Topic: My videos

[Czar Mohab]

Part three should be added somewhere in a "what to never do in this situation" file... It was like watching lions or wolves tear into the weaker and now separated from the herd prey animal.

Part 5 should also be added to the "what not to do with T-bombs" catergory. 100% behind the "stop the drones with the mine" tactic, however, the mine was placed poorly. Due to the quality (I know it isn't your fault) I wasn't sure who laid the bomb, but running over your own (team's) mine is... sad.

KS - A couple of times you had your port photon mount shown enough that I could see you were suffering from that hardpoint recharge bug - the one where you have one weapon charged (or more) and it doesn't indicate properly... you were firing 2 of your 3 photons from the mount. I don't think that the extra torp would have changed the outcome any, but it is something to watch for.

I was kind of worried as the seconds ticked away and there were still two baddies on the screen... and then bang-bang what a finale.

As for dialup, would it be possible to burn the higher quality vids to disc and upload from the library or a neighbor? Or worst case snail-mail the disc to a buddy? I'd love to see the higher resolution version of this.

One more (two part) question... was the choice to go with slow speed drones intentional or due to a lack of funding? Seems like you could have been more effective drone wise with at least med speed drones, but that's just my opinion; you did well enough (see part 3) with what you had. Also, did you have the max reload of drones or were your choices dictated by the conditions stated above? Seemed like you ran out rather quickly.

I fully understand the tactics here, but I was still waiting for you to O/L the torps and charge one of the retreating baddies in a big bang style surprise. And when you turned in front of your Gorn buddy-- TOTALLY forgot for a minute he was your buddy and I was seriously pondering why he didn't uload all that plasma up your rear... then I remembered. 

I would love to see more vids like this. It, at the very least, helps me see what I can do better. Meaning I can learn from others' mistakes/successes.

Czar "Yeah, I took notes," Mohab

[knightstorm]

Part three should be added somewhere in a "what to never do in this situation" file... It was like watching lions or wolves tear into the weaker and now separated from the herd prey animal.

Part 5 should also be added to the "what not to do with T-bombs" catergory. 100% behind the "stop the drones with the mine" tactic, however, the mine was placed poorly. Due to the quality (I know it isn't your fault) I wasn't sure who laid the bomb, but running over your own (team's) mine is... sad.

KS - A couple of times you had your port photon mount shown enough that I could see you were suffering from that hardpoint recharge bug - the one where you have one weapon charged (or more) and it doesn't indicate properly... you were firing 2 of your 3 photons from the mount. I don't think that the extra torp would have changed the outcome any, but it is something to watch for.

I was kind of worried as the seconds ticked away and there were still two baddies on the screen... and then bang-bang what a finale.

As for dialup, would it be possible to burn the higher quality vids to disc and upload from the library or a neighbor? Or worst case snail-mail the disc to a buddy? I'd love to see the higher resolution version of this.

One more (two part) question... was the choice to go with slow speed drones intentional or due to a lack of funding? Seems like you could have been more effective drone wise with at least med speed drones, but that's just my opinion; you did well enough (see part 3) with what you had. Also, did you have the max reload of drones or were your choices dictated by the conditions stated above? Seemed like you ran out rather quickly.

I fully understand the tactics here, but I was still waiting for you to O/L the torps and charge one of the retreating baddies in a big bang style surprise. And when you turned in front of your Gorn buddy-- TOTALLY forgot for a minute he was your buddy and I was seriously pondering why he didn't uload all that plasma up your rear... then I remembered. 

I would love to see more vids like this. It, at the very least, helps me see what I can do better. Meaning I can learn from others' mistakes/successes.

Czar "Yeah, I took notes," Mohab

Yeah, the slow speed drones were from lack of funding.  The way the bpv system works, reloads of slow speed drones are free, while its horrendously expensive to upgrade to and buy reloads for faster drones, its one of the things I'm hoping they'll change in SFC4.  Most GSA matches use slow drones as a result.  I did use OLs when we were castling, and I didn't need the extra speed, as is evidenced in part 3.

[knightstorm]

I'm not pleased with the lack of views I'm getting for my vids. Can anyone give me advice on how to increase the number of views I get.  As far as I know, these are the only videos of SFCOP pvp currently on youtube.

[Pestalence_XC]

F1 view is your friend 

F1 view gets me killed because I misjudge the range of the plasma chuckers.

F1 an F11 are your frinds F11 give you range to every object in game, including asteroids, plasma, missles, fighters, enemy ships, planets, etc.

[Pestalence_XC]

how can you play on line with dial up?

OP was designed to run on dialup.. when I was on dialup as well I even hosted a few times, hosting a 3v3 on dialup usually is OK

Even though the game is designed to play on Win 98 SE and dial-up.. there are 2 rules to follow :

1. The person with the fastest connection speed needs to be the host. the person with the slowest connection needs to join last. as such the person joining last will set the overall ping of the game an the network code will adjust properly to the slowest connection this way, thus reducing lag.

2. If 2 people have the same connection speed, the person with the faster, more powerful computer needs to host since their machine will work as the mission server.

You follow these 2 rules, you reuce the chance of lag spikes and player driops.

[Age]

how can you play on line with dial up?

OP was designed to run on dialup.. when I was on dialup as well I even hosted a few times, hosting a 3v3 on dialup usually is OK

Even though the game is designed to play on Win 98 SE and dial-up.. there are 2 rules to follow :

1. The person with the fastest connection speed needs to be the host. the person with the slowest connection needs to join last. as such the person joining last will set the overall ping of the game an the network code will adjust properly to the slowest connection this way, thus reducing lag.

