Questions about my sheep farm.

[Inertpyro Profile]

It has been brought to attention by Asim0v that my sheep farm is too large for the current entity limits (100). My current farm is about 800 sheep, probably more because its spread over a couple chunks. I spoke to Vantes and he brought up that since the change to spigot the server is running really well. Currently at my sheep farm with 14 people loged on the TPS is at a full 20 TPS. Ive checked with more people on and it doesnt seem to effect it much. If anything is effect me on my side with all the rendering.

It should be noted that my farm is in a remote section of the map that is only loaded when me and Geo131313 are shearing sheep. Also I have only recently really expended my farm, before spigot it was less that 400 and I would not vist there if the lag was too bad.

For now I have cut my farm in half and would like input from the mods and other members about raising the limits. As of now this is the only way I can keep up with supplying wool at my current price, I on average probably sell at least a double chest or two per day. At 100 sheep I could never keep up, even at 800 its still a daily task. I will also consider creating multiple farm that are in separate chunks if people think that would an alternate solution.

I would also like to add this quote from a recent post from Curley about a public chicken farm:

I haven't delved too deeply into spigots mob and general entity limiters. Currently all the configs I have control over are on default and working pretty darn good in my opinion. If needed I will look further into it. In regard to server hurt from mobs, as far as I understand the dumb animals are pretty easy for spigot to model as things like chickens and sheep just kinda auto derp around, the entities that cause Server pain are the smart path finding mobs like zombies and skele's as the server has to model them , players around and the path finding ai. Lots of chickens shouldn't be a problem for spigots performance BUT that being said, as others have brought up here, there's other issues. Entity caps are server wide so if you cap a world entity limit with chickens you block someone else's experience elsewhere being able to have normal gameplay with like mobs attacking them. Spigot seems better than bukkit at dynamically adjusting spawns to help this but there's still an impact if someone leaves their grinder on. Also server performance is much different than client performance. While the server could prolly easily model 5000 chickens. And players with a less then ideal machine would probably drop to 1 fps when they got close at all (and then blame me for lag^_^)

Tldr, we have no crazy rules about what you can and can't build regarding entities but we will start if things become an issue, do your research and understand your builds impact on others and play smart.

Thanks,
Inertpyro

[SkyerCorp Profile]

Rule 9 specifically states that the entity limit is in place to limit lag. Lag alone is the reason for the limit. It is reasonable to think, now that the server is using better technology, that a new limit should be interpolated.

I think it would be generous if the mods granted a trial period for allowing higher entity limits. There must be the understanding that, in the end, the entity limit that best suits all players would end up winning.

[Inertpyro Profile]

Thanks for the input.

Also what chunks are loaded when your around. Ie: is say 1 chunk in all direction loaded or only the chunk your currently in loaded? And if you walk out of a chunk does that still stay loaded for a certain time? If I figured out the boarder of a chunk (coordinates/16) could I fill the entity limit of that and make a nether one next to it or one chunk away?

[PosterAnonymous Profile]

Here's the problem: You have 800 sheep in your farm. Let's say I see your farm, exclaim "i MUST HAZ 1 2!!!1!", and run to an area that's unpopulated and build my 800-sheep farm. Now lets say Goobler, who is a Goobnesian and always steals my ideas because I'm awesome, sees my farm and decides to make an 800-sheep farm himself. Let's say 2 more players see this and decide to make their own farms as well.

We would then have 5x 800-sheep farms on the server on top of the smaller farms that all the other players on this server have. Let's say 20 players, including the 5 owners in their respective farms, are all on the server at the same time. Each player is in a different chunk from the other. That's 20 sets of entities that have to be loaded. So, 15 players with their entities PLUS 5 players with 800 sheep each. I don't care if it's Spigot or not, that's going to make for one low TPS.

I think upping the limit is a bad idea. The server was slow before and is running MUCH smoother now because of Spigot. Why bring the quality of play back down to what it was before Spigot by upping the allowed entity limit? In the end, the only justification is "I don't want it to take so long to get my wool/leather/etc." Impatience is a weak argument at best.

