Dedicated Servers when?

[[MSZS] Neo_Bahamut_19]

I've been waiting to play for years with my friends, but we don't want to dive in without dedicated servers. It was mentioned about 2 years ago that they were being worked on, yet here we are with Update 4 and still no dedicated servers... Starting to think it won't happen. It's been so long that another person on Reddit posted a way to workaround and essentially host a dedicated server.

[Capt. W. Schwartz]

...and it won't happen until all game-breaking client-side bugs are fixed.

[Aven]

Imagine this: you rent a server and then spend all of a Saturday getting it set up. Your friends log in, you have a joyous few hours on Sunday. On Monday morning, a patch hits breaking your server. Another on Wednesday afternoon. Thursday morning. Thursday evening. Friday morning. Friday at noon. Etc. Etc.

The game has bare bones multiplayer support with substantial bugs. Attempting to implement dedicated servers with multiplayer as it is during early access period with known bugs and frequent patching is just the devs asking to be punched in the gut every day from now until release.

[SocialModo]

As i played with friends multiplayer near all was good. If there would be dedicated servers it should be the same. Gamebreaking problems should be only at big patches. So if there would be dedicated servers and players got before using a warning that it is not perfect and after big patches a new games must be started, most players would be happy. I would.
Actually i dont play multiplayer, because i want play when i like it and not only when the host is online.

[sansee]

Snutt are holding them as hostage until the bugs that plagues the players are fixed...

[cdog]

I've played multiplayer, it works pretty good (vehicles can get wonky for the non host player though) we got quite far, so it handles large constructs as well.

You can share the save file so the original host player doesn't always have to be on. If someone wanted to do some vehicle action we'd just let that person host for the session

[Tibbers]

Originally posted by cdog:

I've played multiplayer, it works pretty good (vehicles can get wonky for the non host player though) we got quite far, so it handles large constructs as well.

You can share the save file so the original host player doesn't always have to be on. If someone wanted to do some vehicle action we'd just let that person host for the session

Any big issues you come across?
Are you and your friend able to go opposite directions and be pretty far from each other working on your own stuff?

[Caduryn]

Originally posted by Tibbers:

Originally posted by cdog:

I've played multiplayer, it works pretty good (vehicles can get wonky for the non host player though) we got quite far, so it handles large constructs as well.

You can share the save file so the original host player doesn't always have to be on. If someone wanted to do some vehicle action we'd just let that person host for the session

Any big issues you come across?
Are you and your friend able to go opposite directions and be pretty far from each other working on your own stuff?

Depends what you call pretty far, but.... yes.

[GI Ged]

if you use the search engines you find at least one hoster that runs SF for 9 € /month

[cdog]

Originally posted by Tibbers:

Any big issues you come across?
Are you and your friend able to go opposite directions and be pretty far from each other working on your own stuff? [/quote]

The biggest issue was vehicles - this was before the last few patches, so maybe some of this has been improved. The truck would glitch constantly, teleporting around, falling through the ground, running me over. It would still make it's deliveries, so it didn't seem to be a problem aside from being a hazard to the non host player. Non host players would also glitch out of trains if they tried to drive one (this was in the middle of our giant factory complex though, so perhaps it would have worked with less constructions nearby) they could still set the train routes and use them to transport material, they just couldn't physically ride in them.

We were able to go VERY far from one another, probably half the map length, so I don't think there is even a limit to how far apart you can get. We did this with 3 players as well. You could build entirely separate bases if you wanted to.

[Fidget]

Originally posted by Aven:

Imagine this: you rent a server and then spend all of a Saturday getting it set up. Your friends log in, you have a joyous few hours on Sunday. On Monday morning, a patch hits breaking your server. Another on Wednesday afternoon. Thursday morning. Thursday evening. Friday morning. Friday at noon. Etc. Etc.

The game has bare bones multiplayer support with substantial bugs. Attempting to implement dedicated servers with multiplayer as it is during early access period with known bugs and frequent patching is just the devs asking to be punched in the gut every day from now until release.

A temporary server design could be achieved by simple command line arguments to run the game headless (no GUI) with command line arguments to tell the game to start a multiplayer session using a specific map/save. There's nothing super fancy that needs to be done to achieve this on the development side, it's a basic implementation that once set would really never have to be touched again. They already have a lot of command line arguments, so it's mostly ready. And you're absolutely right about the game updates, but even then, it would take less than a few hours to put together a script to do a nightly reboot by stopping server, check for updates from Steam, then relaunch server, and even write documentation/instructions. It would just be nice if they would give us something to work with.
Being generous here, that could be completed within a week by a single competent developer, and it would be a thing that once done, it's done. It's a ghetto temporary solution for a dedicated server. It would have no moderation, no admin tools, and be only as stable/functional as the base game with a user hosting a multiplayer server. But it would give something until the game reaches a stable enough state that they can focus on a proper dedicated server.

And someone has already done this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/m7yek2/satisfactory_dedicated_server_guide/
I just wish the Dev's put in a couple hours so we don't have to do hacky things like this.

[SocialModo]

Originally posted by Fidget:

(...)
I just wish the Dev's put in a couple hours so we don't have to do hacky things like this.

I agree.

[TacomaBob]

You don't know or have access to the code. What makes you qualified to say how hard or easy something is? And especially how long it will take?

I've got near 35 years of software development behind me. Ya, I'm an old guy collecting social security and on Medicare....spending your taxes. Anyway, one thing I've learned is it is near impossible for outsiders (aka: Us) to make these predictions. You should always ask because what you think is hard could be something that can be done while at lunch. But what you think should be easy can be very very difficult.

Like a headless server. This is one could be easy (doubt it) or hard. And having a command line switch is the easy part...the hard part is using that switch.

[[MSZS] Neo_Bahamut_19]

Originally posted by GI Ged:

if you use the search engines you find at least one hoster that runs SF for 9 € /month

I have my own 20 core, 90GB ram, 2TB disk legitimate server tower at my house... I'm not looking to pay someone else to host a server for me and a few friends to play a game on. lol

Originally posted by bob.crothers:

You don't know or have access to the code. What makes you qualified to say how hard or easy something is? And especially how long it will take?

I've got near 35 years of software development behind me. Ya, I'm an old guy collecting social security and on Medicare....spending your taxes. Anyway, one thing I've learned is it is near impossible for outsiders (aka: Us) to make these predictions. You should always ask because what you think is hard could be something that can be done while at lunch. But what you think should be easy can be very very difficult.

Like a headless server. This is one could be easy (doubt it) or hard. And having a command line switch is the easy part...the hard part is using that switch.

Except for the modders who are creating their own versions of dedicated servers... Years after the dev teams announced work on dedicated servers. So...