Forums » Suggestions

Reconnect Option

Nov 26, 2004 bsp link
I've likely lost ~35 ships due to disconnections, or the fact that users have to wait 10 seconds before being able to reconnect (logoff and on). It would be extremely helpful if there were a "reconnect" button in the escape menu.
Nov 26, 2004 Forum Moderator link
How would it work in play?
Nov 27, 2004 henrie link
when you see you're disconnected (eaasy to see with enemy and damage comportement you may press esc and it the reconnected key in order to reconnect faster
Nov 27, 2004 ananzi link
It (or something like it) is a good idea. My brother was on World of Warcraft last night with some buddies doing a 4-hour long quest. His computer hiccuped, (bug in WoW code) and they lost all their work.

If the lag hiccups in vendetta cause similar losses it will seriously limit the 'riskiness' and length of missions that people can go on.

Can you imagine if you had a 5 million credit capital ship, payed for by a group, and then you organized 10 escort ships from other players, and spent an hour warping to some system, and then lost it all in 5 seconds because of lag? We all know how important a split second decision can be in this game. And then the 10 escort ship players just sit there going 'huh why did the capital ship just get blown up' and since they have no place to dock, rearm, and repair, they all get killed too. Talk about pissed gamers.

When a player is injured in sports, there is a 'timeout'. I dont know what they do on online games but there should be some solution other than 'let their ship drift off without a pilot while they get destroyed'.

Now I know some cheaters will exploit this. I remember playing Warbirds (another twitch MMORPG) where lag was a big problem. Its been years since I played but I believe the way it worked was like this: If the client and server lose connection, the server waits about 30 seconds for the client to regain connection. During that time, all other clients see your plane flying in a straight line, invulnerable to death. Now, some people would, in the heat of battle, jiggle their modem cables in order to escape death. But I think that is just the price of playing a game, knowing that some will cheat. And in the end, the player with the most skill will come out ahead over the course of many missions, regardless of a few cheaters. At least we have referees, in the devs and their cheat-detection code, that can mitigate this problem.

What do you think?
Nov 27, 2004 AlienB link
Very well thought out. I like.
Nov 27, 2004 a1k0n link
But something is obviously wrong. If you can just reconnect, why doesn't your existing connection work? All it's doing is changing the port on which it sends UDP packets. Pressing 'reconnect' won't fix any underlying problem, and you'll still have to wait for the timeout.

So there's either a bug in the VO network code, or a firewall problem somewhere. I know there is a bug in the VO network code, by the way, and I'm still tracking it down. It seemed to me to be a pretty rare occurrence though. I still haven't been able to actually duplicate it myself but I see it tripping a few times a day on the server console, where I added some checks for this last version.

Anyway, if that's what's wrong, I'll just fix that bug. I don't see the need for a reconnect option.

ananzi, if you lose your connection you similarly fly in a straight line, but you are still vulnerable to fire (but you won't actually explode, you'll just be dead when you log back in).
Nov 27, 2004 bsp link
I would like to believe it is a bug. I would expect disconnections with dial-up, but I'm now using DSL. I've been playing with an average of 40 ping, and suddenly noticed that two Orne Guardians and a Tycorp Assault have suddenly lost interest in me completely, and have started floating aimlessly. Damn, now i have to spit out 15k to replenish my ship.
From what I've seen, I've come to a few conclusions:
- DSL in Wisconsin is awful, and it will randomly disconnect you from VO (I've never been disconnected from UT2k3).
- VO is too picky, and the slightest flux causes it to drop a client.
- There is a bug (please)

I'm running Mac OS/X 10.3.6 on a PowerBook G4.

The point of the reconnect option is essentially that you can reconnect without having to wait for 10 seconds (possibly saving your ship). I'm aware that may not be the real problem, just a very bad no good hack that might help.