Persistence

Logging out and back in at the same place is part of the plans, and the intention is to do everything possible to return players to the same position, whatever their scenario.

Beausejour says 4.8 involved constant firefighting, including two bad check-ins that broke persistence, though the overhauled entitlement system worked well, and Lind says extra protection against such check-ins is needed.

Jens Lind says the problem came from the 4.8.1 database combined with 4.8.2 data, an environment QA doesn't have, so hiring many more QA people wouldn't have caught it.

Beausejour says ship cleanup is one thing being looked at: the system seems to work but may be misconfigured in some areas, letting ships pile up, and more entities make servers do more work.

Blueprints persist through patches but aren't permanently account-bound like event rewards and would be lost in a full wipe, except cosmetic blueprints, which stay account-bound; resource persistence issues are looking to be addressed.

Daily resets would not help because the shard reloads from persistence with the same problems, so they use detection, periodic fresh shards and occasional maintenance windows rather than a systematic reset.

Several cleanup systems have been unified into one platform with density classes, per-region tuning, lifetime cleanup, abandoned-vehicle timers and the pink-slip intersection cleanup, which are tuned every patch and are improving, though not a magic switch.

Lost ships come from the long-term persistence system being fragile, since stowing happens through many paths that don't always record correctly, and the team is still finding cases where records are wrong.

The plan is for bases, land and extraction pots, and much of their functionality, to be visible across all shards in a region, but raiding can only happen on one shard, usually the owner's if online, so players must switch shard to attack.

Crushing trees with large ships needs unfinished gameplay design plus promotion, entity management and persistence work, and it isn't planned or guaranteed, though the system should support more complex behaviour.

The item kiosks are already in the game and the back-end database work is ready, but item recovery was pulled from 3.24 and no date is given; a broader plan for purchased items is said to be coming.

Logging out of the PU into Arena Commander while your ship stays put is only an idea needing significant server meshing and persistence tech, not a plan; a standalone Arena Commander test booted in about 40 seconds.

Beausejour feels good about persistence, calling it very ambitious and praising the close collaboration between game, network and service teams with no silos.

Phil found it daunting but exciting, as a backer wanting to build QA into a department from a small base where people enjoy working.

Edward Fuller worked on updating the XenoThreat event for the persistence changes, and the team describes persistence as a fundamental change that complicates development and debugging, with mission persistence not properly in 3.18.

Persistence stays per server before server meshing, but items stowed in inventory can be carried to another server; no matchmaking changes are planned for this version, though crashed players get a reserved slot for a limited time.

Unstowed ships persist in their shard until stowed, but a landed ship that logs out is planned to be auto-stowed if no players are nearby, though one left behind and destroyed could mean waking in a med bed.

No, assets can't cross shards unless stowed in an inventory first, and within a shard, entities like missiles can span server nodes while bullets are spawned separately on each client and node.

No shard count can be given; the plan is to start with many persistent shards that mimic current behavior, measure their metrics, then gradually reduce shard numbers toward very large shards once the dynamic mesh exists.

A wipe will definitely come at some point, but not every patch, since keeping progress lets them test long mid-game systems and gather data to rebalance before progress becomes permanent.

The "i" in icache stands for item, not Ignite; the icache service is largely custom-written, though the wider backend uses open-source technology and may move parts to a cloud-native architecture.

They want hackers for hire to clear others' CrimeStats but can't yet, because meshed servers and persistence make editing offline players hard; the new hacking database lets you hack individual crimes.

The unclaimable ship bug is fixed and should be in the next PTU publish for the patch, because the game server now falls back to a pristine ship loadout if a customized one can't be retrieved.

Few gameplay features depend on SSOCS; it mainly lets them scale and add content, and its foundations like Global Persistence could enable future development, while teams must spend time making their features work with it.

The underlying systems for persisting settings locally or in the player account already exist, but it's up to each feature team to prioritise it, so it's not committed, though Jared Huckaby thinks the chances are good.

Physical inventory is the intended direction, with items carried on the player or stored in owned ships and locations, but it depends on global persistence and server streaming work, and fine details are still undecided.

Cargo dropped outside a ship is cleaned up after a while and only visible in the same instance, while cargo left in your ship persists, with better persistence only being explored and not promised.

Insurance is still being tuned, with prices expected to be adjusted once more players generate claim data; a recent terminal-crash bug is being fixed, and the expedite price formula was worked out between design and code.

Yes, the game tracks legal ownership (bought or given) separately from physical possession, which blocks certain actions, such as spawning a stolen item or claiming insurance on it, depending on which you have.

Player ship dirt, litter and decoration are something they'd like and will push for, but not right now; the Flowgraph part is easy and storing the data on the server is the tricky bit.

Color variations are definitely coming and already visible in the RSI flight suit; CryEngine supports layer color changes, so the remaining work is an in-game interface and persistence.

Living spaces act as a save point away from planets and add light roleplaying detail such as sleeping, eating and coffee, possibly with small boosts, without heavy survival mechanics.

Components bought with UEC or real money will carry over into the PU, though items may still be rebalanced, while any temporary currency would be wiped.

Chris Roberts says they want players to be able to name their ships, which is not necessarily in 2.0, and that tuning a ship's setup, such as component overclocking, may give a reason to keep it; no other specific incentives are confirmed.

Beds may act as a save point in space, and toilets and showers could be a light-weight way to give needs like sleep, eating and hygiene small effects on performance or NPC reactions, short of full life simulation.

Chris admits this isn't worked out and gives an off-the-cuff view that the 890 could be left in orbit, mostly safe if defended, but possibly jacked if left undefended.

Chris Roberts delayed the Dogfighting Module so it could integrate with the new back-end and hangar, and says there will definitely be a chat channel between them, including with friends and organizations.

The patch adds client-side persistence as a first step: changes to the ship or hangar are saved locally, with more use planned and a step toward full persistence.