krazmuze

You want Atlas Server Controller - it does the opening and closing of the servers independent of the client.  If you have enough GB you should be able to keep a few grids open it is configurable for 1-9 grids and he has beta of newer version with multiplayer tracking with unlimited grids.   Of course if you do not have a dedicated machine that means it is running on your gaming computer.   Although it is not documented yet what the single player option is changing, so you will have to make your own fine tuning yourself using ini.

It is not as resource efficient as single player though as it has no vector information where you are headed it by default has your current steam tracked server, its four neighbors and your home server open.  You can manually track yourself though. 

NPC pirate forts are upcoming shortly but not for official at this time.  You will have to defeat them if you want to settle on the island and use their resources.  I suggest single player or coop which is just released as beta, or see if an unofficial wipes so they can add them.

2 hours ago, AntonyVW said:

Ok I understand what is being said but my son was not even able to go out of sight on the same island. My pc is not too slow with an i7 and 32Gb ram (and my internet speed is not to bad at 56Mb), so he should at least have been able to go out of sight on the same island. If even 2 players can not be out of sight on same island then its not going to be a viable option for a small group of friends. So one question I need help with then is what am I looking for to alter the tether and where would I find it?

Tether distance is a different problem than server navigation.  The server needs to get all the things out of the server database and send them to the clients render view, and tether distance makes it more likely that they are all the same things so less hit to the server.  You can increase the tether distance but then popup lag will worsen.

Not as much resources as you think - much of this was already figured out in ARK and it was a mystery why they simply did not enable this to begin with since it shares the codebase.  The SP options and ini is copypasta at its finest.   The only thing they needed to update was the player leash code to deal with the vectoring of which grids to open.

You cannot blame the decline of MMO on SP/MP, it is fact the otherway around!  SP/MP only exist because MMO is in decline.   They realize they have to get their steam numbers up one way or the another.    Also they probably already know from adding it in ARK that SP/MP is what XBOX wants to play  - so the fact they beta these features on PC just shows XBOX is around the corner.

4 hours ago, Winter Thorne said:

Assuming the game is that populated, they would have to add islands or a new server.  It's not a bad problem to have.

A modular map sounds like adding new grids is an easy solution

Already with the megapatch additions there is too much copy paste density.  It increased the GB requirements of each grid - and forced them to bring all the servers down so they could hardware upgrade, and similar density makes unofficials less feasible.

So lets say the add new biomes and want to add them to the sides.   The problem with that is the map is an atlas torus - those that settled on the east or west borders did so because it gave access to east and west.   Those settled in polar tundra had access to north and south polar tundra.      You have destroyed their previous sailing routes to their resources.  Might as well just wipe so that people can pick out new places for new maps.

adding islands means adding GB to each server while adding grids means breaking the existing atlas and wiping it.       But more population justifies it?   That only works if you expect population to increase and not die off as the game meta keeps getting trolled by the devs.....there is no monthly subscription nor monetization (maybe planned) so if the OG starts leaving then they are not recommended the game to friends to join and that starts the death spiral of no new income.

You need to realize that the game is still fundamentally a server architecture.     To get seamless sailing they have to be doing a predictor that figures out what grid you are going to so they can spin up that server while the other server is open.     So if they are allowing 4 unleashed that would be 8 servers.   But you also want to keep a home server open so you can respawn so now you are up to 12 servers open.     Double to 8 unleashed you now have to keep 24 servers open.   Most unofficial dedicated servers are not even that big!

Atlas Server Controller did this very thing, and the biggest user support problem they had players do not understand how much GB each server grid consumes.   For myself with 32GB running the client and 6 grids was occasional out of mem crashes, I had to keep it to 2-3 and do manual rather than followed open (it could not do prediction so just opened all neighbors)

The devs should have access to the steam data that shows them the average system their player is using so that they can set the number of grids they can safely keep open and design their leash limits accordingly.    It would be better if they read their clients system and optimize these leash limits - but even that is not good enough - what if they have too many Chrome chewing up the GB open?   But the practical reality is even a small squad would take up too many GB if they did not stay leashed onto the same grid.

Why I think you just invented flag based land claims LOL

I have had a guy wipe my base on unofficial PVE (mob dragging killed my sleepers then flag takeover against our rules).  He tried to claim to GM that I was lagging his FPS with my 'spam' - with one hut, 4 garden plots, and a sloop dock and shipyard starter base.  Of course the GM ruled against him and made him leave a chest of mats and compensation but it took hours of stress to deal with and that does not count waiting for everyone to be online.  If unofficial had mechanics that made sure we could make flag contest impossible, and leash mobs no GM would have been needed as it would not have happened (and I would not have left the server as rebuilding even with mats provided is not fun).   

