=VG= Acro1

Recently the !admins command was stripped from all but Head Admins. While the reasoning behind this clear, many admins raise the question as to why exactly this was done. It was a way for both =VG= and community admins to always know how many admins were in the server and most importantly, to notice new admin names in-game.

 

As stated in the Admin instructions that everyone has to  read upon getting admin rights, admins are required to talk with each other to set next maps etc.  Why then do we get stripped of the one thing that lets us see admins directly in-game? I hate to think of admins as solo police officers, not being part of a team as a whole. I know most admin names by heart but without !admins I would not have known asquirrel or StormHawk10 before much, much later, with all the risks of mistaking a problem-fixing admin for a badly behaving/rule-breaking player.

Our aim is to keep the server healthy, the players happy, and to make sure everyone follows the rules. =VG= is and will probably remain my all-time favourite server because of the regulars and playstyle. I get a huge pleasure from making sure everyone is having a good time and our player counter is high. The biggest reward for any day of being an admin is simply seeing people work together and having fun. To be at our top game of admining, it's a good thing to know who is who, and to know there's another admin who can deal with the issue when one is preoccupied.

 

Is there a bigger reasoning behind this change that we are missing?

Thanks for your answer.

 

Have a great day!

Acro

You're a good player, as you've proven yesterday over several rounds in my squad. As mentioned before by others, =VG= does not actively recruit admins. Just play at your best, report those who break rules and do your best to spread a 'good player' attitude. Watch the forums regularly and join TS when you're playing.

 

See you soon man! Nice to have you!

11 hours ago, =VG= SemlerPDX said:

The missing details are mentioned in another post here: Good server - bad PR software

The company we are currently with is one of those that offer the greatest uptime and specs for the most reasonable price (less than $100 US monthly) -- and we also would experience wait times with a fully managed server which would cost tons more.  But I will be minimizing the tech support wait times on our own server for certain things as I am able since some of the others are less available than I am at present.  I will learn what I have to, at times even I will have to wait for a reply to a question from one of the others, or learn it myself online, which will take time -- time I am willing to devote to VG to keep the power in our hands to run our own servers and to do so in a fiscally responsible manner at the same time.

*also, we are not overloading our available CPU cores, though we cannot open any other servers if we want to keep respecting that capacity.  PR has it's own dedicated cores on the i7 - and the rest of the server does not run near 100%.  The new server we will eventually get from the same company (intel Skylake CPU, same price/month!!) will increase that capacity, but cannot be expected to fix bugs or issues within the PR software itself.  Stability issues are noted to be software (PR) and not server hardware.  Please don't confuse the two, it's a common mistake. No worries.

I've just returned from a week vacation, and it is one of those times when one realizes how much they actually do - several areas of VG needed some love.  And I love VG, so I'll be doing more and more.  But I cannot fix core engine code issues in PR COOP -- again, read that other post linked above.  Thx

Cheers for that Sem! I knew PR didn't have the greatest and most stable code but had no idea it was this bad...

 

That's an amazing price too ! Did you make them sign at gunpoint or something?

Ahh, then I misunderstood the work that was being done :).

 

Still it bleeds to see the server so lowly populated and people confused as to what's happening.

I have noticed that people's faith in the PRCOOP server is declining due to recent errors. What feeds this tremendously is a lack of communication about these problems and the efforts that are being made to solve them.

 

Recently the PRCOOP server has been crashing more oftenly and severely than before. A short time ago the server was crashing pretty much at the 2nd map in the list. This issue has now been resolved but more and more times does the server crash and stay down for several hours until the VGeniuses can jumpstart it. This caused people to have a lesser image of our server than before.

 

Semler and the other geeks are now working on a more stable server. Nobody knows about this though, and to the general pop it just seems like the VG server is unstable, unreliable and VG isn't doing jack shit about it.

 

Could someone make a forum/blog/sticky thread somewhere on the Main Page to advertise the fact that the server is being worked on? So that people are aware that it might crash more oftenly or be on without Mumble sometimes but this is for the good of later?

 

This will create a much better image of VG and the servers. In my experience, admins right now have to answer questions of players the entire time, and not even all admins know what is going on.

 

Input and comments appreciated, as always :).

Thanks for the effort Sem! People were exhilarated (did I spell that right?) when it came back on!

 

Now without intention to dis, but "powerful, affordable and stable"? Clearly something is not right if a server crashes so oftenly. Is it overloaded with too many game servers perhaps?

 

Also, as Blud mentioned, the VG members can only dedicate their free time to maintaining the server, which unavoidably leads to 'dark hours' when nobody can interfere with any technical server issue. I dont know where the server box is or who controls it but many companies offer great uptime and specs for a reasonable price,within the monthly amount of donations that are currently received.

 

If I'm missing a detail that makes this whole point bullshit, then let me know ;).

1 hour ago, =VG= BLuDKLoT said:

Savage, Solar, Poff, Ciro, are the geek squad. Not sure where they are these days man. I'm looking into other options atm in relocating and moving the site and servers to something like alphanetworks with tech support cus I know it's frustrating having to reply on people to rescue the servers, but only when they have the free time, so makes shit hard for the community when it's technical stuff. Sorry guys. 

