship loads and then you fly back to base to dock. All the stuff together then throws the server over the cliff. Add more then one player to the sector, moving parts and the circus is complete.

There is no easy fix for that but if you have blueprints of some ships then you can try to do the following. Make sure your far away in another system.

Start off with /force_save

Then let's backup the station with:

export_sector

DESCRIPTION: exports the whole sector. be sure to use /force_save before
PARAMETERS: X(Integer), Y(Integer), Z(Integer), name(String)
EXAMPLE: /export_sector 2 3 4 mySavedSector

mySavedSector is the file name use any name you like but write it down!

From the /search command get the exact name of the ship to delete. Make sure your not near the station.

/despawn_all shipname unused true

There is no /despawn command... it is very powerfull so take care

After every removal go to the sector via the maps admin warp and see if it now loads. Delete something big for possible best result fast.

despawn_all

DESCRIPTION: WARNING: this will delete the entites that start with the given pattern from the database!
PARAMETERS: ShipNameStart(String), Mode(used/unused/all)(String), ShipOnly(True/False)
EXAMPLE: /despawn_all MOB_ unused true

/despawn_all MOB_ unused true

Is something to use a lot as it clears user spawned pirates and frees up slots for other pirates to spawn. If used on a server that has been running for a long time this command will take 100% cpu and drop all connections to connected clients. Once done it will say despawned an x number of entities.

Use /import_sector to load any saved sectors. Again be far away! WARNING the target sector must be clear of any and all entities!

import_sector

DESCRIPTION: make sure that the target sector is unloaded
PARAMETERS: toX(Integer), toY(Integer), toZ(Integer), name(String)
EXAMPLE: /import_sector 2 3 4 mySavedSector

 

[Laltonel]

I'm going to try to do as much of this as i can, the server is not mine however, it is a friends. To complicate matters i am currently in Italy for the holidays and the server is US based. Mind you I've been having this issue since before I left the states so that is not the issue.

Define large objects for me, as this definition seems to vary from person to person. the "large" objects i have are my main battleship "Nedesico" @ 298L x 149W x 110H. The other is the station that houses it @ 400L x 600W x 150H. It has a lot of blocks however and enough native regeneration to produce 8 mil e/s before the power update with no sub reactors. it also had nearly 1 billion energy capacity. So would those two entities be enough to cause the server to have a fit by chance?

Edit: Oh yes, most of the ships were docked to the station as it was my spawn location and main faction base. The one ship that does still load no longer shows "docked" to anything and was previously docked.

 

[Batavium]

I tend to work with mass definition for size as seen in navigation. The Nedesico sounds like 75K plus. You sure you got 1 billion energy cap on the station and not 100 million because 1 billion takes a lot of blocks. You need a serious server once you go over 50K. Static objects like stations can be pretty big before there is trouble but anything that moves requires a lot of cpu power. Starmade is all about cpu cores not so much about ram.

I have a 127K ship and big base on one server that i know is very powerfull. Most other servers i play have smaller stuff. Most servers allow far to big stuff it pays off in the long run to impose a strikt build limit.

A little trick to test a server is to disable all pirates. Then set your desired ship size as a pirate and spawn a wave of them. For best effect have a station or planet loaded. Every other pirate needs to be disabled "untick enemy use in the Blueprint catalogue Admin tab" to force the server to spawn the big ship as a pirate. Gameplay must remain smooth as all this takes place. Don't go crazy start of with like a 5K ship.

/initiate_wave 10 10

initiate_wave
DESCRIPTION: Initiates an enemy wave
PARAMETERS: Level(Integer), Seconds(Integer), FactionID(Integer)
EXAMPLE: /initiate_wave 5 20 -1

Can you post a /status command output once the sector of the bugged station stops loading. Double check if it still shows on the map even though you see nothing.

Now the ship thats just there can you enter it? If so try jumping away try not to move just jump away.

Wait a few seconds then try /repair_sector once jumped.

Also if the station does glitch the ships that were docked tend to pop up a few sectors further as ghosts. You wont see them on the navigation screen and you can fly strait through them. With the old dockers you often had turrets come off and do that while the main ship still seamed docked to the base.

Again if you got Blueprints just spawn things a new. As admin there is also the admin tab in the catalogue giving you access to every Blueprint on the server. Keep Local copies of your builds tell everyone to do that before making a server Blueprint because servers can crash. Stations can be Blueprinted from within a Buildblock everything docked to it also goes in the Blueprint possible making it way to big so beware.

Something i just thoughed of. Did you ever restart the server? Restarting it fixes a lot of issues.

shutdown
DESCRIPTION: shutsdown the server in specified seconds (neg values will stop any active countdown)
PARAMETERS: TimeToShutdown(Integer)
EXAMPLE: /shutdown 120

The Description for the command is wrong. It doesn't turn the server off it restarts it.

 

[Laltonel]

Well i do have most of the blueprints for many of the ships in near similar stages of completion. As far as mas goes, the Nedesico is around 50,000 units of mass, and the space station power capacity was not quite at 1 billion, it was i think somewhere in the 800,000,000 range. It was framed with 10 x 10 x 10 power reactors to its dimensions, leading to its 8 million+ power generation before the power update. So i'm guessing the moral of the story is build smaller?

 

[SmilingDemon]

and there are problems when big entities with docked stuff do enter the bounding box of stations (which also have docked entities).
do you see heavy fps drops or only nothing loading ? ... sorry if you did answer that already and ihavnt s een it

 

[Laltonel]

Well the Nedesico does dock in a giant hanger built in the station, so yeah, definity in the bounding box. Also the server gets restarted frequently, it seems i have a propensity for crashing it. And was just restarted a few minutes ago from me attempting to recover something. There are several scaffolding arms with many ships docked to them that extend out toward the front of the station. all said and told there are no less then 50 entities in total in and about my station. Though i have been crashing the server for a while now, I'm guessing its because of my station at this point.

Edit: I have a post detailing some information about my ship here:
http://starmadedock.net/threads/high-moble-battleship-nadesico-50-complete.21944/
Edit 2: I haven't tried any of the fixes suggested yet aside from the server restart. The server owner has been given this forum thread link to try things when he gets a chance, i'll try somethings when i get a chance but i'm visiting the in-laws in Italy so i haven't been able to get to it just yet.