Team Gridlock talks about this in their dev blog about Time Dilation that if you haven't read this already I highly suggest giving it a glance.

time dilation as i understand it will only change one thing:

It makes the lag equal for everyone, rather than having some lucky bastards among the pilots who can still lock and unlock reasonably well, while others are stuck in the lag void completely.

Which kind of lag do you prefer?

(1) Unevenly applied, unpredictable, causes weird effects like ships remaining in space, benefits some types of ships disproportionately

(2) Evenly applied, predictable, everything works as normal, just somewhat slower overall

Fate willing, we'll be doing public tests of Time Dilation in the coming weeks' mass tests, so you can get a first-hand impression of it there~

so you can get a first-hand impression of it there~

there~

Quoting this post as it's a good summary of what we're hoping to achieve with Time Dilation. #1 is what we have currently when the server becomes overloaded, #2 is what we'd greatly prefer happen.

As for this signifying us becoming lazy about server optimization, that's a fair concern, as it'll certainly make the pain of being overloaded less acute. At the same time, it's not cool to leave a painful thing alone just because it reminds us that performance is important. I have a baseball bat for reminding people of that.

Fate willing, we'll be doing public tests of Time Dilation in the coming weeks' mass tests, so you can get a first-hand impression of it there~

Which kind of lag do you prefer?

(1) Unevenly applied, unpredictable, causes weird effects like ships remaining in space, benefits some types of ships disproportionately

(2) Evenly applied, predictable, everything works as normal, just somewhat slower overall

Do you know how much of a pain it is to rewrite code to take advantage of multi-core systems?

I'll take the solution that'll work without giving us EVE 2 thank you very much

TD is a simpler solution. not a permanent solution, because as tippia said, if you "fix" the game to hold 1000vs1000 battle, someone will make a 2000vs2000 battle and crash/burn the server. So yes, tbh TD will probably be a temporary solution, but a long term temporary solution at that.

Actually, I kind of meant that the other way aroundGǪ

TD is the final solution, in the sense that GÇ£it's what kicks in when all other solutions have nothing more to offerGÇ¥. Once you've pushed the server to the limit, TD kicks in an makes sure the limit isn't actually broken, but rather that the chaos gets calmed down a bit. It's a kind of a force multiplier for other fixes that lets them be worth a little bit more. Calling it a temporary solution is short-selling it a bit GÇö it's as permanent and long-term a solution as they come since it will be beneficial in combinations with future improvements as well (since, as history has shown, as soon as the upper limit for a working fleet is moved, the fleets adjust in size to match the new limit).

It's perhaps better to think of it as something other than a solution to lag, because it doesn't actually remove lag GÇö it removes lag-related breakage, which is just as important.

......

Fate willing, we'll be doing public tests of Time Dilation in the coming weeks' mass tests, so you can get a first-hand impression of it there~

[quote=CCP Veritas]How will you get a big blob of lag on Sisi? Ive been in the last few mass tests and there has been some lag, but not that much.

To say what Tippia said in different words...

Most of the things we talk about when we talk about "fixing fleet lag" have to do with increasing the capacity of these fights, that is, the number of players it takes to make the server start exhibiting "lag". Team Gridlock has been at that for over a year now, and have delivered very good results.

Time Dilation does not increase capacity at all. These days we handle about 1000 players (more or less depending on the type of activity being done) before lag starts kicking in. The day after we ship Time Dilation, it'll be exactly the same. The difference is what happens *after* that threshold is passed. Instead of the effects we all know and hate, it'll simply slow the game down until able to cope with the load.

After we ship, we plan to go back to work increasing capacity. These things are not mutually-exclusive. Rather, they're quite complementary.

The sane plan is to add in thin clients. The insane plan is to allow time to go past 1x speed.

I haven't decided which is better.

The sane plan is to add in thin clients. The insane plan is to allow time to go past 1x speed.

I haven't decided which is better.

Bullet time is going to completely ruin this game. Worse than anything else before it.

The sane plan is to add in thin clients. The insane plan is to allow time to go past 1x speed.

I haven't decided which is better.

