pbem hosting hell!

Mordante · #1 June 14th, 2001, 02:55 AM

Hmmmm, epic pbem game conclusion, large fleet battles, thousands of fighters ...

Just how long could it take the hosting program to produce a set of turn files from a complex endgame battle across many systems with thousands of involved ships?

I ask because I have just returned from setting SEIV to do the hosting (taking 2 hours to watch a DVD) and still returning to find the progress bar on 72%!

The program appeared to be working still - the mouse moved, the hd light kept flickering but the progress bar did not appear to have moved from where I left it.

Could this take days?

Personally, I suspect the fighter defence stack bug which could create multiple redundant pointless combats with fighter Groups unable to hit each other.

Any hints on how to speed up hosting?

Any word on the patch (to resolve the fighter issues)?

Ah well, leaving my laptop to labour on overnight to hope the hosting will be done in the morning....

Gimboid · #2 June 14th, 2001, 03:06 AM

Perhaps u should try Play-by-Web?

it makes the turn processing so much easier, particularly with a larger number of players spread out over many timezones.

At the moment it only works with Version 1.30, so that doesnt help u. But later Versions should work with the system, and the fighter problem should be resolved by then.
http://seiv.pbw.cc

Aussie Gamer · #3 June 14th, 2001, 04:44 AM

We did one final battle, we had decided that one player had won already. We got 5 fleets of different empires together and let them fight it out.
There was 50+ in three empires.

It took along time to do the roll over, not as long as you though.

The bad news is that I could not watch the reply as it would say that it had an addressing problem.

Jubala · #4 June 14th, 2001, 09:20 AM

The replay aint worth much anyway since you don't see damage taken by the ships. It would also be much better if you could step from ship to ship in every turn and see exactly what it does and not as it now with ship after ship going at it with no control by you until the turn ends. And a better combat report in the log wouldn't hurt either. A table with ships killed, captured and damaged sortable by size and design would be good.

Mordante · #5 June 14th, 2001, 12:10 PM

.... well, the host program is still running ... 8 hours and counting - the computer still responds, the mouse moves, the hard-drive whirrs, but the message still shows 72% complete!

geoschmo · #6 June 15th, 2001, 01:30 AM

I seriously douubt that it is going to finish, or that it's actually doing anything at this point. 1.35 seems to be better than 1.30 at avoiding the RCE's and app errors, but I have seen a couple games that simply never process. This sounds to me like what you are describing.

If you check the task list it will probably tell you Se4 is not responding.

Geo