Mara Rinn
   |
Posted - 2010.04.23 00:45:00 -
[1]
Having the client join local once it's loaded grid might be a neat way of solving the blob fight problem where people jumping into a fight are sitting ducks.
Requiring confirmation from the client that grid has been loaded, before making the ship appear in space or allowing modules to be activated - would that solve the fleet lag problem while simultaneously eliminating this exploit?
At the worst, the exploiting player might be able to see grid (because the client has successfully loaded grid, but the message that grid has been loaded was intercepted) and provide intelligence without appearing in local. The player's ship will eventually have to appear in local space since the server would disconnect the client, at which point the ship will appear so that it can then do an emergency warp.
The client and server would have to be modified so that grid is loaded while the ship is still in transit, with the player's ship only being added to the grid after the client confirms that grid has been loaded. For a ship jumping into a system (through jump gate, jump drive or jump bridge) the ship only appears in the system when it's added to grid, for a ship warping between points in a system, it leaves one grid, warps, then disappears into an "uncollapsed quantum state" while waiting for the client to report that it has loaded the destination grid. The "uncollapsed quantum state" would allow the ship to be probed down, but any attempt to warp to the ship will have the attacker arrive on an empty grid at a random point along the warping ship's path.
The server will not accept any commands from the client until the client reports that grid has been loaded. Thus an exploiter could report what ships are present (the client has loaded the grid and the simulation is running), but cannot tag, cannot broadcast targets, cannot broadcast "warp to me", cannot light a cyno, cannot warp elsewhere, and due to the server still having the ship in an "uncollapsed quantum state" the ship cannot be warped to.
If this has already been suggested elsewhere, apologies for the redundancy.
[Aussie players: join channels ANZAC or AUSSIES] |