[Inertpyro Profile]

Here's the problem: You have 800 sheep in your farm. Let's say I see your farm, exclaim "i MUST HAZ 1 2!!!1!", and run to an area that's unpopulated and build my 800-sheep farm. Now lets say Goobler, who is a Goobnesian and always steals my ideas because I'm awesome, sees my farm and decides to make an 800-sheep farm himself. Let's say 2 more players see this and decide to make their own farms as well.

We would then have 5x 800-sheep farms on the server on top of the smaller farms that all the other players on this server have. Let's say 20 players, including the 5 owners in their respective farms, are all on the server at the same time. Each player is in a different chunk from the other. That's 20 sets of entities that have to be loaded. So, 15 players with their entities PLUS 5 players with 800 sheep each. I don't care if it's Spigot or not, that's going to make for one low TPS.

I think upping the limit is a bad idea. The server was slow before and is running MUCH smoother now because of Spigot. Why bring the quality of play back down to what it was before Spigot by upping the allowed entity limit? In the end, the only justification is "I don't want it to take so long to get my wool/leather/etc." Impatience is a weak argument at best.

You make a fair enough argument. Thats way I made the suggestion of keeping a limit but spreading my farm out underground so its not all loaded at once; only the allotted number of entities would be loaded at a give time. I agree impatience is a weak argument but at the same time I would have to constantly be shearing sheep all day to keep up with how much I sell, not to mention having to wait for them to grow it back.

[VanteS]

Just read this post, so to be clear, Asim0v and I discussed your sheep farm and agreed that your sheep farm was way over the limit and that you should lower your entity count. Current rule is 100 entities in a farm.

There has been some discussion on raising the entity limit and that is why I suggested making a forum post to discuss perhaps relaxing the entity limits now that spigot has worked so well for the server.

Upping the entity counts a bit may not be a bad idea but there should be further discussion with the community and the mods before any rule change occurs.

So far I completely agree with Poster's post on the subject, heh.

Also spreading out your sheep pens over multiple chunks is not a bad idea. You get to keep the amount of sheep you have and they aren't all being rendered at the same time thus preventing server strain.

Hope this helps,

Vantes

[Inertpyro Profile]

Currently I am working on my new farm that is spread over a grid of 49 chunks, 16 of which are sheep. So it should limit how many are rendered at one time. You and the other mods are free to take a look at it if you would like. I probably won't populate it untill I've finished building it out.

[PosterAnonymous Profile]

... at the same time I would have to constantly be shearing sheep all day to keep up with how much I sell, not to mention having to wait for them to grow it back.

Why not hire other players on the server to harvest the wool for you when you're offline? Pay a modest, negotiated salary (X coins per stack, chest, etc.) and grant them access to your farm. There are at least a handful of players on until the wee hours of the AM PST that would be willing to make a few extra coins on the side. Sounds like a good economy-building project to me...

[Inertpyro Profile]

Could do that. I plan on also adding sell signs to my shop to do sort of the same thing. Also I am already splitting what I make with geo so splitting it up more doesn't really make it worth it. I'll see how my sell signs work and go from there.

[PosterAnonymous Profile]

Sell signs would make it more convenient and is basically the same thing, yes. Maybe you could charge a small fee to grant them access to the area? That way, you get them coming and going...

[Inertpyro Profile]

A fee could work, its kind of out of the way but if people really wanted to I guess they would come. I do have a private rail line to it from our Hyrule location.

[Goobler Profile]

Sell signs would make it more convenient and is basically the same thing, yes. Maybe you could charge a small fee to grant them access to the area? That way, you get them coming and going...

The People watch you PA, just know that.

[abigail Profile]

buy shears x coins
sell white wool x coins a stack

since shears wear away is there a point to buying them back in this case?

[Inertpyro Profile]

buy shears x coins
sell white wool x coins a stack

since shears wear away is there a point to buying them back in this case?

Yeah shears wear pretty fast. Ill burn through a few going through my sheep. I will have to look into setting up some sort of a pay to shear center. Maybe a 20c entrance fee like most grinders, maybe more since your able to sell what your gathering.