Required server hardware question

I know it might be to early to ask, however I am going to buy a new htpc/server soon.

Since I definitely want to use it as a dedicated PA server I would like to know if my current configuration idea would be good enough. (I3 3225 with 4 or 8 gigs of ram)

Seems pretty powerfull to me ... or would a quadcore be necesarry?
Would it be possible to give some rough advise?
2/4 cores (i3/i5/i7) with 4/8 gigs of ram

From what I understand the game is being designed to scale to your computer no matter the ram or core count. so any computer will crash its just how big the game can get and not crash.

So for a Server you will want the quad core and 16GB ram or more I would think.

It is far to early for ANY kind of system Requirements.

Mike

Basically what's been said. The game is designed from the ground up to scale with the hardware. The more CPU power & RAM you have, the bigger the game / greater amount of games you can host. Also remember your internet bandwidth might be an issue if hosting many/huge games.

All depends on how much you want to spend. But if you're going to spend a large sum of money, you may be better off renting a server instead.

So I suggest spending what you need for your HTPC, and host matches with whatever capabilities that turns out to have when the game comes out.

I picked up a bunch of free/cheap PC parts on Black Friday, so I'm going to host matches out of the HTPC I built with that stuff. Thing only consumes like 60-80 watts. Core 2 Duo 3.0Ghz, 8GB DDR3. And whatever it can handle that's what I'll settle for.


Cheers.

Yeah the thing is, I have great upload (50mbit).
I reckon ill go with the i3, I could always change it to an i5 if needed.

So in general the fast the better. However, if you have a slow net connection that could be your limiting factor instead of CPU.

I don't have exact numbers or anything at this point though so your guess is as good as mine. Scalability is the watch word.

So, how big can a game get with a download speed of 1,9Mbit/s ?

Exactly 13241 units on a maximum of 10 planets.
Thats easy math, isn't it?

...

Don't know yet. Also when you say download do you mean upload?

The server needs uplink bandwidth equivalent to all of the players added together. A client only needs a fraction of that and can actually just degrade if it's not enough.

FA runs a 8 man setons pretty ok on one or two cores.

I hope that PA is a bit more efficient with the simulation.
(Did FA not have some sim bug?)

That might then perhaps be a couple of thousend units on an i3 dual core in PA ..... we shall see. Quad core seems a good idea in retrospect .. I just ordered the i3 .. ah well.

50mbit up will be juicy! The servers we run in the cloud typically have a 100mb connection.

The goal is actually to be significantly more performant per unit. I would sure as heck hope a dual core could pull off more than a couple of thousand if it was only being a server. Of course simulation is one aspect but there will be more cpu going to managing network connections as well.

I will probably be ok then with an i3, I dont think ill be able to manage that many planets anyway

Owww, it will be good times, I cannot wait

What I know from supcoms synchronous model is that every player could leave at any time and the game still can be played by the rest of the people.


So I have a couple of questions about the PA server model:

What happens if the server disconnects?
From what I have read the game is over. Isn t that a big big drawback?

Remember you host a big game and then you die early. You cant start a new game until the old game is finished? Then you have to sit there for hours and wait?
What happens if the host loses connection or has to leave?


What happens if Uberent cant afford to host the servers for online play in some years? Does this mean the game is dead?
For supcom we only needed a lobby server and not a big powerfull server for each hosted game.

Players can host their own servers. So as long as someone is hosting/renting servers, the game goes on. It will not depend solely on Uber.

Not to mention you will be able to play it in LAN as well, so players can play it locally as well.

Or play against the AI in single player locally on your own machine.

From what I understand I cant just host, because I would have to wait until all the players in the game are dead or the game is over.
Image how stupid this would be if you die after 5 minutes and the game takes another 3hours in which you cant play.

The other solution about renting a server is problematic too, because I dont think everyone wants to invest into a server. What about the server? Can I use the server for multiple games at the same time? Or do I always have to wait until the game is over?

is "host migration" confirmed? Its also only usefull if the new host has comparable hardware

It was kind of a joke... I don't actually know.

It's called a dedicated server for a reason. If you can't dedicate the computer time to hosting, you shouldn't be running one.

I have not seen a game with public hosting software that fails to have dedicated servers. Even DOOM has a disturbingly large list!

The problems with LAN games are somewhat different:
A) because supercomputer rack mounts are hard to find, and
B) because shutting down the host after dying is a **** move.