@HWS NA | The RAM Bottleneck | New Server?

HWS Announcements
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Hi HWS Community - Hi HWS NA,

this is a dedicated topic for you! :slight_smile:

We started EU on 01.03.2016 as you know and after I saw in Google that we have a lot of players from the United States, I decided for a “risk” and expanded to North America (at that time I had a lot of established competitors).

So on 23.th August 2016 the HWS NA server, which you are currently still playing went live!

For the record some facts about it:

  • Intel 2x Xeon E5 2650v2 | 16c/32t | 2.1 GHz / 2.6 GHz
  • 128 GB RAM DDR4 ECC 1866 MHz
  • SSD
  • 1 Gbit/s
  • Cost: $217 per month => $7378 paid until now
  • Since the HWS 9.X season you have beat HWS EU after 1 year in the ranking!
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  • You reached 170 max. players again!
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    image1096×331 19.5 KB

So in very successful seasons like that, at the beginning, we have a big issue!

The RAM Bottleneck

128GB RAM are not sufficient anymore! We have daily restarts at night, once we reach the critical threshold of 90%. Otherwise the whole savegame and everything will become corrupt.

On HWS EU we upgraded the Server to 384GB RAM because I found a very good deal one day. It does not solve all issues, because Unity is unable to utilize Multi CPU Core Threading, but we are at least save regarding the RAM “leaks”.

Do you want to level up?

The big question is now: do HWS NA want to upgrade the server to a better machine, mainly more RAM?
It does of course mean the cost will increase dramatically but considering

  • HWS NA buys more Supporter Playfields than EU
  • Patreon got insane boosted recently which could cover the cost
    it would be “OK” from my side.

Another question: Should the location remain Canada or where are most of you coming from?
Keep in mind: USA West is not recommended, because CSW for EU players would suffer too much.

Final Note: Upgrading NOW means a huge overload for us and you! All of your saved blueprints would be lost - you have to spawn them, so we can transfer it to the new hardware. So this might be a decision for the upcoming season?

So let’s do an obligation poll but please comment below your thoughts

  • Yes, let’s boost the HWS NA server even though it will cost much more money per month
  • No, let’s keep the server for now and deal with regular server restarts
0 voters

I’m excited for your input and really wondering your thoughts.
Money should not be the show stopper here but your fun on HWS!

Your HWS Team

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Keep location in Canada please. Its a rather stable location with infrequent outages and doesn’t have to deal with US regulation. As well as being better for EU it’s also vastly better for NZ

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  1. Does upgrading means some support package or Patreon tiers cost will increase? If yes it should be known before people vote, if not upgrading is purely business decision for you and this poll is not required.
  2. I think only filter on location should be north-eastern part of North America, take most cost effective deal in this location you can find.
  3. Make sure you give proper warning before upgrade so people can spawn their blueprints
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Just curious

US has frequent outages?

What US regulation would HWS have to deal with?

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no. Otherwise I would have mentioned it of course!

I just did!?

Wrong. It’s called Community Interaction and requesting Community Feedback, since they are the one who are playing at night, while I’m sleeping. Only they know the pure need of it or what consequences are involved with it.

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Another question: Should the location remain Canada or where are most of you coming from?
Keep in mind : USA West is not recommended, because CSW for EU players would suffer too much.

So I’m from the US west. From what I’ve seen US East is central to US and Europe. I hold no qualms over where in the US/Canada it is located I just felt like it’s worthwhile to be aware the further east the servers are pushed the better connection Europe should have which I always thought is nice.
Ultimately I’m a very frugal man myself and I just hope for you to find a good deal for the server.
I find the consequences to be negligible. But I have found the restarts resulting in me thinking “Dang already?” So obviously I’m partial towards fixing it.
Although it’s funny not to long ago I read the server specs and was like “Dang europe has a lot more RAM than us… is it all really needed” Well I guess that explains the server restarts, I never knew, very interesting.

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While we are considering connection for the EU server lets not forget about us australians please and our connection to the server.

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There is no time info :slight_smile: Proper warning for me would be like this (after you make decision) :

NA server will shutdown for upgrade on next Monday 1st of July 2019 at 12 AM server time, spawn all your structures from factory before or they will be removed.

