v.14: Server speed scaling without disabling achievements

[Yehn]

Servers can be pretty strong, but a lot of people out there playing factorio don't have top of the line computers. It would be nice if there was some way to allow the server to slow down for clients (ideally this would be a dynamic adjustment) without the penalty that comes with using console commands...

Example: Say I configure a minimum server speed of 0.8. By default the server will run a 1.0, but if a slower client connects, it might drop down to 0.9.. if that's the best that client can do. Or 0.8. But if the server would need to drop to 0.75 for it to work, the client would then be left behind as in the current version.

[ssilk]

For a better understanding of this issue I need to point to discussion in General: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=32384 Unable to "Catch Up" with capable hardware

I think that could be a good compromise.

I would add some kind of "Max Keep Up Time". After some seconds the server can estimate the time, the client might need to keep up exactly enough. If that time minus the inaccuracy is longer than the MaxKeepUpTime the server will immediately drop. This is to prevent situations, where a client barely can keep up and it would take minutes until he can join.

[Yehn]

There are some similarities, and I think it shares a common underlying issue, but we're asking for different things...

For example, if someone is having trouble catching up, I can pause the game. They download the map, load it, catch up, and get in.

But then when I unpause the game, they cannot keep up with the server and so drop. Just as mentioned in that linked thread, ironically, a lower-specced server is more accessible/easier to play on.

If dynamic scaling would be too much to ask for, even just being able to set server speed in the server-settings.json file would be an improvement...

[ssilk]

Pausing is of course always possible, but think to games of 300+ players ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=797vZGozwmw ): You cannot just pause. You need some kind of automatism.

[Yehn]

I agree, but if we had something like this, it solves both problems at once...