Only until it gets bumped off. 
sounds like an exploit. ban! 
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Upon further thought of this topic… I’m fully on board with the idea of making dscan automatically update in the same way the overview does. The dscan skill ceiling comes from narrowing the band to 5% and checking specific locations, as well as the other spatial awareness aspects of it (such as adjusting the range.) Being able to mash your scan hotkey repeatedly is not a skill… it’s mindless tedium.
You could still have an activity check to try to save some server resources (not that I think it’s really needed) … maybe 10-30 minutes which the player could reset at anytime during that duration. The player could also toggle it off, if they wish to get a snapshot of what is on grid. This snapshot could then be linked, in game, to other players though the chat function.
If CCP wants to test this behavior to make sure it will work for the servers without breaking things. Introduce a high or midslot module that makes use of the mechanic. If it’s determined it wont melt the servers, CCP can then integrate it into the base dscan behavior. (Or just replace dscan with this new version since it’s old code.)
Another benefit of updating this, is it would break all the bots that are currently using it. With the update, perhaps CCP could figure out a way to encrypt the id used in the backend for the dscan, so bots wouldn’t be able to listen for that identifier. I’m not sure how that would work, but it might be possible do something there.
Thank you for confirming this. It’s one of those little things that could really improve the player experience. As I said before, and again, and now a third time… imagine if your guns did not automatically cycle, and you had to manually fire them every. ■■■■■■■. time. Mashing d-scan is similar in terms of mindless tedium.
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So I started multiboxing lately. I park my cloaked character outside FW complexes and have it sit there so I don’t need to spam d-scan anymore. I have dual monitor set up and if an enemy lands on my plex, I will see them show up on the second monitor. Not only that, but I can see how close they are to the acceleration gate, and I can tell if they’re aligning down the gate and activating it. If I get a third monitor I will be able to watch youtube at the same time.
Tell me again…how manual d-scan makes the game better. How manually spamming d-scan makes it so that players who are more “active” get rewarded as a result of it. Because as far as I can see, if I can afford to triple monitor and set up multiple omega accounts… I can just pay for the convenience of not needing to spam d-scan anymore.
I understand that there’s more nuance to this situation. For example if I was mining on a belt, having an alt parked nearby wouldn’t afford me the same level of intel as it does in faction warfare. But still, I think there’s still valid arguments for an automatic d-scan to be an improvement, and to some degree, a balancing factor between those who play single accounts, and those who multibox.
the issue is not about it being useful or not. It is about it being doable or not.
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if they can automatically update your overview… they can automatically update dscan.
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They not only can. I suppose they already do, they just don’t show you the results in the UI.
When you hit Dscan, the UI is updated “instantly”. You can test it by selecting no filters (“All” preset), and just hit Dscan in a populated system. You will get your Dscan results instantly, even if its a hundred entries long. And that means, all the results are already cached, else you would have the usual server-delay of approx 1 second, like when you activate a module, change direction etc.: The results you see are not the results of a server-request explicitly triggered by your button-click! The results you see are cached data from the last server update tick you get anyway, whether you hit Dscan or not.
non sequitur.
No. On the opposite.
That’s BS.
also BS.
Server ticks are linked to a grid. You ONLY get data on your grid per tick.
DScan is about retrieving data of other grids
Nah. Please keep it civil, okay?
I usually don’t claim things I am not very sure of. Of course I did some testing before writing that.
First test was Dscan in different systems with the open NetworkTraffic page of the windows TaskManager:
In Jita I warped to a safespot where no one was on grid with me, but in range of the Jita Undock. I closed all chat channels and hit Dscan several times. Even while doing nothing, there was some network activity for EVE, probably from players leaving/joining the local chat (thats the only chat you cannot leave). But also every Dscan showed an additional spike of network traffic that I could reliably connect to the button click, not instantly but like a second later. Still I had the Dscan results on my UI instantly, even if there where a hundred entries on it. That alone is no proof, because the NetworkMonitor could be delayed and it could be indeed a request to the server, just because my internet connection is incredibly good it feels like “instantly”.