To say what Tippia said in different words...

Most of the things we talk about when we talk about "fixing fleet lag" have to do with increasing the capacity of these fights, that is, the number of players it takes to make the server start exhibiting "lag". Team Gridlock has been at that for over a year now, and have delivered very good results.

Time Dilation does not increase capacity at all. These days we handle about 1000 players (more or less depending on the type of activity being done) before lag starts kicking in. The day after we ship Time Dilation, it'll be exactly the same. The difference is what happens *after* that threshold is passed. Instead of the effects we all know and hate, it'll simply slow the game down until able to cope with the load.

After we ship, we plan to go back to work increasing capacity. These things are not mutually-exclusive. Rather, they're quite complementary.

Combined with the slowdown of time, will it create endless battles?

I don't see anything bad in this. "Endless" means until you run out of ships, how many times would you return? And more exploding spaceships is definitely a good thing.

[quote=CCP Veritas]Why are you wasting resources fixing lag when you should be fixing lag ffs?

Maybe it's just me, but a 48 hour battle with everything running at 1/4 speed doesnt sound like fun, just a competition to see who doesnt quit from boredom 1st.

Rather than staring at a black screen for an hour and perodically checking killboards out-of-game to see if you're dead yet?

Here's the universal response to every complaint about TD: How on earth could it possibly be worse than what we have now? It's very telling that none of the objectors have actually said they like the current system because nobody does.

Maybe it's just me, but a 48 hour battle with everything running at 1/4 speed doesnt sound like fun, just a competition to see who doesnt quit from boredom 1st.

Sooner or later people will quit the battle because they are bored or out of ships or have to mow the lawn or get wife agro, numbers will decrease and the delay factor will go to normal. So i think it's really just you.

I won't lie, this is pretty awesome.

Would the time dilation be effective only in the grid where the big fight takes place or is it system wide? And if not the latter, how would this look to an distant observer, perhaps monitoring the situation with probes and by scanning?

The whole system will be dilated, including warping or scanning itself.

The sane plan is to add in thin clients. The insane plan is to allow time to go past 1x speed.

I haven't decided which is better.

Will the station environment be dilated, too? And the connected WiS?

Will the station environment be dilated, too? And the connected WiS?

Combined with the slowdown of time, will it create endless battles?

Will time dilation affect aggression timers and log-off-despawn timers?

I am just saying that I hope that this is implemented very carefully, with a lot of user input and testing.

To say what Tippia said in different words...

Most of the things we talk about when we talk about "fixing fleet lag" have to do with increasing the capacity of these fights, that is, the number of players it takes to make the server start exhibiting "lag". Team Gridlock has been at that for over a year now, and have delivered very good results.

Time Dilation does not increase capacity at all. These days we handle about 1000 players (more or less depending on the type of activity being done) before lag starts kicking in. The day after we ship Time Dilation, it'll be exactly the same. The difference is what happens *after* that threshold is passed. Instead of the effects we all know and hate, it'll simply slow the game down until able to cope with the load.

After we ship, we plan to go back to work increasing capacity. These things are not mutually-exclusive. Rather, they're quite complementary.

Q: Will Carbon IO work along with time dilation?

Q: What results can we expect from Carbon IO to improve cluster performance alone?

Q: How long will TIDI run in a system, If enabled? "until the cluster is free of lag, or is lessened in lag."

Q: As Carbon IO allows C++ code. When can we expect to see C++ integrated?

Q: What is your perfect Sunday?

Common decency forbids me from answering this.

TiDi will kick in when a node has become overloaded and will stop when that node is no longer overloaded. Do note that only that node is effected, not the whole cluster.
.

Yes, if a large scale fight breaks out on a non-reinforced node, other systems hosted on the same node will slow down as well. While this isn't ideal, it's still considerably better than what happens today.

Yes, if a large scale fight breaks out on a non-reinforced node, other systems hosted on the same node will slow down as well. While this isn't ideal, it's still considerably better than what happens today.

Yes, if a large scale fight breaks out on a non-reinforced node, other systems hosted on the same node will slow down as well. While this isn't ideal, it's still considerably better than what happens today.