Now imagine the mess it would have been if he could have walked up to my hut and reported it as spam and the GMs had instructions to delete all reported spam.

Just for our small population I feel sorry for the GMs for all the BS they have to deal with, I cannot imagine if the game actually had a 4x40k load what sort of staff would be needed

They must certainly have said it in their streams when people asked for more GMs to solve all the trolls, they clearly stated they are in favor of mechanics that reduce their reliance on GMs.  It is most certainly a design goal - as witnessed in their most recent attempts at mechanics for eliminating spam.  In fact they are so eager to do things that way they do not think the mechanical changes thru (witness the reversion of the owner wipe function for PVE)

You are mistaken efficient reporting for efficient removal.  No good GM is ever going to remove something just because you flagged it as spam.    Maybe you are the troll and the other guy had to put down some defensive spam to prevent you from taking over his base.   A good GM needs to investigate and decide - and that takes time that has nothing to do with if the actuall pillars are individually flagged. 

It will not work because the ARK and ATLAS devs have always had the goal of a game that does not require a GM to manage it.   They want mechanics to solve problems, not GMs.  So adding a mechanic that calls the GMs is not something they are going to do.   All you are doing is making the reporting structure to the GMs more efficient for the player, it does nothing to make the GMs job more efficient.  They still need to investigate both sides of the conflict, which takes time. In fact it will be so easy to report spam that they would need more GMs to handle all the spam spam reports.

they said mid week for the beta branch with it

Now that I know the game mechanic is balanced to meat/fish when hungry and only use veggies and fruit when full I have minimized my overeating damage while still balancing vitamins -  there is no need to hasten food drain to allow you to eat more vitamins.

Now the problem is still that you eat unrealistically much -  6 meat 6 fish and 30 veggie and 30 fruit if fully drained.  To balance that I am trying stamina drain slowed down by half, as I found that modest activity this results in the more realistic daily allowance (RDA) of 1 meat and 1 fish to get full then overeat 5 veggie and 5 fruit.    This also increases your food reserves so that you can go many days before starving to death (accurate per IRL where hunger strikes are a thing - it is lack of water that kills you).

I think it is realistic that if energy is expended that you will have to increase your daily allowance.   With this setting I scythed continuously for an in-game hour before getting tired, if you did maintain that rate for a solid work day then you would be eating a weeks worth of meals in a day, will need to see if overeating vitamins is then a problem - but I think that is unrealistic for someone to work so hard when they could just get a bear.

Now the problem gets worse that vitamins drain too fast as less stamina drain means you eat less vitamins, , so my next approach is to balance their decay rate so that eating the RDA keeps vitamins at 50%.

Water they at least got right - 1-2 waterskins a day depending on heat waves is realistic IRL.

Its like singleplayer mode, but your coop friends can join your game.  Most likely they will be leashed onto one grid or two.  No need to run a server just need to have your game running.

On 7/13/2019 at 2:56 PM, Slash78 said:

 

 

It's not that they didn't have a roadmap, it's the concept was faulty from the beginning.  They didn't analyst Ark's success.  Which is heavily reliant on single player and unofficial servers.  And in creating the Atlas world map as they have, it means you won't get the same game play experience as you do on the official servers.  With Ark, every map is the same, official or unofficial.  You can have the same, or even an enhanced experience.  I've spent quite a few hours on unofficial Atlas servers and they are missing way too much.  Now they are stuck with no clear way forward because they don't even understand the nature of the problem.

Singleplayer gives you the full official map experience, amazed they pulled that off as it was more than just the low effort option screen.     

Upcoming non-dedicated coop is going to drop the numbers on official even more because the majority of people just want to play with a few close friends.  They just tolerate joining the megaclans on official PVE/PVP because it is the only guarantee against wiping.   Those players who already left are currently on unofficial, but that means admins and mods and rules and maps and people that you  may not like.   

Coop of course lacks any PVP interaction as it will require leashing - but you can at least play against the island conquest game on the full map against the AI with the upcoming pirates claiming islands.

These changes are clearly being done because they are planning SP/coop the main way of play on XBOX - for the reasons you state of ATLAS official/unofficial servers cannot be as good as ARK was.   I think they are finally realizing that as they can see their server numbers have gone way down and unofficial servers cannot provide the real atlas experience.

7 hours ago, Kummba said:

This is an old commit of mine, but your picture is missleading, therefore (https://atlas.gamepedia.com/FoodMost cultivated veggies are 5/5, maize and wheat not. Reduce stamina by shouting.