2. If 2 people have the same connection speed, the person with the faster, more powerful computer needs to host since their machine will work as the mission server.

You follow these 2 rules, you reuce the chance of lag spikes and player driops.

How about your firewall does it matter if you have it open or closed?

[FPF-DieHard]

how can you play on line with dial up?

OP was designed to run on dialup.. when I was on dialup as well I even hosted a few times, hosting a 3v3 on dialup usually is OK

Even though the game is designed to play on Win 98 SE and dial-up.. there are 2 rules to follow :

1. The person with the fastest connection speed needs to be the host. the person with the slowest connection needs to join last. as such the person joining last will set the overall ping of the game an the network code will adjust properly to the slowest connection this way, thus reducing lag.

2. If 2 people have the same connection speed, the person with the faster, more powerful computer needs to host since their machine will work as the mission server.

You follow these 2 rules, you reuce the chance of lag spikes and player driops.

For D2 from my experience, the person with the worst connection should draft.

[Pestalence_XC]

how can you play on line with dial up?

OP was designed to run on dialup.. when I was on dialup as well I even hosted a few times, hosting a 3v3 on dialup usually is OK

Even though the game is designed to play on Win 98 SE and dial-up.. there are 2 rules to follow :

1. The person with the fastest connection speed needs to be the host. the person with the slowest connection needs to join last. as such the person joining last will set the overall ping of the game an the network code will adjust properly to the slowest connection this way, thus reducing lag.

2. If 2 people have the same connection speed, the person with the faster, more powerful computer needs to host since their machine will work as the mission server.

You follow these 2 rules, you reuce the chance of lag spikes and player driops.

For D2 from my experience, the person with the worst connection should draft.

Misconcept.. Why would you want the worst connection hosting when it has the highest chance of dropping and bugging the mission or sending everyone to desktop? If the host drops, mission is bugged the best connection needs to host if 2 connections match as the best, then the best computer hosts, The worst connection joins the match last to set the ping and the network speed of the mission, this way if the worst connection drops, the mission will not be bugged and the rest of the players won't CTD.

as such, Highspeed cable should host, followed by med speed cable, then normal  / slow speed cable, ADSL, DSL, ISDN, Dialup, Cellular, wireless, Satellite basically in that order (based on Ping response for gaming).

The worst connection connecting last to set the netowrk ping and data rate of the connection. This provides for less buggy and more stable missions.

If the worst connection keeps dropping, then maybe they nee to tweak their system out with some Networking hacks to improve performance.

[Pestalence_XC]

how can you play on line with dial up?

OP was designed to run on dialup.. when I was on dialup as well I even hosted a few times, hosting a 3v3 on dialup usually is OK

Even though the game is designed to play on Win 98 SE and dial-up.. there are 2 rules to follow :

1. The person with the fastest connection speed needs to be the host. the person with the slowest connection needs to join last. as such the person joining last will set the overall ping of the game an the network code will adjust properly to the slowest connection this way, thus reducing lag.

2. If 2 people have the same connection speed, the person with the faster, more powerful computer needs to host since their machine will work as the mission server.

You follow these 2 rules, you reuce the chance of lag spikes and player driops.

How about your firewall does it matter if you have it open or closed?

Firewall makes no diference so long as all the proper ports for SFC and GSA are open.

Now if you are using a Router and a software firewall ... lose one of them. a Router is a physical firewall an as such much more secure than a software firewall... and unless you are in government service, there is no need for multiple firewalls on a single computer system.

However AV on when gaming and applications in the background like Downloads can effect connectivity and should be disabled when gaming. The less running on your computer, the better the game performance.

AVG Free v9.0 now offers a Gaming mode which disables Active (resident) scaning when gaming (full screen mode of game only).

Resident scanning (active or realtime scanning) can cause loss of packets or data corrumption causing lagging, dropping from missions, and possibly CTD. Resident shields or active scanning should be disabled when gaming.

[FPF-DieHard]

Pesty -  you're wrong.  Drafting always hold up better when the guy with the crap connection imitates it.  I don't know why but my 1000s of hours of anecdotal experience (God I need a life . .. ) goes opposite of what you say.

GSA is a different animal.

Regarding firewalls, all I can say is before I started shutting mine off before playing I could never hold more than 4 in a mission.  I've always had decent PCs and great cable.

[Pestalence_XC]

If your connection experience is based on D2, it may be the server networking code causing that issue. Connecting to server, disconnecting and reconnecting P2P then disconnecting again and reconnecting to the server. I can see how this would disrupt the normal working of how the code should work, the server is going to attempt to throttle to the slowest / weakest connection, throwing people over to a high speed connection would disrupt the DirectPlay in use from the serveto P2P that has already been throttled to the server which would be based on the worst connection as based on mission matching draft (configures the netork to transfer over to P2P play thus setting for worst connection as the base line). So I can see where you are coming from. Network instability based on active connections to the server as based on speed throttling from worst first to fastest. Backwards of what is should be but then again, the networking in SFC OP has always been a nightmare.

I know on GSA and TCP/IP the strongest connection and computer should be the host.

as for the firewall, open the port range up just a little bit more or better yet, if your router allows it, give SFC : OP free port usage with no restrictions. you know, program specific settings, while the rest of the system follows the normal port rules.