OP.. it's SO easy to re-write the GIL to take advantage of multi-core processors that's why no one has bothered to do it for YEARS

So to the devs reading this thread: how (or even just will) EVE time dilation and DUST not break the live game to game interaction?

Have you decided yet if you will be showing which systems are using TiDi on the map like other states of the game or will FC's have to send scouts out to see what the state of other systems are?

Hay Veritas you skipped a question

Sorry 'bout that. I hadn't considered putting it on the map like that, but with a few hours for it to rattle around my brain, I'm not a fan. Primarily because it should be a rather rare event and 3-way fights (such that 1 group wouldn't already know the dilation state) are very rare.

I'm quite willing to be wrong.

Sorry 'bout that. I hadn't considered putting it on the map like that, but with a few hours for it to rattle around my brain, I'm not a fan. Primarily because it should be a rather rare event and 3-way fights (such that 1 group wouldn't already know the dilation state) are very rare.

I'm quite willing to be wrong.

A prob with time dilation I can think of, is that if it's applied to one or two systems, with outside systems remaining unaffected, is that does it affect reshipping?

Eg some1 gets killed jumps out, runs 10 jumps to reship, and comes back within a couple of module timers? So to the ppl in the time dilated system it seems that some1 dies and almost magically reappears in a new ship. Combined with the slowdown of time, will it create endless battles?

A prob with time dilation I can think of, is that if it's applied to one or two systems, with outside systems remaining unaffected, is that does it affect reshipping?

Eg some1 gets killed jumps out, runs 10 jumps to reship, and comes back within a couple of module timers? So to the ppl in the time dilated system it seems that some1 dies and almost magically reappears in a new ship. Combined with the slowdown of time, will it create endless battles?

That is easy to solve. After someone jumps in they get to wait for the time in the system that is TDed to catch up to the time when he jumped in.

Harder to fix jumping out but that should have less effect on fleet fights so hopefully not a big issue.

Bullet time is going to completely ruin this game. Worse than anything else before it.

The sane plan is to add in thin clients. The insane plan is to allow time to go past 1x speed.

I haven't decided which is better.

A prob with time dilation I can think of, is that if it's applied to one or two systems, with outside systems remaining unaffected, is that does it affect reshipping?

Eg some1 gets killed jumps out, runs 10 jumps to reship, and comes back within a couple of module timers? So to the ppl in the time dilated system it seems that some1 dies and almost magically reappears in a new ship. Combined with the slowdown of time, will it create endless battles?

After we ship, we plan to go back to work increasing capacity. These things are not mutually-exclusive. Rather, they're quite complementary.

Sorry 'bout that. I hadn't considered putting it on the map like that, but with a few hours for it to rattle around my brain, I'm not a fan. Primarily because it should be a rather rare event and 3-way fights (such that 1 group wouldn't already know the dilation state) are very rare.

There's also the moth + flame issue there.

"Oh! A Time-dilated fight is in progress! GET TO THA CHOPPPA!"

Suddenly the 2000 vs 2000 fight becomes 5000 v 5000 and each cycle of that Navy Omen's lasers takes two minutes

I look forward to endless battles. It will make the giant fleet engagements not only into yet more epic stories, and more epic experiences to go through, but it will also turn them into make or break experiences for alliances when they commit to total war like that.

Just think, log in, join a fleet going to war, fight til bed time, come back after work, long in and fly to the same fight. The ultimate test of how strong your force is

Also, I vote for the insane plan. It is obviously superior because SUPERHYPERNANOMEGATITAN GO!!!

The sane plan is to add in thin clients. The insane plan is to allow time to go past 1x speed.

I haven't decided which is better.

You really are getting the wrong idea about Time Dilation. Listen carefully:

TIME DILATION WILL NOT MAKE FLEET FIGHTS LAST LONGER THAN THEY ALREADY DO

In fact there is every chance that TiDi will in the end make fleet fights faster, since "graceful lag" will make it easier to kill ships, and the quicker ships are killed, the quicker the battle ends (or at least reduces to proportions that don't trigger TiDi).

