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Server Issues? Questions? Tips for 4.33.1?


=VG= SemlerPDX

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If you have any questions, issues, or tips relating to our Falcon BMS Server, or the new version of BMS 4.33, post 'em up here, and we'll do our best to address them or simply spread the word to help us all adjust.

!pilot

Thanks for flyin with us, and see you at Angels 20!


New pilots should read: How to connect to the VG Falcon BMS 4.33.1 Server Campaign with IVC Enabled
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Thanks for being right on top of the BMS upgrade as fast as you did. Good luck working through any issues. I've had time for one successful connection so far and all was good except some odd AI actions, so I'll keep an eye on that. A few requests if able...... Even on the 4.32 version there were times when 3 or 4 human pilots fly back to back missions. If a few get splashed or damaged I think the available acft in the 120th do not replenish, so when fragging a flight we get the message that no aircraft are available. If users would Abort flights they finish if the AI take it back up, it will help free up more flights. But also, sometimes the base is bombed to 0% and no flights are available. Would the campaign manager consider having another base setup with no AI also to give an alternate squadron with more flights available to frag? Another base like Osan would also give another type of F16 available, which I have found in 4.33 will give alternate weapons and systems options. Thanks again for you support.
Derk
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Less AI Squadrons:
After campaign restart it took no 12 hours for BluFor to win the air war, making CAS around the FLOT rather trivial. DPRK airforces are just relatively weak. To balance things out I'd suggest maybe 2 more F-16 squadrons for players, one of them being F-16C Block 40 because those get some of the new A/G weapons.
When I joined just a few hours after server restart the 120th was still set to HQ and fragged with DEAD, please double check when starting a new campaign (just make a Day 1 save after all setup is complete for easy restarting).

Weather:
Unless one of you is really hardcore and wants to work with the new weather maps, setting weather to "probabilistic" would make use of the new weather effects. Clear sky gets old.

@derk_axelrod No, the campaign manager only assumes none of the planes at that AFB is available and creates different packages to make up for the "loss" of aircraft. There should be a set resupply you can look up in squadron information, i think it includes planes. However completely valid reason to have at least a second F16 squad.

Buddy lasing is awesome by the way so get online!
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Yes - we are on it, great suggestions - things are just a bit different, please bare with us.


And keep the suggestions coming! Any other issues that you can tell, let us know.
!cp
Sorry for the transition period here - and thanks for your patience!
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Autosave might be a good idea especially since the server seems a bit unstable (aka. at the time of writing it's down again).

Yesterday I noticed two players flying for the 111th because there were unable to create their own flights. Nothing game breaking but I suspect there are more inexperienced players out there and I don't want to rule out the possibility of crashing the server by doing something very wrong.
For those people: https://youtu.be/ghy0wBWaQ-E?t=9m30s
It shows all necessary steps to create a flight/package. Until we get additional human F16s stick with KF-16 Block 52, 120th, Seosan airbase.
Also connect with a BW of 300. I've seen crazy numbers and it can cause crazy desyncs.

There seems to be an issue with ATI cards that will black out the screen when switching to the TGP. I'm getting a few frames of blackout occasionally but others reported it to be permanent. Alt+Tab fixes the issue only temporarily but I'm not aware of a proper solution yet.

For people with massive FPS drops after the update I suggest looking at "falcon BMS.cfg" and setting g_bDoubleRTTResolution to 0.

Cya in the air
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Look like a lot of people are having lots of problems, but I also wanted to thank all of the VG staff for their hard work and dedication to this great Organization, but I think its the Sim its self that needs to be corrected/fixed. But for myself, I had to stay with .32 for the moment until I get a powerful machine. Have fun guys!!
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Server back up for about 12 hours (looking at campaign time), 120th still fragging SEAD and CAP. DPRK already lost almost all AA on the FLOT and airpower is a joke, making these missions rather boring and pointless.
So, unless one cancels AI flights (which is forbidden) or plans a flight hours ahead of time there is no way a human package can be created.
Consider this: Set autosave and time in Falcon BMS.cfg, start a new campaign, set up squadrons for humans, save, restart as server, load, double check settings, done. All you got to do after a crash is reload the autosave.