Community can give you feedback on how annoying these restarts are, but the main consequence I see here is a big increase in server cost and we don’t know financial details of HWS so I don’t think we can help you much here. Or maybe there are other consequences for players besides having to spawn blueprints from factory and I miss something?

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:grimacing: don’t start with that or we get all the “HWS RU” guys in the boat again :see_no_evil:

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Ah I see. Well, because of your other point you mentioned: I will only do this, if the community backs my decision up.
Crawl the Forum - you will see the process of a HWS server switch more than 2 times already.

Same: just search in the forum and see the procedure.
As I said, money is a criteria but most importantly the impact for players.

The consideration is for example:

  • the population naturally decreases over time, 128GB RAM are sufficient enough by then
  • is a big increase of server hardware + cost justified by only granting a less restart frequency at the beginning of a season?
  • later you have a power machine which “runs empty”
  • is all the workload during a season justified for the gain?
  • isn’t it better to kill the proud and reduce the server slot limit from 170 down to 107 or so? (same could go for HWS EU)
    …
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All I meant was if the US is better for us I would prefer it be chosen over the Canadian server. Even a little better ping would be nice, but if having 10 better ping means an extra $100 for a server then definitely go with the cheaper option.

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These are all valid things to consider, as EU player I don’t want to speak for NA community, but maybe some historical data on number of players vs number of forced restarts could help here.

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I’m all for a new server of course if it will improve game play. The better the server/performance, the more people maybe incline to subscribe to the Patron program.

Also, can I suggest of creating a fund raising campaign (maybe for a month) to help pay for the upgrade of the server. With a goal to reach and capability of people to give what ever amount they can.

Best Regards
MaxiThunder

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I think it would be worthwhile to upgrade sooner rather than later if it means improved performance, especially if Patreon covers the cost. The only concern I’d have is that if people withdraw Patreon support (moving to other games near end of season etc) that it could stick you with lot of expenses. It would be nice if this was something you could easily scale up/down as needed.

Edit: Oh yeah also, I say Canada for the server, but I am very biased due to being located in Canada. I get pretty good ping as is. Though, if there is a better place where more players would get better ping, like in US-East, I think my overall experience will be better even if my ping goes up a little bit. I’m used to most game servers being located in US-East anyways.

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I strongly advise an upgrade. To your point of it not being required late season, even in that case, a more powerful server that isn’t always pinned at 70-90% means sudden huge PVP battles are less likely to overwelm the server. We saw what it did for EU, it was a massive increase in performance. Everyone said it was better. This was the case both at the start and after time had passed. NA deserves the same, as we’ve been equally loyal and apparently BIGGER! (which I am super happy about :D) then EU :slight_smile:

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Hello RexXsuS, I am all for a new server as it will Improve game play over all including PVP fights. The better the server / performance the more people will stay playing on HWS NA. I also agree with MaxiThunder, I would suggest creating a fund raising campaign open to the HWS NA player base with no donation required and open to the community to donate whatever they can. A lot of people enjoy and appreciate the work you have done and would gladly show it.

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Hey Rex, I agree on the upgrade, the points you made yourself is enough of a reason. As a patron myself we invest for the future of this server and we thank you for considering us before doing something that may or may not extend the life of it, in this case I believe it would in many ways. thank you

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I get disconnected every 5 minutes on NA. During PVP. I log back on 2km+ from my ship, in PVP. I can’t warp or use stargates in PVP (1 out of 10 tries to K warp worked). I just bought a new computer, specifically for Empyrion, and I get an awesome 60 frames to watch the disconnects in. I get decent Ping, as I live in Canada. An un-named faction who claim to not be “pirates” took full advantage of this, lucky I did not lose my BP.

There is no counter play for a disconnect, the game is not “playable” for me right now. Honestly I don’t see myself logging on again in the current state.

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I’m from EU, and i don’t have that bad connection? It might be your router or something which needs an upgrade.

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I literally just replaced everything in line with playing Empyrion, it was fine until yesterday. Everything was upgraded just for Empyrion. I can pretty safely say the problem does not lay on my side on things. No other game has an issue.