74 replies to this topic

[martino2k6]

Malzel, on 09 December 2013 - 07:13 AM, said:

If it existed, the 1st RDR would most likely switch over. The total cost of the server and our expected contributions to it would be the largest deciding factor, but as long as that's reasonable, supporting the FRR community is one of our largest goals, so we'd want to be involved.

The good news is, a VPS server is a much cheaper option. I can start an instance off with $5/month which I will happily cover myself (I'm also eager to learn about setting up a VPS so more than happy to do it!), and scaling up to the next one is $10 for which I'd probably start crowd-funding. We'd most likely need the $10 for 100-200 users, but we'll see this based on the usage. Safe to say, I'm currently in the process of getting these things set up while I wait for builds at work to complete.

[MnDragon]

I have recently upgraded my computer and now find myself in possession of a spare mobo, processor and video card. With that said, I would be willing to scrounge for the remaining parts to host a server. (I have fios with a 75MBps/50MBps stream) but wouldn't know how much processing power it would require. If someone a little more server savvy would be willing to give me an idea, I could build a rig that I could dedicate full time to a server. (trying to keep costs extremely low as I am poor lol) I humbly offer my services, should I be able to.

[martino2k6]

MnDragon, on 09 December 2013 - 08:20 AM, said:

I have recently upgraded my computer and now find myself in possession of a spare mobo, processor and video card. With that said, I would be willing to scrounge for the remaining parts to host a server. (I have fios with a 75MBps/50MBps stream) but wouldn't know how much processing power it would require. If someone a little more server savvy would be willing to give me an idea, I could build a rig that I could dedicate full time to a server. (trying to keep costs extremely low as I am poor lol) I humbly offer my services, should I be able to.

A TS3 server doesn't require many CPU/RAM resources. A 1GHz/512MB machine should be fine, as long as you don't plan on doing anything taxing on it while the server is running. The problem is the network traffic, which can climb up a lot.

I'm perfectly happy with setting up the VPS solution though, as it actually comes rather cheap and it should be a more reliable and permanent solution.

[Jarl Dane]

fluffypinkbunny, on 30 November 2013 - 10:39 AM, said:

Sor is a MERC unit, we don't FLY the FRR banner...

We should probably restrict it to units that "fly the FRR banner".

[martino2k6]

Mech The Dane, on 09 December 2013 - 01:49 PM, said:

We should probably restrict it to units that "fly the FRR banner".

I think we could allow merc units affiliated with the FRR to also make this hub their home. The more the merrier I would say. Any strong objections?

Progress is going fine. The server is running, and my TS3 client is connected to it. Currently just securing it to make sure it doesn't fall over and so that it won't be easy to gain illegal access to it. Applying for the non-profit license will be the next step, although this looks more laborious than I initially thought. I'll have to throw up some basic page on the webserver for the TS3 folks in order to get approval, so getting webhosting working is my current goal.

Edited by martino2k6, 09 December 2013 - 01:56 PM.

[Sarsaparilla Kid]

Yar! Thanks, Martino2k6! This was an idea whose time had come...plenty of discussion for the better part of a year, and now you've stepped up to make it happen...much appreciated! If there's a way to directly pay the VPS host to build up credit on the account, or if there isn't and we can reimburse you directly, let us know, so that you're not out both time and money.

[martino2k6]

Sarsaparilla Kid, on 09 December 2013 - 02:04 PM, said:

Yar! Thanks, Martino2k6! This was an idea whose time had come...plenty of discussion for the better part of a year, and now you've stepped up to make it happen...much appreciated! If there's a way to directly pay the VPS host to build up credit on the account, or if there isn't and we can reimburse you directly, let us know, so that you're not out both time and money.

Thanks! I'm happy to be doing this as I'm learning something in the process and improving on something that I've never liked about the FRR since the start; the fact that we're all over the place. I've put in $20 into a PayPal account that I set up as a pot for paying the VPS hosting. This should be enough for the next 2-3 months, and so far I don't have any issues with paying for it myself. However if more people will feel strongly that they would like to reimburse the costs then I may open it up. By costs I mean costs for the service, not for my time. If I'd ever want people to contribute to the cost then it would be only for the service(s) that we would be using for the hub. I'd also need to specify details on which provider and plan is being used so you guys wouldn't feel that I'm trying to gain something from this. Anyway... those details are for later!

Address: 162.243.232.211:9725
password: Dragon

It's basic for now, I warned you First I'll get the license and then we'll work on fleshing out the channels, but for now 32 people can join if they wish to try it out. You should be allowed to talk in 'General', but not the 'Entry Zone'.