I'd suggest setting all squadrons at Kunsan to humans instead of the 120th. It's 3 squadrons less to fly SEAD early in the campaign making things more interesting, US Block 40s are in the mix and there is less conflict with AI flights (which behave strangely sometimes).

@TAC: Performance isn't as good but adjusting in game and launcher settings as well as the tweak I posted earlier helps a bunch. Other than that I haven't seen much issues with 4.33.
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Brain LAN_WROTE ...

Server back up for about 12 hours (looking at campaign time), 120th still fragging SEAD and CAP. DPRK already lost almost all AA on the FLOT and airpower is a joke, making these missions rather boring and pointless.
So, unless one cancels AI flights (which is forbidden) or plans a flight hours ahead of time there is no way a human package can be created.
Consider this: Set autosave and time in Falcon BMS.cfg, start a new campaign, set up squadrons for humans, save, restart as server, load, double check settings, done. All you got to do after a crash is reload the autosave.

I'd suggest setting all squadrons at Kunsan to humans instead of the 120th. It's 3 squadrons less to fly SEAD early in the campaign making things more interesting, US Block 40s are in the mix and there is less conflict with AI flights (which behave strangely sometimes).



We have an old friends who knows all about this stuff, unfortunately, he is busier than I am these days, and I would need someone experienced to show me how to set up the campaign in these ways.

Brian, you sound like you know what you are talking about - any chance you and I could hook up and work on this together? I have scoured google, looked through most all setup screens and config files on our server, and I just cannot "figure it out for myself". I am retired (medical) and will be available whenever you are, so send me a PM or reply to this thread with a good time to meet you on TeamSpeak or something, and I'll be there; we could share a teamviewer session so we could both move the mouse, and kick these changes out.
!hi
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Update:

We've turned of HQ fragging of flights from Seosan, and for a test, we've also turned off HQ fragging at Kunsan as well. We're still checking in manually a few times a day and manually creating the save files, and will be loading from them upon server crash - so long as the campaign finally starts lasting more than a day.

We'll see if the fragging changes at Kunsan and Seosan work... if not, we'll try some other ideas. Good luck, and thanks for sticking with us!
!cp
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Since all the squadrons are set up already and you remembered to do a day-1-save after doing so (you did, right?) I don't think it's really necessary to do a TV session.
Only thing left I can think of right now is activating the autosave in the server's Falcon BMS.cfg (g_nCampPeriodicSaveMinutes) which should be fine when set to 20 or 30 or something like this. We don't see large packages very often so I don't expect huge progress to be lost.

If I remember to do so I'll be on TS in the evening which should be around late morning / mid-day for you. Just poke me if necessary. The people in the BMS channel usually play CS and nobody on the BMS server cares to join TS so I haven't really bothered with it.

I already like the new look of the campaign. There are a lot of SEAD targets up north and the FLOT has more bandits to worry about, making flying feel less like a training mission :)

Speaking of training: Yesterday somebody left because he felt "useless in the air". Don't worry, I can employ almost everything and teach others how to do so. Only thing I ask for is you already set up your controls and have a basic understanding on how basic things work. Maybe we'll get the server growing this way ;)
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Thank you for your tips and advice Brian - I also think a TV session is no longer needed, nor meeting in TS3, so don't bother hanging around in TS3 just for me (so busy with a home construction project I haven't even got to enjoy a flight in 4.33 yet) too busy to know when I'll be available right now.

Yes, I have been creating these changes in Day 1 save files so it can be reset easily. Let me know if the lack of HQ fragging at Kunsan works out, or if it should go back to HQ fragging, or if this "second airbase for humans" would be better at a different airbase (i.e. Osan as mentioned above).