 

But the point of eating meat until full then veggies is still valid !  You can eat more meat which brings up your vitamins more if you are not eating veggies when hungry.  So there is less need to shout.

farmed veggies still have significantly less food contribution to overeating (0.2F instead of 5F if hungry) unlike meat/fish which does not lessen food contribution when overeating.    In other words that is a 25x increase in the ratio of vitamins to food.

So the farmed veggies just mean you need to eat less than the wild ones, but both types of veggies work for vitamin balancing when full.

Yes you still need to drain stamina when sailing to keep up your vitamins because then there is not enough food drain.  But the point I am making is that the fruit and veggies are basically no to little cost to food if you just pay attention to the order you eat them.

11 hours ago, Archsenex said:

I have never died to a heatwave on official.  While you take damage, even the worst heatwaves aren't enough to kill you, alone.

While not true for you it is a common experience, the problem is the game will reach 144F in starting tropical freeports which will kill you in the ocean in cloth in 10-15 IRL minutes.  This exceeds the hottest recorded temperatures on Earth in the worst deserts. 

This is just bugged because the formulas for calculating the temperature are so convoluted with all the variable interaction that the devs themselves have no idea how to realistically bound them.  I saw Jat acknowledge the problem months ago - and nothing since.

Normally heat waves are not enough to even damage you, they are really just intended to make you thirsty.

This is using the official map -  offline, online and singleplayer.  

After doing some research I found that food and vitamins ARE balanced to each other - it is possible at default rates!

According to the wiki most fruits and veggies do not give food if you are already full, they just give vitamins.   This does not even make any realistic sense, this exists purely as a hidden minigame mechanic.  

So simply eat meat and fish until you are full - this should realistically get  them balanced to their 50% EQ because their food to vitamin ratio matches the default drains.   Then overeat fruit and veggies until their respect vitamins are balanced.

So no need to increase your food depletion rate ini to allow you to eat enough to balance vitamins, just start eating fruit and veggies when you are full because only meat and fish can cause you to overeat.   

You should not eat fruit and veggies if you are hungry because the give as much vitamins as they do food - despite the fact that the goal for vitamins is 50% while food goal is 100%.   

It would be incredibly easy for devs to fix this so that one could eat normal meals  - just make fruits and veggies give half the vitamin amount.   This could be modded in the ini to make A & C vitamin drain 2x faster to match the fruit and veggie vitamin restoration.

8F (8F) 5V - Cooked Meat / Fish (so one piece restores 8 Food, 8 Food when FL above 100 and 5 Vitamin Units)

1F (0F) 1V - Vegetables, Cooking Herbs, Medicinal Herb, Fruits with some outliners

I had tried 2.0x but gathering fiber by hand was starving me if I did not snack after each burst because it uses a lot of stamina.

I will try hunger at 1.5x to better balance with vitamins and stop the overeating.   It is rather annoying that I have to eat an unrealistic amount per game day - as long as stamina is managed you only need to top off once a game day which is less than an hour - it is not the frequency that is bothersome - it is the amount..   I suppose one could pretend the increased amount of steaks and filet are just bites despite their art, but it is hard to pretend a chicken was just a few bites. 

I really wish someone  would attempt a mod to actually balance the system to make it realistically fair,  to show the devs there is a proper way to do it without ditching the system.   

1) make the time constant for vitamins game weeks like real life with the purpose to penalize those who do not eat balanced diets (a diet is not a single meal, it is many many meals) so as to reward those who engage with the farming, cooking and hunting game systems.     This can be done simply be slowing the vitamin tick rate.

2) Ditch the death refresh to eliminate the easier system bypass

3) Make game day food intake realistically balanced total 1:1:5:5 meat:fish:veggie:fruits with high stamina drain (scything/climbing/combat) at most doubling that, and low stamina drain (standing AFK) at most half that.   That should have no impact on vitamins if it is balanced - if you eat too much or not enough you should suffer stomach issues.  I think this can be done simply by increasing the amount of food in a serving and reducing the food requirements to refill stamina.

I am going to try SP player stats food 2.5x as a starting point, but I am not sure if that also increases the vitamin contribution or just the hunger.

The problem with the vitamin system is that it is not balanced along with food.    A daily intake of 1 meat, 1 fish, 5 veggie, 5 fruits is actually a fairly healthy recommended diet for an active person IRL.   At worst you might need to double that with a hard days work.   The fact that it is also the ratios needed to keep your vitamins in balance shows the devs did do their research.

However cramming 5 meat and 5 fish and 25 veggie and 25 fruits and investing in overeating and vitamin skills just to survive every day is unrealistic.   Way too much food loss to refill stamina with way too fast vitamin drain.    The food system needs to be balanced so that one or two of these meals is enough to keep you full and also keeps your vitamins balanced.    I do not have a problem with a minigame for survival - but these systems should not impact your day to day experience more than they would IRL.   Survival should be about getting caught unprepared.