Oh, hey. Seems my old suggestion of abbreviating it "TiDi" caught on.

Now will my suggestion of calling the amount of time slowing "Gamma" catch on? And the idea of displaying Gamma somewhere on the screen? Gamma would usually be 100% then drop as time slows.

I guess time dilation will be a huge nerf for Titans and SCs as they profit from lag usually.

You really are getting the wrong idea about Time Dilation. Listen carefully:

TIME DILATION WILL NOT MAKE FLEET FIGHTS LAST LONGER THAN THEY ALREADY DO

Will the same number of shots need to be fired at a ship to make it blow up? Yes.

Will those shots take more time? Yes.

Will some module activations now be possible that weren't before (e.g.: shield transporters)? Yes.

Therefore, Time Dilation will indeed make fleet fights last longer than they already do. QED.

You might think that black screens and module lag currently make fights last longer, but all Time Dilation will be doing is allowing logistics boats to actually get reps on ships before they blow up due to incoming DPS (and no, I'm not claiming that Time Dilation will help logistics save boats that are blown up by a single salvo, I'm claiming that Time Dilation will allow logistics to get reps on ships at all). The removal of black screens and module lag will be countered by thhiiiiinnnngggss tttaaaaaaakkiiiiing looooonggeeeeerr toooo haaaaappppeeeeenn. Fights will take at least the same amount of time, it's just that now you click a button and stuff will happen. As opposed to nothing happening, or your button not even being there to click.

Combine that with 10 seconds of "grid time" taking, say, 15 seconds of real time, and suddenly getting reinforcements en route to a big fight ASAP will actually mean something. The fight might still be in progress when reinforcements arrive. Pilots who lose ships simply re-ship and head back into the fracas.

I do not doubt that there is a very real possibility of Time Dilation leading to "perpetual fights", given enough ships cramming onto grid. As a parallel to "Time To *****" used to dismiss ideas of player-contributed content, I'll propose a "Time To Perpetual", in which we can run a book on how long it will be from the time Time Dilation is available and working on Tranquility to the time a massive fleet fight occurs which sucks in every available ship and pilot from 50 jumps, because suddenly every ship does matter, and people actually go to work and come back ten hours later to find the same fight still running.

If a X v X fight takes half an hour to resolve, how many ships will need to be on grid to make Time Dilation stretch that fight out to an hour? What about two hours? Will it be linear or exponential dilation (i.e.: doubling the number of people more than doubles the duration of a grid-second).

Also, SAYING THINGS IN CAPS DOES NOT ALLOW YOU TO ESCAPE LOGIC.

I bolded the assumption you have made that is most incorrect. Have you been in a heavy lag fight? Are you aware of what it does to weapon cycling?

EDIT: Also logis are of much less use when everybody's guns can be relied on to work not just more frequently, but at the same time.

I bolded the assumption you have made that is most incorrect. Have you been in a heavy lag fight? Are you aware of what it does to weapon cycling?

How this actually pans out in practice is anybody's guess. Please don't pretend that you know the answer.

Quoting this post as it's a good summary of what we're hoping to achieve with Time Dilation. #1 is what we have currently when the server becomes overloaded, #2 is what we'd greatly prefer happen.

As for this signifying us becoming lazy about server optimization, that's a fair concern, as it'll certainly make the pain of being overloaded less acute. At the same time, it's not cool to leave a painful thing alone just because it reminds us that performance is important. I have a baseball bat for reminding people of that.

Fate willing, we'll be doing public tests of Time Dilation in the coming weeks' mass tests, so you can get a first-hand impression of it there~

As the situation TiDi tries to prevent - one fleet getting unpredictable and heavy lag gets crushed by a fleet that is experiencing much less lag - tends to result in relatively short fights I think it is plausible that TiDi will lead to longer fights on average.

Do you know how much of a pain it is to rewrite code to take advantage of multi-core systems?

I'll take the solution that'll work without giving us EVE 2 thank you very much

My main concern is as follows:

if there is a big fight going on,a nd everything in that system is beeing slowed down, that means a fight might take double the time then it would normally.

that means that one f the sides has double the time to bring in reinforcments... or am i wrong with that?

