Messages

91

General Chat / ban request list

« on: May 18, 2013, 07:51:33 am »

Dear admins, I'd like you to ban the folowing people from n-ice because they negatively effect my game experience:

• Ban Bolsiq for always beïng online. Many people hate him (especially me). He's unable to change his playstile, always being the tryhard going for the best possible strategy and trying to slow me down by "stealing" every recourse I try to transport.
  
  
• Ban Gopher and Blender for cheating even harder. They are always somehow working together so that no other player has any chance to win calling it "teamwork" or something. Well they do always screw up at the start to make you think you have a chance, but don't be fooled. It's all a trick to make your loss truly feel worse.
  
  
• Ban Kris Indonesia for just beïng really bad at the game and not wanting to learn anything. I mean, just look at his best score on server 7 for example. How bad can someone be at a game? Also he's never trying to be challanged at his game, he just sits there building his own tiny networks that usually block entirely.
  
  
• Ban admin Geert for never having any patience when he's called. Someone's blocked just 1 piece of a town? => ban. Someone's called him "not really nice" => ban for 2.5 months. Someone just asks him something => company reset, cause you don't deserve an explanation anyway.
  
  
• Ban Katar for having his own prefered playstile. When I tried to teach people about how PBS was causing a heavy load on his servers, he just had to tell me to shut up. He never even took the time to show me just how huge the load on the servers actually was. I bet he's just causing the server lag himself and blames the players for it. Especially those with a super fast internet connection hogging all the recourses.
  
  
• Ban Geo for being a girl. Girls should never be allowed to play games. They shouldn't even be alowed to leave the kitchen. Now go make me a sandwich.
  
  
• And finally ban imus for never trying to help anyone. He never points out to people why those large planes crash, always calls an admin if someone does something wrong without just asking the player to solve it first. Never tells people why some of their trains don't make money (like a missing piece of track, reversed light). And he's always, and I mean ALWAYS swearing.
  
  

edit:

• Give andreas some cookies cause he's lonely for not making the ban list. And then ban him as well for spamming the forum with useless stuff and insisting on trying to change the rules for his own good just cause he can't keep up with the competition.
  

ps: there is an obvious reason why I did NOT post this in the ban/unban request page.

92

Suggestions / Re: [Poll] Industry competition

« on: May 15, 2013, 10:59:26 pm »

I'd keep all industries fair game for everyone. With that I mean, you can steal any recourse as long as it is for your own good and as a bonus slowing down your opponent. If it's obvious that you're only taking goods/food to the nearest city using buses that barely make any profit (read sabotage) I'm entirely against it.

So I guess that means keep it as it is now

@Bluefox: And what if I just create a short truck line with 2 trucks"delivering" to the industry, then it's still fair game? The rule's only going to get more confusing.

93

Server 2 Temperate Mini-CityBuilder (3000 population,2005-2030) / Re: Stuck with appaling rating in my own town!

« on: May 14, 2013, 12:33:23 am »

Now that was one very very very useful link when playing CB games =D Now the only thing left to do is figure out how to make towns follow the desired layout without first remodeling the town yourself. And here I was thinking that the town growth depended on how much you could transport there... can't believe I missed that page ^.^ probably added after I quit playing on coop servers.

94

Tech talk / Re: Signals

« on: May 14, 2013, 12:10:41 am »

Epic =D

But I kinda expected n-ice to have that as well. What I was trying to say is that openttdcoop has everything in place to do the same things as n-ice. The only thing I didn't take into account was the difference in network connection and abilities of the server itself. So as I corrected, I should have compared 2 games the openttdcoop server, 1 with lots of PBS, other without. The difference there is huge for players with a bad connection when there are over 1000 trains in play. But only then ... so on most of the n-ice servers it really doesn't matter that much probably.

Bonus: Kadar pointed out today that the load on the server is currently quit low, so the lag is probably caused by something completely unrelated to this.

95

Tech talk / Re: Signals

« on: May 13, 2013, 11:49:26 am »

Ah thanks for the info Kadar =) so that means I can spam PBS as well? As it doesn't really matter in that case  ...

96

Tech talk / Re: Signals

« on: May 12, 2013, 10:52:41 pm »

Sorry that I gave a bad example, I fully agree with what you say =) Except for the plugins running.
#openttdcoop also has an admin function, a full logging of EVERYTHING that happens (even which players raises/lowers which piece of land) and an IRC connection monitored by a bot similar to n-ice. Only the goal system is not used there. So there might still be some small scripts different but I don't think that really changes much.

This still does not mean that PBS is the only reason for the lag, so I stand corrected. Then again, it is probably one of the only things we are capable of changing at this moment to reduce the load. Last time in a game someone (not gonna name him here) said he couldn't be bother placing normal signals as it would lose him time to switch between the normal and PBS. Does it really hurt that much to ctrl+click those 2 to 8 signals that need to be pbs?

I have a feeling (can't prove it) that over use of PBS is similar to using ships. Causing a lot more load than wanted, so should be limited if possible without really affecting overall gameplay.

Another minor thing I noticed is how people often place signals every tile on their big lines. I don't see how this is useful. But this is probably getting off-topic now.

97

Server 2 Temperate Mini-CityBuilder (3000 population,2005-2030) / Re: Stuck with appaling rating in my own town!