The vitamin rate should be much much slower longer time average - vitamins do not respond to individual meals they are a result of longer term diets.   Eat only meat for weeks and you will get the scurvy.   Eat only veggies for weeks and you will lack stamina.   Eat only fruits you will get the runs.   The vitamin loss itself should never kill you, although not being healthy could put you in a poor situation that results in your death.

Balance it to be realistic food consumption and vitamin drain, combined with removal of the vitamin refresh upon death (because the main reason people do no use the existing system is death offers the same reward for significantly less work)

Anyone know what single player settings to try so that you can get by with a daily diet of a meat steak and fish filet with a fruit and veggie salad that follows the 1:1:5:5 total amount?    I tried and died of vitamins in a single play session - why unrealistically gorge when death was easier?

I thought the mode was going to be only for the single grid ISO map, so amazed when they said it works on all maps.   

Since you do not have 15x15 servers running  how did they solve the problem of treasure map bottles being empty when the target server is not up?   This is an issue Atlas Server Controller had in implementing server swapping.  You can traverse the map and only load those servers around you to make running servers on your gaming PC feasible if you have 64GB of mem.   With 32GB you had to manually load your source and destination grid and home grid because loading all  neighbors and home was too much.  That could not be automated using steam location services outside the game as it required knowing  the players direction, but this update could be tracking that.  Problem is with only 3/225 maps up - treasure map hunting was boring local common quality.

I think the mode will be successful - it allows people to experience the game without any server issues.   Obviously being able to chose your own mods and settings and not have to live with others poor choices is great.  The reality is MMOs are so full of people doing their own thing without regards to other people - they have no desire to either compete or cooperate - that they might as well be playing solo.   Most people have no desire to play with people only willing to play with themselves.     

On 5/30/2019 at 2:22 AM, znasser said:

Im not playing the PTR so maybe they are copypasted. But usually what looks like the same island on the map, its not. Even sometimes what in the map appears to be shallow waters is land in reality. So looking like the same island in the map, doesn't mean it's the same island in reality. 

Except they said they are adding FIVE unique islands, we know one is for polar ice cave which leaves FOUR unique islands for equatorial.    So it is the same handful islands copy pasted, if they had made two dozen variants of the same footprint - they would have said so .     The tundra update was way more  more variations because it was an entirely new region, whereas this is just filling in some gaps - and clearly they did not consider them important enough for a 'fair' start wipe.

The pics was on their twitter, you have to make sure you got the latest one which has them only in equator and polar the prior version had them mistakenly in other biomes.

The server logon map was always wrong.   It never showed that the central desert had expanded into central tundra.   It has always been that way since last DEC.

A large island changed origin and needs wiped and repositioned.  check the grid editor bug reports for details.

The western tundra powerstone island was stripped bare and needs wiped and replaced with the eastern tundra version.

You will still have the old claim flag system - it defaults to empires so only the timer changed.  With admins and rules the old system worked very well. 

Quests are revised and new. 

add New trenches.   

add New eastern tundra. 

replace all the biome templates 

reposition your npc ship paths.

lock all your old islands, and hope the island editor does not move them anyways causing them to wipe.  We ended up pasting new stuff manually using text editor.

Freeport spawns are screwed up if you had non freeport islands mixed in, there is a workaround.

The editor has issues making duplicated ids that need hand worked around

Old characters will be hobbits and need wiped and releveled if that annoys the player.

We have spent a month working on it with the goal not to wipe.  Lots of testing.

You best bet is to join the Atlas Server Owners Support discord (unofficial).   There are still people in there trying to get their servers working.

2 hours ago, Captain Stabbin said:

at least give us a 1 grid single player to be able to play around with the game some.  Consider it a “tutorial” phase but don’t limit the level to 8.

That is the intent of the modder ISO map coming next month....although it is not tutorial is stated intent is to experience the full game.  Although I am not sure how that can be when it is only a revamped equatorial biome maybe the mod condenses the mechanics such as requiring biome variant materials for blueprints.  You would need multiple grids to experience the powerstone islands and trenches as written, but that could also be condensed since you only need to grab the powerstone and that can go anywhere.

read the latest captains log and watch the stream the specific question of is this a realistic pirate game was addressed.   The short answer is no, just like Ark was never a realistic survival game.  It is Atlantean and Mythic Fantasy which is what makes it different than Ark Alien Tek.     

It is the belief of the devs that these elements (tames and lore) will drive piracy.

As for as ship weight goes they are adding cargo pods which will allow you to pack more into your ship, but to attract pirates they are not in your cargo hold, they are hanging in your dinghy slot ready to be converted into flotsam.