Since dogfighting is a testing module, what will you have built into the DF Module to retrieve data? Will you only have logging to file which, in case of problems, we have to send to you? Can it be turned on/off? Or do you also have an automated system to gather statistics or other info that is directly sent to you (with or without us knowing)? Or have you thought up and other way of monitoring the test?asked by Voyager_NL
TL;DRChris Roberts jokes about the NSA, then says CIG runs the servers and the game is server-authoritative, so CIG can see and track data from all battles, such as ship and weapon balance.
You mean kind of like the NSA. You know, one of the big reasons why I decided I wanted to push back the dogfighting is because I really wanted a proper test of the back-end of the system. That means we're running the servers, it's not a peer-to-peer sort of multiplayer typical kind of set-up that a lot of the first person shooter stuff could have. So the servers are our servers basically. So we get to see what's happening in every battle and we get to track metrics of this ship beats that ship while this weapon is stronger or too weak and all the rest of the stuff. So we'll have access to pretty much all the battle data because essentially the servers are run by us. Everyone else is just running a client connected to it and simulating local stuff that doesn't effect the master gameplay. But if you're playing against other people we have to be server authoritative. I think that's how we would retrieve the data, and it's far less innocuous than some other people have been retrieving data recently.