I’ve been playing on a server for 3 weeks now with build anywhere enable and haven’t really had any problems but for the past week the server has been experiencing unusual amounts of lag. Since then the admins have taken to destroying unnecessary buildings and such to reduce the lag which was working. But yesterday someone claimed that allowing build anywhere causes severe server lag…
So if someone can explain to me if this is true or not i would greatly appreciate it.
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Interesting question. Just having the box checked, right?
There’s an answer I would like to know too.
It doesn’t on single player
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Well,
I have no clue about single-player, but all private servers, with less or no building restrictions, are more or less laggy.
The worst-case scenario is if players or mostly the people in charge are building either within big NPC hubs (Sepermeru) or very close by.
In most cases, it’s part of the server rules to stay away from any NPC camp at least at minimal sight distance.
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Not directly, no.
If there’s massive mega structures on every no-build zone, it -MIGHT- contribute to lag. But those structures -MIGHT- contribute to lag if built elsewhere anyway.
Contributors to server lag in order of severity in my experience:
LogoutCharactersRemainInTheWorld=True
This is a big one depending on the size of the community of the server. It won’t affect a little 10 man server. It will affect those 90/90(13) servers heavily.
Number of Players Online
A decent server host can handle around 30 people without any issue. 40-50 will have decently playable lag. 60+ will have a noticeable impact. Going much higher can make combat interesting. Not so decent hosts can cut those numbers by up to half.
Thralls
The more active the more they contribute. Thrall limits in upwards of 30+ get crazy. If you have around 30 or more clans you can easily end up with over a thousand thralls, and if they get activated (someone nearby) and agro, then its adding a ton of load on the server. With the new purge system this is exacerbated by the fact there can be more than one purge. Several instances of 20+ NPCs engaging 20+ pets and thralls gets pretty bad for many. Definitely consider getting those thrall limits down. And simply accepting that the new purge system is something that needs to be handled cleverly or simply done on smaller pop servers.
Excessive storage by everyone
The larger the stack size the better. Having 50 stacks of 1000 stone is worse for a server than 5 stacks of 10,000 stone. Even better would be specialized storage that simply stores a number, rather than stacks. This would be one of the better server saving methods FC could take. But aside from that, the best policy for admins here is to foster an environment where people are not hoarding so much.
Buildings
Yes, buildings are quite low here. Buildings have to be exceptionally large and numerous to have a contributor to lag. To give an example, one of the servers I played on used admin buildings to make dungeons. These dungeons ranged from 30,000 to 70,000 blocks. They were also built off the map to ensure maximum building area for the players, this put them roughly in the same area. There was never any noticeable server impact when these areas were active. You would see client side lag when they first teleport in. But nothing for everyone else.
From my experience on a somewhat busy server (around 20-30 online) with larger builds (roleplaying server), you would need to build a structure around 100,000 to see an ongoing effect. People claimed to have seen effects building quite smaller than that, but I believe that to be a placebo effect.
Players commonly attribute framerate loss to server lag. Large builds do have a significant impact on client side issues on weaker systems. But it takes a significant amount of building spam to actually make a server start to struggle. The exception to this is when buildings stretch across large areas.
One way to describe this is think of the Exiled Lands and Siptah (and all other maps) as having Minecraft style ‘chunks’. When you load into the game the chunk your character is in, loads in. As well as the chunks adjacent. They become active (NPCs begin moving, crafting stations begin crafting again, etc). When you move into a chunk the chunks next to it become active.
When you have a building larger than active chunks, the server handles that differently. I don’t remember if the server actually loads it in too, or does some sort of pre-load thing. In either case, its loading stuff in it normally doesn’t have to.
What about when there’s 40+ people online and they’re all spread out? Does it load pretty much all chunks on the map? It sure does. And its for this reason player counts contribute so highly. But the buildings do something different. You see if you are on a 40+ man server and all chunks are active on the server, but you are on the southern beach. The server doesn’t need to send you information about the Volcano. Only to those who in the Volcano.
When you have a building stretching contiguously from the beach to the volcano… well that method gets muddy and then you start running into some interesting issues. Most servers don’t let players do this, so the impact isn’t that bad.
It gets bad when you have dozens of buildings that are spread out over large areas all across the map. Its for this reason FC doesn’t allow players to build excessive amounts of walls around their territories or do landclaim spam (outside of it being a jerk move to do). Its always best build UP when building big, rather than building OUT. And two tall buildings far apart from one another is better than a large connected building complex.
Database age
I’m bringing this up because this used to be a cause for a ton of lag in the past. But FC has done a pretty decent job at keeping the map file clean and wipes due to database getting clogged up is greatly reduced. I’ve personally been on an admin team where no wipe was needed after 2 years and the only reason there was a ‘wipe’ was switching to another map. The old map was still playable (And even after several years I’ve heard of some of the former admins still using them in singleplayer for testing).
Mods
This is an interesting one. On their own they usually don’t cause lag. Especially those following good modding design practices. They can however exacerbate issues. Particularly in the storage area. With more items comes more stuff for the players to hoard. So while the mod itself causes no issues, what players or admins do with it, might.
Build anywhere setting is only checked when trying to build. If no one has their build hammer out. The setting isn’t being checked. So unless you have a 100 players with their building hammers out in areas that normally don’t allow building, I doubt you’re going to see an appreciable effect. I can’t say I’m 100% sure on this explanation, but its over 95% certain, I just haven’t looked at the logic for that setting (if its viewable). I’ll let those who are more curious than I am take a gander and explain that one further.
-edit
I forgot to mention restarts. You can almost set your watch by this. But at around 96 hours (and you start feeling it after 72) since your last restart. You will see rubber banding and other connection issues. I’ve seen this behavior on a variety of server hosts. Most servers get around this by restarting daily. If you start seeing lag issues and you haven’t restarted in the last 24 hours, usually a restart clears it up. Outside of that, there’s another cause.
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