Ah! EVE! Had completely forgotten about Eve Online! Now you're talking!
Yeah their Server Side problems are pretty intense and now they're hitting the limits of single server instances it's coming to light how much work it's going to be or even if it's possible.
In a video I linked above it's explained by one of the Networking Developers that they are looking to lock into regions (US, EU, Asia etc...) at first so their will be 4-5 Instances, this is for latency purposes and I suspect to help out with scenario's like the one you mentioned.
One of the developers in the forum also explains they're looking into a certain type of instancing so you can only see players to a certain distance and this will be adjustable on the fly. So lets say there is a huge battle with potentially thousands of players, as you fly around in the battle, it'll dynamically load in and out (including server updates to and from your client) players of a certain distance and therefore reduce the load on the server drastically, rather than trying to update 3000 clients of the position of 3000 players 30 times a second, it'll be closer to 100's of player positions per client.
They are also quite thoroughly integrated with Amazon's AWS and they will have the ability to spin-up more servers on the fly if an area gets particularly busy.
That kind of dynamic loading will break the gameplay, especially for those that work in fleets. I just can't see any way they can make SC support more than a few hundred at a time on a single server. Their server load is nothing to scoff at and it is a result of feature creeping.
Sounds like they plan on distributing the load to more than one server. This design pattern (for those versed in software engineering principles) is not new. In the HPC realm, this is called "distributed computing" and it sounds like it is done in various other games, one I remember being mentioned is Battlefield V. However, read the links
@Burty117 posted.
Note that this is also done between clients, too. A particular client, meaning anyone running the game from their own personal computer, is responsible for the actions of the player in the game. What they are intending to do is to apply that pattern, I.e., a particular PC (I.e., server, client), to the universe as a whole. Obviously, they have to since no single computer could possibly run the entire game for everyone.
Did I say this was going to work? No, I did not. That's the nature of software development. You try something and iterate through until you have something that approaches what you really want.
As to this being part of feature creep, I have to say that I disagree. With the promise of multiple planetary/star systems in the game basically from day one, this was something that was going to be needed from day one. As I see it, now that development has progressed as far as it has, they see that their current method is inadequate and they are working to implement something better.
@Burty117 Thanks for all the info.
I was thinking the same thing about Crytek - they saw SC had deep pockets and wanted to siphon off some of those funds. However, it sounds like Crytek was having problems, and may even have wanted to gain some insight into the SC code, and then use those practices in their own code. In other words, gain intellectual property for their own use.
@midian182 We have the fact that the Crytek v Cig lawsuit was filed splashed around the web, and for sure, at the time it was newsworthy, however, why have we not heard about this significant development?
Here's a couple summaries of the current state of the lawsuit:
https://www.space4games.com/en/star...-motion-to-dismiss-partially-granted/id-1389/
The lawsuit is not over yet, but it sounds like CIG scored a slam dunk over perhaps the major one of Crytek's claims because part of the basis that Crytek was claiming that CIG violated was an item specifically allowed in the contract between Crytek and CIG.
I have to say WTF to that. Any entity trying to sue saying they violated a clause in their contract that was specifically allowed by the contract has to be either insane, or extremely desperate, IMO.
And that link in Burty's post to whether or not anyone was due a refund, from day one, is interesting. The short answer, NO.
IMO, this article by Forbes (an entity widely respected in the business world) rests on some very narrow and outdated material. I expected better from Forbes. To me, it seems like they dropped the ball on this one, and the sensationalism and attention it would get them is what they were after.
