the networking torment nexus - it's all our fault

[StarCoreIssueBot]

reduce to 1 real and 5 fake beams with the same damage

Submitted by: invalid

[InvalidArgument3]

looks like one t4 takes up something like 200kb/s upload, the f11 menu lies

SpaceEngineersLauncher_2024-09-26_04-54-43.mp4

[InvalidArgument3]

i'm not a packetologist but 300 down seems like a lot, gonna test in a vanilla multiplayer world

[InvalidArgument3]

found it
happens on a world with just WC-starcore + MA
does not happen with the main weaponcore
it's something we did. look for something that could amplify on a high rate of fire weapon or many hit instances

main WC still has high network load, but it doesn't "lock" the network like ours does

Ash-LikeSnow/WeaponCore@master...StarCoreSE:WeaponCore-StarCore:master

maybe one of the API calls we added back in February is thinking too hard?

[BadM0dder]

Yo you found a lead that's huge 🫡

[InvalidArgument3]

might be less of a lead than i thought, still happened in base weaponcore on a DS testing with 2 players. tested slashing off packets with StarCoreSE/WeaponCore-StarCore@ca8dfea

a t4 shooting a target appears to be much more load than shooting off into space

[InvalidArgument3]

note:
what if it's not network stuff at all? what if it's the very thread the client uses to deserialize the 9 morbillion incoming packets from a wall of lasers (or a single one if things are under load) getting jammed up? there's no simspeed reduction on server or client?

[InvalidArgument3]

going to need to just re-implement at minimum like 9/10 fake stages rounds in all beams
can use this opportunity to slim down configs a bunch of fake patterns were removed when I added decals (which are now fucked :))

[BadM0dder]

need to tell BD about beams using excessive reloading when not reloading

[InvalidArgument3]

it's instances of DoDamage

https://files.catbox.moe/esrakf.mp4

i feel like we could have gotten away with this a year ago, maybe modapi's dodamage was changed in a keen update to send more info because it really feels like a hard cutoff where some sort of limit is reached and it sends any further packets to the back of the line

we fix this through patterns starting with lasers

[BadM0dder]

Bandaid solutions aside, we need to figure out a way to dismantle this artificial limitation, whatever it may be, as it effectively cripples large player battles, as even with fake lasers, bring enough guns and the network goes to hell.

The 32 player startreck exhibition had 9 federation ships with, on average, probably 7 or 8 gladius each. And the main limitation at the time was server sim speed.

In the brotato bowl, darth brought a mass effect Reaver with something like 110 large lasers that didn't have patterns.

Now, with 1 gladius without its patterns, a server with 16 players screeches to a halt.

Maybe Space Engineers 2 will lack this "feature" and allow good networking again. Until then, maybe other servers have been seeing this same issue? Could there be a way to code it out? Do we need to switch to an older version of the game?

And if an older version of the game works, then we call that the "lastest stable version" and continue on with great performance.

If it doesn't, then the only other "easy" solution is to see if the performance returns with a version of weaponcore from 2023. Or orrery systems.

[InvalidArgument3]

the scrims last night were encouraging, the GT4 world had the thruster particle fx replaced with the basic recolorable ones and all of the MA lasers had their patterns applied. thrusterfx always showed as like a 10% load on simspeed in the profiler but never the network and is completely unrelated to damage events, but it may have pushed clients over the threshold. we'll see in 4.9

[ari-steas]

proposed high player count scrims to test this, even with the laser performance edits we would still have notable hitches. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to test to such a degree after the particle fx removal (but results were promising!)

[ari-steas]

context for later, cutting laser firing rate helped a lot (alongside removing the thruster FX mod) but we still need to reach into weaponcore and figure out why it's creating ten quintillion packets. A packet combining system might go a long ways.