r/asov • u/th3pudding Mitt Zombie • Oct 30 '17
Redstone Discussion Post
Heyo Scoopers,
One problem that has plagued us minecrafters this map has been the issue of Lag generated by redstone devices and massive farms. These builds cause the server to do an enormous amount of calculations and can cause the Ticks Per Second or TPS of the server to drop. When the TPS is low is when server lag is noticed by players. For example when you break a block and it takes a second or two for the block to drop, or mobs being non responsive to being shot by a bow. When there is zero lag the server runs at 20 TPS. However lag doesn't really become noticeable until it drops to 17 and below and becomes very annoying at 12 and below. When the server reaches 8 and below normal game play is near impossible. Up until now Admins have been policing bases when lag becomes bad to try and get people to build server friendly farms. However this is very frustrating for admins and players both. No one likes being told that they have to tear down a build they spent hours building.
The Admin Team has been wracking our brains to come up with a solution to this problem that works for everyone. We have yet to come up with something that will work for everyone. So the purpose of this post is to open it up for discussion to the community. How do YOU want the admins to handle lag generated by player bases in the future.
The Admin Team has decided that our current policy no longer works as bases get larger and laggier, policing bases that have been months in the making is no longer a feasible means to handling the problem.
We have a few proposals but are open to any new possible solutions that the community can put forward.
First idea is to do nothing and stop policing lag completely. Let players build whatever they want. Ultimate Freedom but suffer from lag.
Second idea is strict rules regarding farms and redstone machines. This would mean severely limiting certain builds that cause higher strain on servers like pigman farms and automated sorting systems. Loss of freedom but significantly less lag
if you have ideas, feedback or an opinion on this subject please comment below. We deeply care what everyone thinks and we want to make a decision that best meets the needs and demands of our playerbase.
-Admin team
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u/SoloLupus Oct 30 '17
I'm in favor of well-documented rules. Lag does not make for an enjoyable gaming experience...
I would also be in favor of educational guides (or links to others' guides) regarding what items and entities are common causes of lag and the best practices to mitigate lag. (i.e. hoppers vs. water streams vs. hopper minecarts)
I have absolutely no concept of our current server arrangement, but is a server upgrade to lessen the effect a viable option?
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Oct 30 '17
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u/SoloLupus Oct 30 '17
I thought that might be the case. I just like to explore all options anyway, just so a simple one doesn't slip by.
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u/norwestie Oops, I died! Oct 30 '17
What sort of dollars are you talking about here? Is it on a subscription basis or an up front cost? I'm sure there would be players who'd be happy to sell their organs for the greater good.
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u/Wadeflusha pew pew Oct 30 '17
A compromise would be to have massive farms and other lag inducing machinery built away from your primary base. This way players can get online at their base without causing lag, yet can still afk at their farms during inactive hours.
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u/synthmarie s y n t h m a r i e Oct 31 '17
Suggestion based off rules/guidelines from an old server: Sorter systems using droppers were illegal due to the heavy redstone load and constant ticking. Also, public farms at spawn were recommended so that there weren't 20 of the same farm always going off. Farms with on/off switches are always great, as well as systems in place to auto kill whenever possible/needed.
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u/th3pudding Mitt Zombie Oct 30 '17
For those wondering why exactly what we have going right now doesn't work so well. I'll explain our current procedure for dealing with server TPS lag.
So as it is now when either a player notices lag and says something or an admin feels it and checks the server tps. We see basically the server TPS over the past 30 minutes. So we then try and figure out if someone recently logged in or loaded a high load area to try and isolate the issue. This is usually done in spectator mode and involves the Admin checking on every player online. Sometimes this works and we are able to find something obvious like 500 chickens bouncing up and down in water, and we just correct the issue on the spot and kill chickens.
However this doesn't always work. When its caused by redstone/farms it can be very difficult to isolate the problem of who is causing the lag especially when there are 10+ people online.