So I traveled to an empty system (no one in local) and warped to a DeepSave spot. I intentionally did not hit Dscan during travel. The spot made sure there were no other grids in range of me, so I knew before hitting the button that the results would be empty. Also interestingly there was no network activity for EVE at all for many seconds, sometimes 10, 15 seconds in a row. I hit the Dscan button and indeed it showed nothing, but there was no traffic in the NetworkMonitor related to that click. I got the results before my client contacted the server or got any confirmation. It already knew there was nothing to show. There were some network spikes here and then, but I could not increase that rate by constantly dscanning. Which is an indicator for me that not everytime you hit that button an explicit request for an update is sent to the server.
Then, for a second test I routed my internet connection via a VPN to Malaysia and back to Europe and in addition limited the network bandwith for my PC via the router. Then initiated a huge download in the background, making sure I had a very bad ping. Usually I have like below 20ms to London (I am in nothern germany), but under these conditions I had like 150-200ms. Thats more than one tenth of a second, I would definitely notice that delay. Stil I got all Dscan results instantly, no matter where I was, so the results I see in the UI are most likely not the results of an explicit server request. If we assume it takes 150ms for my request to reach the server, then the returning info needs another 150m, we talk about 300ms and we might agree that this would result in a noticable delay?
This leads me to the belief that EVE updates the object list of a system in the background, not on demand.
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Just did a second test with a more advanced software, showing even single TCP/SSL packets. Watched 172.65.201.188:26000 ,which is the TQ adress.
Interesting results:
I can confirm that there are often several seconds of no single packet exchanged between TQ and my client. Sometimes 15seconds in a row when being on a deepsave in an empty system.
I cannot confirm that the Dscan button does not cause traffic. Indeed every Dscan button hit triggers a packet (actually 3 packets) to be exchanged. Some of them are only like 2 bytes or 4 bytes long, so they can’t be Dscan results as you cannot fit the information displayed there (type, name, distance) in 2 or 4 bytes. Seems to be just “keep alive” pings. Thats probably why the WindowsTask Manager showed no spike, it’s just too few data to be visible in a graph.
Dscan results still show up instantly, no matter how much I throttle my connection. Even at 500 ping the UI shows instantly what is on scan. The connection to EVE breaks up before I can manage to have a visible delay when Dscanning. Leads me to the assumption that the information about objects is updated in the background whenever the server notices changes and then pushes updates to the client in the background, even without Dscanning. Thats probably why there are sometimes 15 seconds of no packets, because the server knows there is nothing to update, so the client can “play” completely on cached data.
I am by no means an expert, so no guarantee for any of this. Was just an interesting lookup.
Please stop affirming things based solely on what you want to believe.
or they are “nothing changed”.
Yes. the server only sends updates. When nothing changed, nothing to consider. At least for ticks.
Now try the same when you have an alt in range of dscan.
One way to test it would be to dual box and move the alt in and out of dscan range. Could also try changing the range of dscan to include or exclude the alt and see if that has an effect.
Why should I want to believe anything? I am just curious how it actually works and I have no other explanation to getting instant Dscan results even with xxx ms ping other than that the client already knows what the results would be, whether I scan or not.
Maybe, I cannot read the actual content of the packets.
When multiple clients are open, its quite hard to test for me which one is responsible for any network traffic I can detect. I can filter which ones are caused by the EVE Online exefile.exe but as said even without any action the clients communicate from time to time with the server so the more clients are open, the harder it gets to distinguish traffic caused by a manual Dscan from traffic caused by client background activity. Also the 2/4 byte packets are the same, no matter if there are 0 or 100 elements in the scan results. Thats why I think they are not transferring the actual object data. There are still other packets in between with 4096 and 8192 bytes I cannot identify, I have not clue if these would be large enough to fit all information of a full scan in, lets say Jita, with hundreds of objects in range.
As said, I am not an network expert, I just noticed that the reaction of my UI seems to be a lot faster than my ping should allow. So my first guess is, that cached data is used. I am fine with anyone not believing that.
It’s not about not believing that. It’s about not claiming something is true just because nobody has disproven it yet.
Also I am not talking about having a lot of alts. You can have ONE alt far away, you don’t move it. You warp your other too in DSCAN range but out of grid, and you press dscan after a min.
You can even just undock your alt if within station Dscan range. if there is absolutely no transfer between the dscan button and the list update, it means the list was present before.
If you want to know how much lag you would get for auto d-scan for every player in the game try editing your overview while playing and tell me if that is a good experience.
What is the name and location of this mod that automatically does this? I want to make sure i avoid it.
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