What i imagine, is goons slowing down that system until they are able to bring 800 perfectly fitted and organized guys into the battle.

correct me if i am wrong please.

I'm not pretending anything. The stated aim of time dilation is to make everything take longer to happen. The "correct" rate for that Tengu's HMLs to fire is once every 3.4 seconds. Under Time Dilation, that 3.4s of simulation time ends up taking 8s of real time. Shots will take longer to happen.

My main concern is as follows:

if there is a big fight going on,a nd everything in that system is beeing slowed down, that means a fight might take double the time then it would normally.

that means that one f the sides has double the time to bring in reinforcments... or am i wrong with that?

What i imagine, is goons slowing down that system until they are able to bring 800 perfectly fitted and organized guys into the battle.

correct me if i am wrong please.

Good news! You are wrong.

TiDi won't make it any easier to execute a strategy like that than current lag conditions do now. I don't see why people have trouble recognising this simple fact. If anything, the battle will procede more quickly and give "goons" less time to assemble this hypothetical "perfectly fitted and organised" fleet (I have never before heard anyone accuse goons of bringing "perfectly fitted and organised" fleets.

Additionally, CCP really have done good work on fighting the lag monster in the last year or so. 800 guys won't cut it any more if you want to lag-bomb a system; more like 1800. There are limits to the numbers that even goons can muster, especially as they're not even the largest alliance, or in the largest coalition.

Finally, TiDi is nothing to do with goons. The idea was conceived and work began on it well before the current CSM was formed. It isn't a goon conspiracy, and people's concerns about it seem to be mainly based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what it will actually do and how lag works now.

Instead of making it so that no one has lag, now everyone is going to have it?

I'm confused. :(

Sorry i think you've understood me wrong,

goons was just an example, insert your Favorite alliance [HERE]

What i am talking about is not the fight itself, it's the comming back of poped pilots in new ships, the time it will take support fleets to arrive,

when a battle is streched, let's say only 10 minutes longer then they would now, that are 10 minutes more friendly fleets have to get they're arses into the battleground.

I'm not talking about strategies, and fights itself, i'm talking about the background, supports arriving e.t.c.

It'll be like a Baddon fleet aligning 15 % faster and warping 15 $ faster until they land in the effected system / node.

For a reduction of 50% to be warranted, the fight needs to be double the capacity of a reinforced node. More importantly, it would speed up as the fight continued.

Why do we have lag? It's because people keep coming to the fight until it lags.

What happens when it doesn't lag anymore but just slows down? Will more people join in because massive fleet fights now work and node death won't happen anymore? Will fewer people join in because massive fleet fights work and they can't rely on lag to "win"?

Awesome!

How will you get a big blob of lag on Sisi? Ive been in the last few mass tests and there has been some lag, but not that much.

Try and get more people? An offer of ISK on TQ (about what the average player could have earned in an hour) might do that.

Or just get a slow server so the normal showing of 350 will do it?

Or add some thin clients?

Or....?

Also: The term Time dilation comes from Relativity, and there its values is represented by the Greek letter Gamma. It starts at 1.0 and drops as you get close to light speed. CCP Veritas: maybe you should put the value of gamma on the screen somewhere. Have it in percent, 100% normally, and dropping as the server loads up. Going forward, tracking gamma as a function of fight size may be a good metric for the war on lag.

Great, so CCP's solution to the lag problem that a few people get is to, LAG EVERYBODY.

Great, so CCP's solution to the lag problem that a few people get is to, LAG EVERYBODY.

Smooth.

I thought we already had the Final Solution to the lag problem, it was called Incarna/NEX.

So why did you remove my post asking about why the patch was over 100mb and what happened to the Incarna performance patch that was removed?

Why do we have lag? It's because people keep coming to the fight until it lags.

What happens when it doesn't lag anymore but just slows down? Will more people join in because massive fleet fights now work and node death won't happen anymore? Will fewer people join in because massive fleet fights work and they can't rely on lag to "win"?