« on: May 12, 2013, 10:32:12 pm »

Those campains have no influence in the rating (afaik). The best way to get the rating back up is to first blow up all the trees around the town. The rating can't get lower then that so blowing up trees first has no more effect.  Planting trees after that has a possitive effect so your rating will go up again.
This trick is way cheaper than trying to bribe.

98

General / Re: Achievements

« on: May 12, 2013, 03:39:36 pm »

I agree that some achievements should remain hidden to prevent people from spamming just for the sake of getting that achievement (like having a certain number of something, blowing stuff up, etc...). But if you get an achievement and don't even know how you did it or what it means, it loses it's entire purpose. (for example: how did I get "Double Power"?)

Right now I don't see how these achievements would motivate me to play a certain way. It would be nice if there were also certain achievements where you know what to do, but that are just hard to reach. For example a perf of 900, winning a game on a certain server, having a train (TL < some length) with a high profit etc... So you know what you should try to do if you're interested in the achievement.

99

Introduction / Hi

« on: May 12, 2013, 01:13:08 pm »

The (nick)name 's Imus and I joined a few days ago.
I can usually be found playing on #7 where I'm trying to get the all time record (now on shared second place with 24 points).

I started playing TTD a long time ago when it was still running on DOS. Some time ago I picked up OpenTTD and played mostly solo or on openttdcoop. Although I agree with most of their building rules, I prefer to play solo against other players, not playing as one team trying to cover the entire map.

I liked the playstyle up till now and hope to keep it like that.
Only thing that is bothering me is people not knowing how to use PBS signals correctly (if those are reading this, you know who I'm talking about :p) But no fear, I'll educate you guys eventually

100

Complaints / Re: download map

« on: May 12, 2013, 10:55:41 am »

There is a timeout if it takes too long. This is to prevent a really slow player to cause lag for all the other players and is used everywhere in OpenTTD, not only on n-ice.

How long it takes depends both on your connection speed and the server. if the server is really heavily loaded (lots of trains, over-use of PBS, etc..) lots of people will have problems connecting, even with a fast connection. It helps if the game is paused every time a player gets connected but this disrupts the gameplay for everyone already playing.

So there's probably little they can do about that besides trying to get the server load down (also hard thing to do, they already limit boats for this reason). Only thing I can think of that isn't happening now is educate people to use PBS correctly :p.

101

Complaints / Re: Sabotaging on CB server (its getting really common and annoying)

« on: May 12, 2013, 10:44:43 am »

Taking the food (in this case) to your own city would be fine as it is for your own good. But as said before, there's no clear line between stealing for competition and down right sabotaging.

I only have experience playing on #7. There it's obvious that if you try to "steal" pax from someone else's city, you also limit the profit of those trains and trucks you use to do so. And since you only got 10 trains 20 trucks it really hurts yourself unless if it's still a decent connection.

So on city builder games:

• if you can use the recourse (food, goods,...) to help your own city grow and thus helps you in getting your goal. By all means, try taking it from your opponents as it is a win-win for you.
• If you just take the recourse to make a profit from it, it's vague, I'd say it is fine if a neutral player (someone not involved in either company) can say that it looks like it will make a decent profit.
• If it means slowing down the other player just enough so YOU can WIN yourself, I'd say it is allowed but should be avoided in most cases as it will most likely upset the other player (unless if you are having fun in chat and are competing in such a way so both parties like this kind of competition)

Note, in that last case you should both be competing for first place with not too much difference. for example both around 90% or both around 50% (with other players 40% or less).

If the other player really is faster/better, try figuring out what he did different. And learn from it. You can even ask them for some tips. In my experience everyone that isn't speed-building at that moment wouldn't mind giving you a pointer or two on how to improve your game.

These servers are here to have a fun competition between players. In my opinion it's way more fun to play against players who are equally good. So if I'm not the best, I try to learn from the better players. If I am the best, I try to educate other players so I get my fair competition going. Win-win for everyone

102

Tech talk / Re: Signals

« on: May 12, 2013, 09:53:15 am »

I don't think the pathfinding itself is the problem. If you use presignals instead, they will also trigger pathfinding if the chosen path has a red light.
The biggest difference is that all PBS (path based signals) will reserve the track up to the next light and later need to free this. This is fine in front of stations or splits where it's actually useful.

The problem is that most people also use them on their straight tracks without splits/joins. This means that the signal not only checks if there is a train on the block in front of it (so on those 1 to 5 pieces of track between lights) but also checks if these are reserved (so double the work already). Then if a train runs over these tracks in needs to reserve those tiles + free them afterwards (rough estimate, triple the work?).

Depending on the implementation, these extra checks are mediocre to very CPU intensive. (where normal signals are very light on CPU)

My experience:
playing on openttdcoop server with 2000 trains running and 10 or more people connected to that server. No lag.
Playing on #7 here with 3 players. 20 trains on full PBS tracks causing constant reconnect taking a few seconds.

So TL;DR:
PBS is really CPU heavy and should only be used in front of stations or other shared pieces of track (although pre-signals are still preferred if you know how to use them).

PS: In some rare cases I have even seen trains stop before an empty track just because the PBS couldn't reserve the track in time.