I've realized a lot of people are confused about what NR's exactly are, and what causes them. There's been a lot talk about NR's in Legendz server, and now last night NR's in the Annihilation 1.31 server, as well as lag issues, so I thought I'd explain all of this for anyone who cares, as well as talk about NR's/lag in both spawn servers currently up, and mention what you can do to improve your experience.

With all the arguments over ping/lag/nr's I hope this can provide a little bit of clarity.

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NR's, or non-registers, are things you saw happen that didn't. Example: you saw a midair disc hit someone, but their health didn't go down. There are two causes of NR's:

1.) Almost ALL nr's are are a product of differences in ping. If your ping is 70, and you shoot someone with a ping of 120, there's a 50 millisecond difference in where you perceive them to be, and where they actually are. On your computer you may see a disc hit someone, whereas it actually missed them. That is the reality of almost all nr's.

Annihilation spawn is special in how fast it is compared to 2.x, Troc, or base. The speeds at which we move exacerbates these internet-is-too-fucking-slow related nr's, so you will feel like you nr more in an Anni spawn server than elsewhere. Another practical reason for more nr's in Anni than elsewhere is how much faster you can fire discs than in Troc or base. In a single game you might get off 50% more shots. There is a substantial increase in nr's simply because you're taking more shots.

2.) The other reason for nr's is that the Tribes engine is old and sucks. Occasionally you really do hit something and not have it register. This is an engine problem, not a ping issue, not a mod issue, nothing else. The only way I've found to consistently view this bug in the game is in Anni spawn, 5 boosting at a flag. You'll nr it every time. There is a VERY simple solution to this: aim for the ground in FRONT of the flag, letting your inertia carry you through it. In two matches, and 5 maps, of this ladder so far I have not nr'd a single flag and I doubt I'll ever nr more than one in this entire ladder. The only scenario in which you should ever nr a flag in this mod is times when you're racing to a flag and can't get an angle such that you can hit the ground next to it, carrying yourself through it (i.e., it's balanced on a ridge).

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Lastly I wanted to talk about the two spawn servers up.

Legendz
A lot of people have complained of more nr's in this server and Crow's edit. To be clear, there is nothing in terms of Crow's mod that can directly increase the number of nr's you get. I personally have experienced my ping jumping around in his edit and not others, and there may be some solutions to this that he's been able to figure out, but understand that it's still a ping related problem and has nothing to do with improper code.

Crow's edit has a lot of great, modern fixes that old school 1.31 lacks, not to mention mod flexibility and improved administrative functionality. Increase in nr's can only be attributed to ping-spike issues, which might be very well correctable. As to actual lag the server doesn't seem to have any. The ping is fairly significantly higher than the Annihilation 1.31 server which has a better host, but that's really neither here nor there, as it still out performs the vast majority of other servers.

Annihilation 1.31 Spawn Server
I believe some people complained of lag or nr's in this server last night. To be clear, the edit is the same that was used for many years, in packed servers, in countless ladders before this one. Plus, it's hosted on the best server money can buy outside of a dedicated machine, hence so many people pinging 16 and 32. All we did was strip out the extra inventory stuff so that it loads faster. So then, why the problems last night?

For one, we put a blaster in it, the only real change we made. There may have been an issue with how it handled peoples blaster-drop script, which we've corrected. We're still going through the log to make sure nothing else is amiss. Blaster drop probably would have no effect on pings or nr's, so what's up?

Well two things!

1.) Pings! So many people were pinging 16 and 32 last night, that the people pinging 70 (still a great ping) were FAR separated from the 16's. The difference between 16 and 70 is 54. That's the same difference between a person pinging 70 playing a person pinging 124. As anyone can attest, there will be more nr's with more disparate pings.

BUT that can only explain more nr's, not lag, which I know many experienced.

2.) Osama Bin Laden was killed. I know the news of this has reached everyone now, but the word began to spread as our match began to play last night, and continued into full force information spread by the time we finished. In fact, by the time we were done, my internet was almost completely crippled as was many others. As a web developer I can attest that it was one of the single largest bog-downs of internet in American history, and hopefully we'll get some interesting metrics from it.

Why I am almost certain this was the case of lag for some last night was that it didn't affect everyone. Some of you had a thousand people around you all flying onto the internet to confirm Bin Laden's death, others of you did not. I know I did. This would explain how we can have a proven mod, on a top-notch server, with a bunch of people pinging a steady 16 while others had issues.

Unfortunately that was only the first night we had a packed server, and it was played in extraordinary circumstances making it hard to give an absolute answer, but I can say with at least 90% certainty that any lag experienced last night was due to the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Yeah, on DX last night there were times I was running around without any guns lmao. Everytime I ran over a dead body, my blaster script dropped my blaster + my other guns.

Bin Laden posthumously attacked our ladder!

Anti's new name will be doo doo cause hes the shit

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Actually what anti said makes sense. Killers ping was probably 40-60.. idk and he was chasing me - I have a 16 ping. Seemed like he was hitting me quite a lot regardless.

Everything I said is fact, basic 101 stuff really. With all the talk about servers/ping/lag lately I thought it'd be good information for the few people that might find it interesting, especially as most of the great resources about this kind of stuff that existed in the past is now gone or very difficult to find.

It only occurred to me last night that many of us don't understand the causes behind the basic annoyances of this game, which is problematic in terms of troubleshooting bug reports (not knowing whether your problem is lag vs. ping instability, network related vs. engine related, etc.), not to mention it could actually put people at a slight disadvantage.

I added a bit about what went on server-wise last night just because it's interesting and relevant, and I'm a web developer so I can speak to it. I did some research today and the statistics about last night are astounding. 4,600 tweets a second, millions of Google searches (have yet to get a hard number there), servers going down all over the place, networks bogged, CNN's mobile site blew up.

Akamai is one of the best resources for internet load statistics, they control about 20% of the content on the web (nytimes.com, LA times, Reuters, BBC, etc.) and they were calculating 2.5 MILLION page views per second throughout our matches last night. Multiply that by five. Around 11pm my top of the line Road Runner Turbo had slowed to dial-up speed. That we made it through matches as well as we did was quite fortunate.

lol Anti! I was just bustin your onions is all. Great definitions and explanations my man!

If it's all the same; playing in a server with closer pings would be best. Tribes was not meant to be played with 16-40 ping. (IMHO)

I seem to get the same issues in either server so I personally don't prefer one over the other. However; my team begged me for us not to play in the Anni Spawn 1.31 again. Too many lag issues for them. When my cappers can't make solid passes due to lag I have to listen considering all of them have played for years longer than I have! I had some crucial NR's there, but nothing more than I had in Legendz. I'm not going to put much faith in the Bin Laden news being a possible cause for the lag. That's just me though.

Yeah, I'm not used to playing 16 ping rofl. It may sound weird, but my tribes was WAY smoother than I am used to... I probably would have been better of chasing than capping as I was fine killing, but making passes and catching flags was quite different it seemed.

I had 16 Nrs on impulse in less than 10 minutes, his ping was 16 and mine was 60. Better be glad that mine was not 16!!!!

so if you 3 boost into flag, are you still suppose to nr the flag or is that common cuz i did that last match...

No, you just missed it jesus. You tend to do that sometimes.