can we have a better lobby for MP games that are continued?

[tomstegmeier]

2. Selecting empire should show:
- explored territory(without details, as much as see empire that got diplomatic contact) and relations with other empires(alliance, vassalige/protectorate/tributary/rivalry)
- ethos, primary specie, planet count, population count.
- researched techs grouped by type(ex. 10 physics, 7 sociology, 22 engineering) as this can be checked by players anyway(open trade with someone and propose research agreement (use your tech count, add enemy advantage and subtract your advantage)

i agree, a simple map (maybe even without stars, just the borders and these basic infos. But iam not sure how feasible a map in the lobby would be, but i think using basicly a hotjoin version with easier accses whn someone joins and an overlay would do

anyhow, i was baffled when i saw the lobby the first time, and had wtf moment when i first rejoined a game...

 

[GizahNL]

+1



Why do think it wouldnt help in any way? I am not that good educated at tech questions I fought a faster speed is one of the purposes of a dedicated server.

As far as I know most, if not all, of the multiplayer issues do not stem from insufficient host CPU capacity. This is the only thing that could be reasonably be offloaded when running a dedicated machine, afaik graphics CPU overhead is not /that/ big, so you would save very little by hosting the game on a different machine that doesn't do graphics. This is different ofcourse for graphics intensive games like shooters Actually on shooters most people that use dedicated servers use them to save a few frames on their own machines, not to improve net stability per se (unless using rented servers ofcourse)
Nor do we /really/ need a dedicated host that runs for many hours. It would be very complicated to program anyways, especially with the hotjoining mechanisms, and then I would prefer that energy is not wasted on features that are (at least in my opinion) trivial

The only reason why it would make sense is to run servers offsite at rented servers that offer high bandwidth low latency machines with a lot of CPU (single core, pdox games don't scale that well with threading) capacity. However in my experience most games hosted are already hosted on high bandwidth low latency links, so there would be almost no gain. Maybe here my view is skewed as I myself have a 100mbit link (soon 500mbit) and tend to host often