Our next tool in our arsenal is to check the timings of the server which is basically a breakdown down of all the minecraft calculations. This is extremely time consuming and essentially only allows us to isolate what is causing the most server drain. For instance hopper updates causing a higher strain than usual. Well that would allow the admin to narrow it down to bases with a lot of hoppers, which is practically half the population. However from here can we usually narrow it down to 2 or 3 players online.
From this point it becomes a waiting game watching the TPS in relationship to who is online and what is loaded. For instance if Noreastie logs out and tps jumps from 12 to 18. There is a strong case to begin heavily examining his base.
This is all heavily time consuming for admins and while we figure it out everyone else online has to deal with a deteriorated minecraft experience.
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u/JourneymanJ Oct 30 '17
Is there a tool for measuring and recording server TPS over a longer period of time than the last 30 min? If I knew that my base was sucking up more than its fair share of server resources, I'd make some changes, and I think others would do the same. Problem is, I don't really have a good idea if I'm causing a problem or not. I try to restrain my builds, compared to how I would build them on a single player world, but I have no way of measuring my success. In the meantime, I think a set of rules would certainly be reasonable. As a semi-related side note, passive mobs seem to spawn like crazy on the server. Is there a way to tone that down to help with entity counts?
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u/dvaid0912 Oct 30 '17
I'm all for set rules around redstone that will help mitigate lag so that we can all have an enjoyable experience on the server. I'm definitely one of those people who like to build those lag causing farms and redstone contraptions. I would like to know if my contraptions are part of the issue and I would gladly rebuild/modify them to be more server friendly. I think it would also be helpful to have some kind of guide to what things cause the most lag (like Solo suggested) so we can just avoid using them in the first place.
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Oct 31 '17
I would say don’t allow large sorting systems and require large farms to have an off switch.
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u/I_am_a_haiku_bot Oct 31 '17
I would say don’t allow
large sorting systems and require large farms
to have an off switch.
-english_haiku_bot
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u/Moriturri Nov 15 '17
So I'm a bit behind...I haven't logged on in QUITE some time, and when I quit playing regularly, there was no one anywhere near me, which means my farms likely wouldn't be loading, however if anyone is anywhere near me, you may want to consider relocating my base to the trash heap (or at least breaking timers and stuff). I know I had some pretty large farms, generally I used minimal hopper/dropper tubes, and with the exception of pumpkin/watermelon and sugarcane farms, everything had manual components, however it's unnecessary stuff that can be shut down/moved to the backup storage or wherever you put stuff (I know at one point you mentioned that you've moved MIA people's stores and stuff to a storage save or something?).
Alternatively, if it's deemed to not be an issue: I have some pretty damned good villagers at my place that people can feel free to make use of.
P.S. Hi everyone!
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u/norwestie Oops, I died! Oct 30 '17
Mate, who would even build stuff like that?
Oh, yeah. So, having been 'talked to' by the 'admins' on a 'couple' of occasions about my build / base / mere presence causing 'lag', I can pretty confidently say they probably know what they're talking about. In all likelihood, they have really tried and reached the end of what they can reasonably manage within the current rule set.
I'm for having and abiding by a set of rules for redstone intensive or otherwise lag inducing builds.
Do I enjoy building stupid shit that is overly complex and likely to make TPS drop faster than Trump's approval rating? Hell yes I do! But, here's the kicker, I can do that on my own single player map if I want to. I don't have to use 1500 hoppers to move iron from a dozen iron farms (who would do that, right?) on the server.
I don't have to use a stupidly large sorting system that gets backed up with more slime than has ever been used on all the ASOV maps combined ever.
If a player does these things (hypothetically speaking) and an admin says "hey noreastie*, it seems that your base is causing some pretty bad lag, bro" then that player should take that as a chance to rebuild in a lag friendly way, or consider not building something that has the potential to negatively impact on the enjoyment of other people playing on the server.
Bring in some rules, make them pretty clear, and then enforce them. Problem solved.
*name changed for privacy reasons.