[Journeyman]

martino2k6, on 09 December 2013 - 03:26 AM, said:

Since I'm going to look at this in more detail, would you be able to provide any numbers of how much up/down network transfer did you use on a monthly basis and for how many users? Many services offer different packages based on the network transfer amount, so I wouldn't want to be looking for something that's far off from what we would require (RAM and CPU shouldn't be of much concern unless we would want to also put websites/forums there). Thanks

We are currently using a Comcast cable service capable of over 50Mps up and 10Mps down. Our standard users are anywhere between 40-60 on an average night but we have peaked at well over 100. Things started getting shakey at the top because we set all our channels to maximum quality and allow avatars and such. We've since revised quality to make sure we're stable but the experience told us we needed to begin planning for the future. The VPS we are considering is more expensive than the one you found but my IT counterpart did a lot of research and calculations as well as some load testing on our server, and he determined it would be the best way for future-proofing us for a while.

I saw a comment about mercs...Peiper is the CO of a primary merccorp affiliated with our House. To us, it is important to be inclusionary of them and not be too restrictive. We offer our space to "House units, House-loyal mercs, and House-friendly others". We have our Davion bretheren to consider as well. Not to say that is the approach you should take, but it's the road we took given our options and it has been a positive experience.

[Peiper]

Sarsaparilla Kid, on 08 December 2013 - 05:26 PM, said:

Even if some FRR units wanted to maintain their own voice comm server for official practices and such, I would think that at other times when they are just hanging out and dropping for fun, that they would benefit from doing so on an FRR-centric hub as they have the potential of gaining new recruits from pilots that wander in after reading about the hub on the forums or hearing about it from other FRR pilots. Like it or not, the FRR border planets are not going to be won or lost by the efforts of one or two of our larger units, but by the combined efforts of all pilots wearing the FRR badge during the period that a planet is in contention. There are a lot of pilots out there that haven't committed, as evidenced by their Lone Wolf badge in drops, but if you factor them out, the ones that actually wear an FRR badge are fewer and farther between compared to Steiner, Davion or Marik. We would be wise to have an FRR hub and make it well known to the community before Community Warfare arrives, else the numbers could continue to increase against us as the Lone Wolves choose one of the other more organized factions.

You know, the Devil Dogs are a mercenary corporation run out of House Steiner. Some guys that come into the hub want to be in house unit, and some mercs, but I'll tell ya what: most who come in have only the vaguest ideas of lore, houses, clans, etc... When it comes down to it, 95% of the guys who wander into our teamspeak are #1 most importantly concerned with just finding other guys to play with. The Devil Dogs pick up some of the guys who come in based mostly on personality matches. They feel welcome, have a great time, and join us simply because of those two reasons. I think you'll have the same experience if you start up your hub. Guys think: oh, space vikings! I want to be a space viking. They don't know anything about the clan invasion, the future Clan Ghost Bear/FRR fusion or whatever. They know only what they saw in the generic descriptions in the faction description page here on MWO. Most of the lore junkies out there found their units last year. The new batch of players are new to the game overall.

My point is, the flag they fly when lone wolves are playing mean very little to most of them. The flag I fly doesn't mean much to me because my loyalties are to the PEOPLE I play with, rather than the colors we fly. You build your FRR Hub and they will come! And when you do, make sure you get the teamspeak pinned in the FRR forum page so people know they can come and find some more space vikings to play with!

[Jaxwen]

We would use it if it was being used by other units AND individuals who are interested in supporting FRR in CW or RP. Would want it to be accessible like NGNG and Comstar servers so that potential recruits could easily find FRR units to learn, get to know us.

[Jaxwen]

Restricting to FRR flagged players only? To what benefit?

Edited by Jaxwen, 09 December 2013 - 05:49 PM.

[Abivard]

The FRR hub should be targeting those who are or wish to be aligned with the FRR/Space Vikings.

Only units with a strong FRR or Nordic-space-Viking connection should be allowed to have their own unit channels as well as recruitment rights.

It does not need to replace private unit servers, but to supplement and enhance our ability to present a United FRR faction to the player base. Open the FRR HUB on another tab in TS, if your unit doesn't have a full lance on your units TS server, well, why not hook up with other FRR inclined players?

Where better to do that than on a dedicated FRR HUB? Do we really want to recruit for the Snakes or worse, the clammers?

[martino2k6]

Journeyman, on 09 December 2013 - 03:23 PM, said:

I saw a comment about mercs...Peiper is the CO of a primary merccorp affiliated with our House. To us, it is important to be inclusionary of them and not be too restrictive. We offer our space to "House units, House-loyal mercs, and House-friendly others". We have our Davion bretheren to consider as well. Not to say that is the approach you should take, but it's the road we took given our options and it has been a positive experience.