I just went on their site and it appears Alpha Networks is no longer active...

 

Nuclear Fallout has nodes in Germany though. Interesting?

This tool looks amazing on many levels. This amount of detail gives you so much information on rule violations etc...

 

Huge fan. I'm in favour of contacting them .

Hey all.

 

For both videomaking and admin purposes, having a PRbot available to us would be a good thing. On some old servers that I admined (some will remember =RW=) we had PRbots for admins only. Is that a thing we want to look into? I see many benefits.

 

If there's a really good reason why we should never ever have them or are unable to, please comment!

 

Thanks!

Acro

Personally when I'm leading an APC squad I have no problem giving one of my assets to Mech Inf for the sake of good teamplay, IF and only IF I know the other SL to be a good and cautious teamplayer. If they fuck up, they just dont get an APC again. Period. This is why the asset-claiming hierarchy is important.

 

An issue with Mech Inf squads, in my experience, is that they tend to use the Mech as a shield.  They position the APC in front of them to protect the infantry but putting the APC at risk. Obviously this isnt always the case, but still more often than should be good.

 

Though I agree that sometimes APC's tend to fight their own battles, it mainly depends on the Squad leader. Many good APC leaders will assign their vehicles to guard a squad or provide cover from a distance.

If someone in your squad does not follow orders, resulting in a disruption of 'team-flow', just kick them out.

I've kicked plenty of pilots and drivers out of my squad for not listening and flying off to do their own thing, endangering the asset in the process.

 

This is PR. You play for your team. COOP may be 'training' to some but teamplay is the most important trait one should posses and train.

 If your SL says to guard a crossing, there's a reason. If he says DONT FLY OVER DAM, there's a reason.  Imo, APC squads should still prioritize over Mech Inf so that it's always clear who has power over the assets.

Recon I wanna give you a hot tub full of blackjack and hookers for that reply :). Thank you A LOT for confirming what I thought and have been enforcing.

 

The main problem  is that not all players and not all admins know about the specifications you provided. Can we maybe stick this thread or put the detailed squad asset claiming rule into the coop server rules page?

Trans Inf is one of those squads that just doesn't fit into PR. With the recent talks about how a team in PR should work together as a team, this seems like one of the things that should be given some thought. IMO this should be an official rule.

 

TL;DR:

Mech Inf (2 APC crew + 6 inf) is a plausible combo squad for which we established a rule. On the other hand, Trans Helos/Tanks/AntiAir should be available to support the entire team. Having a private pilot for your squad is like playing Vanilla BF2 where nobody cared about another squad's needs.

 

Reasons to not allow Trans Infantry, Anti-Air infantry, etc:

1) Non-optimal functioning of an asset due to private piloting or disregarding other SL's requests.

2) Assets remain unused after respawn because the pilot decides to do field infantry work after dying.

3) Tensions between legitimate Trans/ Tank/... squads and Trans Inf/ Armor Inf because both claim to have the right to a vehicle.

4) 'Squad Mingling' leads to more Vanilla-like playstyle with less desire for teamwork.

5) Great tendency to park air assets near capzones, going inf and switching back to pilot kit. This brings a huge risk of losing the asset.

 

Opinions greatly appreciated, as always ;).

Most admins already punish unresponsive squad leaders if their incompetence hurts general flow of the round, eg. completely unresponsive asset squad leaders or an entire inf squad requesting the resignation of their SL for not doing his job.

!banid?

?

Its in the game, I just wonder if it effectively bans by name

I remember you talking about your brother coming in and teamkilling. Please tell him to behave on VG or shoot us a post on the forums to warn for his behaviour. Together with the server admins we can then?come to a solution.?You aren't a bad player and I certainly don't want you to stay banned. The admin who banned him (and therefore you) was most definitely not targeting you.

Let's unban Golden-Eagle, even if it means unbanning his TKing brother too, and work towards a solution that keeps Golden-Eagle in the game.

Thanks for posting on VG bro!

?

Acro1

PR Community Aministrator

Could we perhaps have an update for the rules, anno 2016? Some of the stuff is outdated, e.g. locked squads are actually allowed now given a few criteria.

Also, players are sometimes confused as to the priority of their squad

Mech inf vs APC
Tank vs APC vs Armor
who gets the asset?
Are BRDM's considered armor? (officiously yes)


Do we just adapt the Deployment rules, which already look like the ones we are enforcing now?

A concrete update of the rules can avoid a lot of confusion in the future and help admins to have a better and less ambiguous reference.

Thoughts?

Nasty looking stuff :O! What did you hit? Hope you're okay man. Volunteer for the RoboCop project if they ask you.

The first time I noticed was the 3-man Trans squad completely dissapearing, followed by a few guys of my squad about 30 seconds later. We were in a helicopter at that time.

Hello,

I was playing on the VG server on May 05, 2016 at around 3 AM

Suddenly people were getting DCed by masses. A full trans squad, then 3 from my own squad, and more.

It's definitely server- or connection related, as they all dropped at exactly the same moment.

Any word on server maintenance or issues?

Thanks!
Acro
PRCOOP Lite Admin