Stuff about a delay on jump-in

That said, I keep a fairly tight eye on what the load in fleet fights is. If I see something pop up that's obviously trying to deny the field, I'll have some work to do to correct that.

Can time dilation be abused? What if large fleets jump in and out or log on and off, what if the large fleet does lots of actions?

Is the dilation localised to the grid? or System wide?

Hmmm... what would happen in a TiDi'd system if there is also a DUST battle raging on the surface of one (or more) planets, with EVE pilots trying to influence the ground fight?

Hmmm... what would happen in a TiDi'd system if there is also a DUST battle raging on the surface of one (or more) planets, with EVE pilots trying to influence the ground fight?

Can time dilation be abused? What if large fleets jump in and out or log on and off, what if the large fleet does lots of actions?

Is the dilation localised to the grid? or System wide?

This is commonly brought up, but inducing a delay on jump in so the "times line up" is not something we're doing. It does make reinforcing mid-fight more powerful than it would be if the fight were lagless, but compared to today's situation it's no worse.

If we were to do such a delay, it'd create a minor nightmare in the details. Are ships stuck in the delay for the duration? Are they in some kind of "limbo" invulnerable state the entire time? What if their eventual jump in time would be after downtime? It gets pretty bonkers.

I totally understand that it feels weird to have differences in time advancement not accounted for in some way, but the oddness of that is less odd than actually accounting for it.

So is the TiDi test on Sisi this week we or do we get more CQ/ Carbon OI/ team BFF stuff first

It can be abused in the same way that the current degradation scheme can be abused, sure.

Dilation, at least in the first implementation, is a node-level construct. Any solar systems being run by the overloaded node will be dilated. This, while not ideal, is no worse than today - when a node becomes overloaded, all systems running on it suffer.

And what happened to this "dynamic node balancing" scheme that was to be added?

What is the density of systems per blade?

Well it was a while back that dynamic node balancing was the ability to "hot" shift systems across nodes.

We call that "non-disruptive live remapping." It's something we absolutely want, but is still a ways away. There is an effort currently to bring disruptive live remapping - the ability to move a system between nodes after disconnecting everyone - up to par. Once that's done, we'll be prioritizing the work of making it non-disruptive against everything else we could be up to.

Time Dilation does help with that effort though - it provides a mechanism which we can use to pause the simulation of a system while it's moved, so we have some progress on that front without even trying

Are "nodes" VMs running on the blades? Is there a software limitation which prevents you from moving VMs off a blade and giving that one node more of the blade's power, allowing it to handle a single overloaded node better?

Could one 'disruptively' move systems off an overloaded node that are currently devoid of players, so the interruption isn't noticed by anyone in-game? Without players in them, would moving about empty systems even help?

Thanks for your answers. :) I'm sure EVE provides some... unique software requirements and limitations to keep it running smoothly, but I know with VMs we can move them between blades with effectively no interruption in service.

Keep up the good work. :D

Well it was a while back that dynamic node balancing was the ability to "hot" shift systems across nodes.

Even if they implemented this, they've already said that the smallest chunk they can break eve down into is a one system chunk, so you'd just end up with one system on a node. This is already what happens when they reinforce a node.

What TiDi does is fix what happens in that system after that node which is only running one solar system gets overloaded.

Please make an effort to understand a system before you begin to criticize it.

I just find it hilarious that CCP is fixing lag by giving lag a special name. Hey guys we are removing lag by making more lag, because that makes sense.

I'll reserve my full judgement of this feature when i see it in action but as it stands right now I see this as a round about way of solving the issue and hope that it will be a temporary feature; That in the future CCP will have worked lag out of the game where large fleet battles can be had without any slowing effect. I just see it as a handy cap for logistics pilots and that is about it.

They are not VMs - they're separate invocations of the server process. We are investigating ways in which we can use modern virtualization to solve the non-disruptive remap problem, but they're just investigations at this point as the problem is not trivial.



That's something we do occasionally and likely will do more once destructive remapping is a more reliable thing. Moving off empty systems doesn't really help anything at that moment, but when someone subsequently jumps into that previously-empty system, I'm sure they're happier having it been moved