DedCon servers

[KingAl]

In-game said 'majority kick vote' could be dangerous, but before entry I don't see any good reason not to have it - the owner of the server can't always be around to assign responsibility, and chances are either that the majority are idiots, in which case people won't want to play with them anyway, or that the player is a griefer.
Also, server owners can already assign admin powers to specific key IDs, which is one fix, albeit not the ideal.

[bert_the_turtle]

Yeah, kick votes or even giving the first player who connects moderator rights are potentially dangerous. Kick votes could lead to lynch mob justice where, say, Pater Punishment gets kicked on sight. A better solution is to have the server admin a) ban griefers and b) look for frequent players and give them moderation rights. Moderator rights are so limited by default that almost every non-griefer qualifies for them. That's a cultural thing and will need some time to evolve.

In the meantime, I'll find something to do against this specific form of abuse. It should be possible to just overrule players that refuse to ready up.

Edit: my connection seems to have recovered.

[keger]

Just wondering if all dedcon server owners would be so kind to post here. It would be nice to have a quick overview of the number of dedcon servers running, and what modes are essentially offered by all of us, and what hardware/OSes we're using all.

Tell us the number of servers you are running, perhaps some info on their configuration and connectivity, and obviously, what modes you are offering.

Me and a friend (e-t172) are running two dedcon servers :
AKE Group | Server #1 | Diplomacy 24/7
AKE Group | Server #2 | Default 24/7

Rules on both :
- minimum 6 players to start a game
- random terr
- default settings (100 pop, default cities, default timer, ...)

The only difference is the game mode (hence the server name).

Both are running 24/7 on a 100 Mbps dedicated connection.
The server is a P4 HT 3.00 Ghz w/ 1 GB DDR and is located in Paris, France (but US people shouldn't have any lag problem).

Dedcon version is the latest (we often check the dedcon page so that the server can always be up-to-date).

It seems these servers are quite popular, so there may be more coming (just need to buy another key and to think about what other gamemode people want).
We also have some nice secret ideas to make the servers more attractive, but that may take some time We'll keep you posted

[Ace Rimmer]

I'm wondering if it's possible to change the color of the Dedcons when they're listed. Like red is incompatible, perhaps yellow for Dedcons?

[Xocrates]

I'm wondering if it's possible to change the color of the Dedcons when they're listed. Like red is incompatible, perhaps yellow for Dedcons?

Yellow is for mods. Green appears to be to games hosted by you or in your network or something like that. Maybe orange?

[xander]

I'm wondering if it's possible to change the color of the Dedcons when they're listed. Like red is incompatible, perhaps yellow for Dedcons?

Yellow is for essential mods enabled. Green is for a local game. Red for incompatible. Blue for started. Grey for full. White for open, not started. I think that we already have an abundance of colors. would it be possible for all DedCon admins to put a [DEDCON] at the beginning of the game name? Or for you, bert, to hardwire that in?

xander

[bert_the_turtle]

Hardwiring something like that would limit the possible naming choices, the space in the box already is pretty tight. There is talk about giving DedCon servers special versions; you'll only see them in the details window, but IMHO that's where the information belongs.

[torig]

I was in your Orgazmo dedicated last night and a player took a seat and refused to click ready when we were full. He started insulting everyone and we used the /ignore feature. The moron began communicating through name changes and he effictively crippled the game since he refused to ready up or leave. We need a /kick command. Either the first to enter will "rule" the server or a majority /kick vote...

I trust you enough to give you moderator privs on the orgazmo server
I'll set that up tonight when I'm at home.

Also, I thought I saw something in the options which could auto-kick (or auto-ready) the player in such a scenario. I'll have a look at that, too.
(and thanks for the heads-up ; I'll investigate the logs and ban the key he was using).

edit: as per the above, the ready-griefing isn't counterable yet. bert's looking into it apparently, but still I'll implement a keyid ban & grant you mod status Radiant.

[bert_the_turtle]

By request, I'm switching over two of my demo mode servers to be reserved for duels among forum members or at least forum readers The server names are "DedCon Test Duel 1" and "DedCon Test Duel 2" and they are password protected, password is "murof". Settings are at default, of course, no random territories; just don't select a territory if you want it to be random. There is no limited slowdown budget.

I'm bending the rules here a bit, normally demo mode servers can't be password protected, but apparently the metaserver doesn't mind It does notice when a demo mode server claims to be open to more than two players.

