Pitboss 18 IT and Tech Issues Thread

[Azza]

It's definitely not fair for players to miss a turn for a technical reason. And given war turn splits that means people may not be able to play in a suitable period of time without a traffic jam like we had at the end of last turn. I'd hesitate to extend the timer because that encourages people to delay playing. Maybe we hold extending the timer as the reserve action if this becomes an ongoing trends? I do like having a turn to play every day though and would rather not give that up until absolutely necessary.

We still need to extend the timer so that it's not rolling before 24 hours though. I'm pretty sure the turn would've rolled at about 22 hours last turn.

[Lord Parkin]

Sorry folks - Furungy played just outside my available hours, so I couldn't play for zanth until now. I guess we were going to have to push back the turn flip anyway.

Just finished zanth's turn (in 6 seconds according to the game clock, heh) and left the game to roll, since xenu stated he was definitely done playing.

I think there's enough evidence that the timer is currently at least an hour short on average, so I would support changing it to 20 hours (up from 19 hours).

[pindicator]

If everybody is suddenly bouncing off everybody then it sounds like we have to extend the timer.

I've bounced off everybody for the last two turns and I never bounced off people before (except like 1 or 2 of you).

[novice]

I seem to be consistently bouncing too.

It looks like Caledorn has extended the turn timer to 21 hours, that's what the timer showed when I logged in just after the turn roll.

[GermanJoey]

We still need to extend the timer so that it's not rolling before 24 hours though. I'm pretty sure the turn would've rolled at about 22 hours last turn.

I think there's enough evidence that the timer is currently at least an hour short on average

This isn't actually true; this is what the actual turn length has been for the last 20 turns, going from the logs:

The red line is at the 24h mark.



What we do about the bouncing issue is another question altogether, though.

[Azza]

We still need to extend the timer so that it's not rolling before 24 hours though. I'm pretty sure the turn would've rolled at about 22 hours last turn.

I think there's enough evidence that the timer is currently at least an hour short on average

This isn't actually true; this is what the actual turn length has been for the last 20 turns, going from the logs:

The red line is at the 24h mark.



What we do about the bouncing issue is another question altogether, though.

That's not when the turn was due to roll though. I know I played the previous turn about 23 hours after the turn rolled, with the timer at 9 minutes after plenty of pausing.

[GermanJoey]

The turn is set to roll before 24 full hours due to the need to pause for somebody every single turn. Ideally the turn takes exactly 24h and rolls at the exact same time every single day; notice that whenever it goes off pace (e.g. turns 100 and 108) then we end up missing a full day shortly afterwards.

[Caledorn]

Caledorn, is there a chance one of the updates changed the game server's firewall config? If you're having a different (worse) experience simply connecting via your LAN connection to the pitboss instance that's definitely an indication of some kind of problem. Do you play on the same machine that hosts the game or from a separate device? Is the pitboss server a VM or running on a physical host?

I tried uninstalling all the updates now. No change afaik.

I have no difference on the local connection, except that I bounce (which is quite natural considering I am not playing from the host server, but another computer inside the NATted network). That answers your second question too.

The Pitboss server is also the PDC of my home network (how's that for MS Recommended Best Practices, eh? :D ) . I am not running on a VM as that caused all kinds of troubles with the timer being completely wonky whenever the host OS decided to put the VM to sleep, literally stopping the Pitboss timer dead in it's tracks.

[Caledorn]

It's definitely not fair for players to miss a turn for a technical reason. And given war turn splits that means people may not be able to play in a suitable period of time without a traffic jam like we had at the end of last turn. I'd hesitate to extend the timer because that encourages people to delay playing. Maybe we hold extending the timer as the reserve action if this becomes an ongoing trends? I do like having a turn to play every day though and would rather not give that up until absolutely necessary.

We still need to extend the timer so that it's not rolling before 24 hours though. I'm pretty sure the turn would've rolled at about 22 hours last turn.

I extended it by two hours before the turn rolled. It's probably a bit more than 24h in practice now, especially with all the bouncing, but better like that.

[Cheater Hater]

The turn is set to roll before 24 full hours due to the need to pause for somebody every single turn. Ideally the turn takes exactly 24h and rolls at the exact same time every single day; notice that whenever it goes off pace (e.g. turns 100 and 108) then we end up missing a full day shortly afterwards.

Not quite--it's set that way because the game automatically pauses whenever someone joins the game. This adjustment generally happens in all the games, but it's more noticeable here because of the sheer number of players.

I just had a weird occurrence--I got stuck on "Connecting to host" while the tracker said no one was in the game. I waited a bit, and it turns out dtay is now in the game--is getting stuck on "Connecting to host" the default behavior while someone else is connecting, or is that new since the problems have started?

(and no, no one needs to hurry for me--I've already played and just want to change a small thing--I just thought that any new information could possibly help with troubleshooting the problem )

Edit: It appears the Caledorn just rebooted the server--ignore my problems