Checked the server this morning, was start of Day 2, and server was stable. Again, I did a manual quicksave, but I will implement the autosave option to give a more frequent reset point for those invested in the progress of the Korean Campaign (I also do not like resetting to day 1 on crashes - ruins the accomplishments of those trying to effect the outcome of the war over the course of a week or so)

Thanks again for all the advice, I was rather unfamiliar with all of this before this thread, and I feel more confident "managing" the campaign instead of just being a "maintenance tech".
!hi

Any ideas on how to get the game window to be resizable? Last little thing I don't know, the startup params are set to -window but this only keeps the window small during the menus, once I launch the campaign and the server is sitting in the pit of a KC-135 at Kadena, the window fills the desktop and I cannot make it small. Maybe it's different than 4.32, or maybe my Google-Fu is rusty, but I cannot find out how to adjust the window of the launched game (GFX options in game only allow 1280x720 and no other smaller options, FYI)
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Server is running smoothly and I didn't notice any loss of progress. It's like everything related to BMS: a pain to set up in the first place but once it runs, it runs beautifully ;)

Some feedback from other users might be nice however. With only 3 (!) active SAMs left and almost every airfield taken out there isn't much in terms of opposition except the occasional MIG-21s, which are usually torn apart by F4s as soon as they pop up. I overestimated the impact the 3 SQs at Kunsan make :(
I DON'T want to make it a hell hole for players but get somebody playing the campaign instead of hosting own games.

BMS seems to use the desktop resolution by default. There might be a command line parameter but couldn't find it.

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Server restarted to Day 1 - this time, to try to make it last longer, I've removed fragging from 3 total airbases: Seosan, Kunsan, and Osan.

Let me know how it goes. Will look into the desktop resolution at some point soon, but at least it doesn't effect server performance, so it can go to the back burner.
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Thank you very much for taking care of the server Semler :) :)

Haven't taken a look since the restart and not at home right now (buying an expensive kitchen doesn't mean it's well designed in terms of construction, luckily it's not mine) but will have at least a quick look later.

If everything fails we can still do "private campaigns" but share the save, as clients should be able to save online as well. It's not optimal but at least the campaign wouldn't advance so rapidly by itself. It would also account for people who prefer strong DPRK or just a different campaign setting ... we'll see.

I'll just be around and see what other people are up to ;)
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I'm getting "Kevin pending message" when attempting to connect to VG which probably means the server needs a restart ... again (has been done while I'm writing)

I've seen people committing multiple times, not deleting accidentally planned / obsolete packages and even got my flight deleted yesterday even though I already joined the plane in 2D (this shouldn't even be possible). Things like this happen all the time and guess what: it will eventually break stuff. Other communities running BMS have lengthy SOPs to ensure people don't mess things up for a reason!

You spend so much time learning about handling the F-16, why is it so hard to watch maybe one hour worth of tutorials to learn about how to properly plan, join and abort a flight? Or how about asking when things are unclear?
Either post all your questions here or feel free to ask when you see anybody on the server. BMS (as any other flight sim) is about teamwork so I'm sure people will be supportive if you just ask. Personally I'd rather have people asking questions all day long, preventing me of flying myself than having them crash the server every 24 hours.

If I see someone committing 4 times in a row, asking in chat if everything is alright and get NO response EVER there is nothing that can be done. It tells me "go way, I don't give a shit" every single time.
THAT is what brings my piss to a boil, NOT lack of experience with one of the most temperamental flight sims out there.

Finally, please ensure you connect with a BW of 300 only and restart BMS after each flight. There is an issue with desync (blue "paused" message when joining the pit, 2D map not updating) and this should take care of it.
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I just restarted it, it had crashed. This is the second time now it has happened in less than 24 hours. Not sure what is happening, but gonna need to keep a close eye on it to find out why, otherwise we'll be restarting to day one every morning like this...
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***UPDATED POST:

VG Falcon BMS Server is BACK UP from maintenance. Please review the connection guide if you plan to use IVC as the process for connecting and joining has changed: http://www.veterans-gaming.com/vg-plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?39754.last

!hi
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