[PSBirch]

Yeah, kick votes or even giving the first player who connects moderator rights are potentially dangerous.
In the meantime, I'll find something to do against this specific form of abuse. It should be possible to just overrule players that refuse to ready up.

The worst form of abuse I've found are those people who force real-time on the other players. It's only happened a couple of times to me, but it completely ruins a game when it happens.

[Ace Rimmer]

By request, I'm switching over two of my demo mode servers to be reserved for duels among forum members or at least forum readers The server names are "DedCon Test Duel 1" and "DedCon Test Duel 2" and they are password protected, password is "murof". Settings are at default, of course, no random territories; just don't select a territory if you want it to be random. There is no limited slowdown budget.

I'm bending the rules here a bit, normally demo mode servers can't be password protected, but apparently the metaserver doesn't mind It does notice when a demo mode server claims to be open to more than two players.

Hallelujah! Thanks again bert!

[torig]

My 3 dedcons are all running version 0.8 as of now.

What's new and configured:
- kick voting. Should anyone be annoyingly annoying, just issue /kick . If the others agree, the griefer will be kicked. (NEW)
3 consecutive kicks mean an automatic ban on the server. (was like this, but only for kicks an admin/owner made)
- slow-down budgets. As to not fuck up anything or put users through trial-and-error sessions, I'm using the same settings as bert is on his other dedcons. People seem to like those.
Complaints should go to me, of course
- banned an identified abuser (out of my logs)
- Silently banned a number of people that were banned on other dedcon servers too. I trust the dedcon server owner(s) I got the banlist(s) from ; fsck with him/them, fsck with me
(The "You're not from around here" /"We don't want your kind here" type of logic ).
For most of them, I only have a keyID, so I don't even know who I'm banning. But with such behaviour, I'm not really interested in getting to know them.
- recordings. Games on all 3 dedcons will be recorded. I'll update this post once I've set up the auto-sharing of the recording files, which may take me a few days. The files will be timestamped so take note if you want to review a game once the recordings are available.
- MaxPacketLoss reduced from 30 to 25, after an interesting discussion I had with bert. Players with more than 25% of packet loss will only be allowed to spectate. If you experience this, contact me so we can troubleshoot the issue. If it's "on my end" (near the server) I can always poke the data centre helpdesk.
- Found a stupid error in my config limiting bandwith being used. Bandwith has now been "capped" at 50Mbit/s PER server. So if all of them WOULD be able to fill that up, I'd be in trouble. It's nigh impossible that 3 servers will produce this effect. Perhaps the increase in TotalBandwith can make things a bit smoother for everyone, connecting and synching, though.

I've cleaned up my logging and turned on the new logging options provided by 0.8, so I should be able to follow up things a bit more.

As per usual: any griefing, any lag, any requests, anything....PM me.
Thanks for testing these new servers out people

[Feud]

By request, I'm switching over two of my demo mode servers to be reserved for duels among forum members or at least forum readers The server names are "DedCon Test Duel 1" and "DedCon Test Duel 2" and they are password protected, password is "murof". Settings are at default, of course, no random territories; just don't select a territory if you want it to be random. There is no limited slowdown budget.

I'm bending the rules here a bit, normally demo mode servers can't be password protected, but apparently the metaserver doesn't mind It does notice when a demo mode server claims to be open to more than two players.

i would suggest that a thread be made with this info, so that it's easier to track down when needed.

[bert_the_turtle]

Dunno, a separate thread would get buried fast, and you can find the post by a straightforward search for "Dual" and "pasword" (creative misspelling so this post doesn't show up in that search ) showing posts instead of threads, and the password is also on this page: http://dedcon.homelinux.net:8000/dedcon/wiki/ServerList

[torig]

i would suggest that a thread be made with this info, so that it's easier to track down when needed.

Well, I created this thread to share dedcon info amongst dedcon owners, but also to the user base of course.
And it's best to post stuff like that in a few topics. Like I spam my 2v2 thread regularly with updates about that server ; this one and perhaps 1 or 2 other ones

On a side-note: setting the bandwith to 50Mbit/s "maximum" has a _real_ measurable effect
Never synched up a game so fast as last night (or heavy observer bias is occuring, but at some point in the network tool I saw the server sending at 55kb/s )