Love this game but biggest disappointment of all

Well considering one CPU and a mere 2GB of RAM is used to host a server...

I think you'd be surprised as to how many players will make that limit. I mean- a couple games that provide a server .exe don't even run their own servers. Minecraft comes to mind.

I guess I was just expecting a good online server experience and wasn't expecting that I would need to host my own server to enjoy the game.

Well when all the people playing against ai actually play offline... Maybe their servers will be running better due to lesser load.

There's the silver lining!

Uhh Planktum keep in mind that just about every server-based FPS requires you to 'host your own server' to play the game. Battlefield 4, COD, hell, even Minecraft requires it.

Thing is, there will always be fans and clans and groups that will want to host public servers for us to play on. The side effect of releasing the server module to the public is that player-operated servers will start to go live, taking some of the load off of Uber's servers. My current theory is that they've been optimising with their 'Playfab' servers a bit too much before release, and now they are hard at work detangling the server module from the Playfab platform so that we can host games and yet still report matches, stats, replays, etc back to Uber.

Battlefield and COD host servers for players, at least for consoles.

Yea.... not really. It is something that could be expected, but it's not obvious (like in - single threaded program will not run faster only because you run it on twice more cores).

Them - servers? "Regular" servers are relatively cheap. You can buy 32 core for $5k easily. Amazon 8-core-equvalent thingy costs maybe $100/month.

Still, I don't think PA server performance and scalability is a something anyone outside Uber could reasonably discuss.

I believe the server is multithreaded, one thread per planet.

It's that this game pretty much can't handle more than 6000 units in the game at once, otherwise the game slows down to a craaaaaaawl.-gabbsc2

6000? if you or your enemy get that big you are doing it wrong just saying. Guess that's why my games run so smooth usually over before 200 units a side.

1v1's arw different from 5v5's.

Unless in a Clan war I avoid the 5vs5 played them though and didn't find a craaaawl and two enemies were gone before 200 units its my goal in any game Im just not gonna let you get that big if I can help it.

He said 6000, i can garantee that against 1 normal AI, playing with less than 1000 units (especially bunch of 300/400 tanks) the sim is just slowing down like hell (and it's not network related, it's path finding related). Now if your answer is "You're producing too much units", then let's cap the number of units per player. I'm not sure that's what uber intends to do. But That would probably help.
The server probably needs optimizations.
While i was not complaining about not having offline, i'm starting to stop playing, because i know it will allways end up with slow motion. This is not fun. And it's really unfortunate. Finally no offline mode is not the biggest issue. The biggest issue is that currently the client-server tech is not better than the p2p tech, except we can't have desynchs.
I will not blame Uber for not delivering enough horsepower to handle all the games, but i really hope server optimizations are coming soon.

He said 6000, i can garantee that against 1 normal AI, playing with less than 1000 units (especially bunch of 300/400 tanks) the sim is just slowing down like hell.-Doud

Yea, ummm no need to cap units ever in any game can't recall it ever being done. However what I'm trying to point is this: most games I have played over time in this genre since about 1998, I have never ever seen good players allow you to reach barely past 200 units anyhow. These is ALWAYS a way to 'zerg'. 'swarm', or other wise spam your opponent into oblivion. I for sure am a player who is not going to let you get that big ever , if I can help it. Ever. Now if your computer is slowing down and you do not have the resources to upgrade I truly feel for you. And I think Uber will in fact start upgrading and optimizing things as needed their pride and what not depends on it.

If the game slows down, an easy way to check if its the server is to look at the in game timer. 33 minutes into a 6 planet 2v2v2 the timer was equaling 17 real life seconds=1 in game second. It was just un playable. Anyone with more than 4 gigs of RAM and a decent graphics card can run this game, its just that the servers have too many instances on them at one time, or the server isn't powerful enough.

You'd be surprised then, many great player 5v5's go up to 1000+ units.

You'd be surprised then, many great player 5v5's go up to 1000+ units.-Squishypon3

Can't see why 'cept for a lack of aggressive scouting and guerrilla tactics. A thousand between 10 players would be normal in any other game. 1000 a piece is well just what it looks like too many people testing the water for too long.

I completely disagree, especially if you're playing on a scale 1000+ or over multiple planets.

Yea ok multiple planets, don't play my games one planet any where from 2 to 8 players. We could argue strat and tactics all day but me I would rather have a game or two before logging into work than sit here. But you my new friend have a wonderful day. Oh and there is a replay somewhere with me two on one in a FFA they didn't get that big at all.

Personally I never play multi-planet actually, as they go to a grind, and I don't have the best computer... and yeah.

Taken from the Kickstarter page...

Pick Your Battles
Play a quick skirmish with a friend on a single planet map with a low unit cap or a 12+ hour game with 40 of your closest frenemies and thousands of units. You can also hone your skills against Planetary Annihilation’s AI or team up with a friend against multiple AI’s.

"if you or your enemy get that big you are doing it wrong just saying."
I disagree! The games vision was all about massive battles spread across multiple planets.

It's also interesting to note the "low unit cap". There's no option to set unit caps, but obviously they intended for us to "pick our battles", so hopefully this functionality is coming too.