I have heard numbers up to 128, but I think that 128 players would cause so much lag that the game would become unplayable.
I think 16 or 32 will probably be the standard.

Yeah, for 128 players u will probably need an OC-3 connection and atleast Quad Xeon 2.8 GHZ and 4 GB ram for it not to lag, and i dont think that theres that many ppl on this planet that can affourd that...

It's not as much the bandwidth as it is the chatting lagging down the servers... Ive noticed servers mostly lagging before they crash, and as the lagg increases so does the chatting, and then it just goes down...

I have tested a server with 6 players, the machine running it wasn't that great either, only a Duron1300 with 384Mb of PC133. I have 256kbps upload from this server and it seemed to play lagless. The bandwidth with 5 players and an IRCd with about 30 users never reached over 7-9k/sec. My IRCd usulay only takes 1-2k/sec though.
So I would say the game probably only uses 2-3k/sec / player.
128 players may need a 2Mb SDSL line minimum, and not many people have them...

I've heard that 16 - 20 is optimal with a good connection. 32 is pushing the limits even with a super connection.

It definitely is not the connection that limits it the most. It's the CPU horsepower.

Currently at 18/18 my server is doing 3kB/s down, 10kB/s up.
With 25 players yesterday it was around 5kB/s down, 15kB/s up.

The CPU is 100% hogged with 18 players (2100+ Athlon XP).

Memory usage is not so big either, currently my server is using 70MB with 18 players.


Xan, "Gemini - Gold" Server admin
Pangalactic Gurgleblaster - Don't Panic! Thank you for all the fish

Hi Xan,

Looks like you need a cpu upgrade..

from all i have heard the technical maximum is 128 but this is not really feasible in this day and age.

16 is the recommended max.

I'm sure in the future people will be able to support 128 (but only when everybody is on t3 connections =))

kumari "Why can't we all just... get along?"