I'm playing on this dsl internet. I sometimes get lags, but not too often. Except when I'm fighting a helman. It happens every time. I engage in battle and it locks onto me and I start severely lagging and it killed me really fast and I don't hurt it. It doesn't do this with any other ship. Is this a bug??

I'm currently using a Windows XP Pro laptop 1.5 ghz.

It's not a bug that I've heard of.

This is more likely to be a framerate issue than a lag issue, given that you are playing on an older laptop in sectors that have a lot of things going on in them.

You can check your "lag" by typing /ping though I would advise that you bind it to a key, given the high probability of death you've been experiencing.

You can check framerate by typing /ToggeFrameRate which will give you a running FPS count. Do it again to toggle it off. The Caps are optional.

Try those when you notice a problem and report back. I suspect that we'll be advising you to lower your graphics detail settings.

NO it's not framerate. This laptop gives me a frame-range of 60 fps to 200 fps ALWAYS. It's just whenever I fight a helman up close I lag until it kills me. Doesn't happen with any other ship. Could this be a windows bug? It doesn't do this on my mac.

I have WinXP, and I found a sector with a Queen and a few Hellmans to play with. I bound /ping and toggled the toggleframerate on. While in the sector, I noted that my FPS was around 150 on average. My ping (checked about 2x per second) fluctuated 80-130 without any apparent pattern throughout my time there. There were no ill effects from this and I assume it was normal.

I engaged 3 Helmans (one at a time) and found that all was normal until they got within about 150m and opened fire. I dropped from 150ish FPS to 60ish FPS immediately. It was worse with objects visible behind the Helman, and if I fired back.

I tried approaching from different angles and found that it really seemed to be the effects of the Helman's close proximity, tendency to be near other objects, and especially its rapid fire shots hitting my ship that really drove the FPS rate down. While I didn't have any problem hitting each Hellman, I did note that when I killed it, it disappeared, cargo appeared, and then there was an explosion.

If you are interested, you might consider repeating the /toggleframrate experiment with different effects/graphics settings.

AKA Ecla Estenk...

Imac G5, 10.4.3 , adsl, ping 120 - 140

I spent some time killing queens ( various sectors , Arta C ) last night when the server was busy and engaged maybe 8 or 10 helmans over a period of 5 or so queens.

Just reporting that I experienced no noticable lag so the mac side of things appears to be ok.......

cheers

Thanks davejohn.

Ummm there has been lag period ever since the Server Crash on Xmas *sigh* and Ive never experienced this much lag on this game at all even with trade voys

My ping is generally around 80, so the fluctuations up to 130 could be indicative of lag - though I experienced no ill effects. It's hard to tell because I don't normally check that often. Have you used /ping when you notice this so that you are certain it is lag?

my normal ping is about 33ish max to 40ish....But now recently been like umm 180-200 Im on Cable...10mb connect...Nothing being downloaded or uploaded when I play VO....The lag has been nuts lately..Dont know what is causing it but its pretty annoying now...and alot of sector crashing aswell Sedina D-14 crashed today...havent checked if its been fixed or not

There has been a lot of lag in the sedina, latos and surrouding areas over the last week or so, my ping is usually around 110, in the last week it hasnt been unusual to ping at 300+ :(

Oh, and FM, the alias /fps can be used instead of /toggleframerate (its in the default config now :)

My FPS sometimes drops to 2-3 when a large convoy passes through the sector. I don't think thats gfx related though. I can look at 70 ships flying around or jumping and have 200 FPS, but 5 minutes later 10 ships cause FPS to drop to nearly zero and extreme lag. My impression is that this is a network protocol problem. When bots just fly in a straight line or even jump everything is fine. A problem arises when a large number of bots change course or have to avoid roids or players. I assume the network protocol doesn't allow the updates to come to my client in a timely manner, causing the extrem slowdown/lag. I am on a gigabit ethernet connection (the last hop is 11g). Its really not a physical bandwidth or latency issue. This particular problem has always existed. I remember seeing it almost two years ago during a large group combat. Whether its players or bots. When lot of them move around the network protocol can't keep up (why that results in a FPS drop is another question though).

yeah, I finally got onto a comp with a better gfx card, better ping, and I still get lag from bots jumping in, jumping out, changing course.

It's not framerate issues, cuz the comp I'm playing on resolves lots of ships beautifully.

The server just doesn't seem to like updating the sector

Well what ever went wrong on that lp top, I don't know. But it did it nearly every time(only with a queen in the sector i now notice) and since I'll probably never use that laptop again with VO, I'm good. I'm back on my good ol' iMac G5 now. :)