That's a similar approach I'd like to take, but we'll see.

Perhaps we could be lenient at first, and even let non-affiliated merc units create groups. Once the traffic/bandwidth would start becoming a problem then we could change direction.

Anyway, I've created a bunch of channels on the server, but currently there are no additional server/channel groups set. It's kind of hard to see how this works without people on the server to test this on (yeah, you'll all be guinea pigs, rejoice!). Groups leads/officers/whatever feel free to take a look and let me know if you have any specific channel structure in mind for your groups, or general suggestions on the rest of the channels. PMs will work fine with me.

[Journeyman]

martino, you'll want to consider "open" channels for guests and such to drop by and "secured" channels for those people you know and trust as affiliated. There's a lot of riffraff out there and people will spam your server for the sake of doing it. It takes some effort to set up the channel and group settings but will keep you fairly secure.

[PerryRaptor]

I will recommend using the "YaTQA" tool for TeamSpeak 3. Journeyman and I use this admin utility to maintain our servers.

I will also recommend setting up TeamSpeak with a few open channels for guests and visitors. This makes recruiting easier because quests that continue to stop by and play with your members gives you the opportunity to feel them out. That way you don't recruit someone with a destructive personality.

Secured channels are a must...dirtbags will find your server!

[Peiper]

PerryRaptor, on 09 December 2013 - 08:24 PM, said:

Secured channels are a must...dirtbags will find your server!

Nobody loves me...

[Sarsaparilla Kid]

Peiper, on 09 December 2013 - 09:50 PM, said:

Nobody loves me...

I'm sure he wasn't saying that you were a dirtbag, Peiper...

[fluffypinkbunny]

I love you, I'll even offer you some ac 20 rounds to hold onto

[martino2k6]

Journeyman, on 09 December 2013 - 06:43 PM, said:

martino, you'll want to consider "open" channels for guests and such to drop by and "secured" channels for those people you know and trust as affiliated. There's a lot of riffraff out there and people will spam your server for the sake of doing it. It takes some effort to set up the channel and group settings but will keep you fairly secure.

Yeah, I definitely plan on doing this. Thanks for the advice. So far all channel’s are open and in the Entry Zone you can't talk, in case loud mouths join in. It might deter them before they realise they need to jump to a more general channel in order to talk.

PerryRaptor, on 09 December 2013 - 08:24 PM, said:

I will recommend using the "YaTQA" tool for TeamSpeak 3. Journeyman and I use this admin utility to maintain our servers.

I will also recommend setting up TeamSpeak with a few open channels for guests and visitors. This makes recruiting easier because quests that continue to stop by and play with your members gives you the opportunity to feel them out. That way you don't recruit someone with a destructive personality.

Secured channels are a must...dirtbags will find your server!

I'll take a look at this tool. I messed with advanced permissions last night and I ****** it up, so I had to nuke the databases and start from anew. Even a permreset didn't seem to fix it lol. *nix groups are child's play compared to TS3 :/

To the people who messaged me while I was sleeping;
Abivard: Thanks for adding the note in the forums. Let's not spread the details outside of this forum and our units for now. I'd like to see how the server will handle the load before we start advertising it in its full glory.

Damon Howe: Good luck with your finals, and yeah we'll see about organising your SoR channels later on. Same goes for all the other interested groups! So much to do... but it's all so exciting

Peiper: Yeah, I'm planning on doing something as you suggested. However I like the idea of a guest coming on and being able too switch into a unit's dropship to ply with these guys and let them know better, in case they would like to join them. Perhaps we can try this at the start and if it becomes a problem we'll start tightening things up. Of course groups will be able to have secured/password protected dropship/command channels if they'll wish to.

Off to work for now.

[Malzel]

Mech The Dane, on 09 December 2013 - 01:49 PM, said:

We should probably restrict it to units that "fly the FRR banner".

Technically, the 1st RDR is mercenary. We're FRR, but we want to play in the take-and-hold-planets metagame, which means you have to go merc.

martino2k6, on 09 December 2013 - 01:55 PM, said:

Applying for the non-profit license will be the next step, although this looks more laborious than I initially thought. I'll have to throw up some basic page on the webserver for the TS3 folks in order to get approval, so getting webhosting working is my current goal.

What are the requirements for web hosting? The FRR has a Facebook group, if that would work. If not, you could always just use one of the FRR groups' unit websites for application purposes. If the 5th Drakons have a website, try using that, or you can borrow the 1st RDRs' page. I'm sure they just want proof that you're a non-profit gaming group, and there's no need to pay for independent web hosting if we don't need to.

Edited by Malzel, 10 December 2013 - 02:28 AM.