Rockets and lag
 

Yesterday while playing MoHAA, I saw two players discussing whether using (many) rockets can cause 'lag'. One of them said they don't, the other one said they do, if the server is running on its limit.

Personally, I think they can cause a server to lag. For instance, consider a server that hosts 20 people. All slots are occupied. The server has just enough processing power to process the game. 5 people start using rockets. Rockets require more power, and the server begins to 'lag'. It has difficulty processing all the info.

Why do I think rockets require more power?

- Bullets arrive the instant they are fired, in MoHAA. The moment I fire my rifle, the server already 'knows' what the bullet is going to hit. As if players (opponents) are frozen in time. A rocket doesn't instantaneously reach its target. And, because the server can not determine in which direction a player will be moving, the player is not frozen in time. Keeping track of the rocket requires more power.

- A rocket splinters on the wall. The server needs to calculate what and how many possible targets take a hit.

Was the guy who said a rocket requires more processing power right? Am I right?

I think I am, because the game became less 'smooth' (it was acting up) the moment many people started using rockets, whilst my connection was the same (ping 50), and the number of people playing also remained the same.

I think what you are saying is fairly accurate. You might blame the rockets, but you could also blame the hardware for not being sufficient for the number of slots available.

Rockets will also impact your pc's fps. Same premise, more to track and render.

Then, the hardware is the issue here, if you don't want people to use rockets, disable them. Not hard to do.

My PC was (is) running fine. On most servers where they play with rockets I am not experiencing any lag whatsoever. So I guess in this case the server is to blame.

Also, what I mean with lag is not conventional lag. It feels like the server is 'choking'; i.e. it stops for very short periods of time.

Cable? 56K? Prolly just some video skip

Cable, and the connection is fine and stable under normal circumstances. Normally, no lag. A ping of ~50 is not too high.

Yeah, its more choppy than lag in a bandwidth sense. Rockets will slow your fps, but probably not enough to notice unless you are on the low end hardware wise. I dont have any problems on my current pc, but when the game first came out, it was a minor issue on the old tired pc I had.

the rockets can cause problems with lag if the server is not powerful enough