From: genie@netcom.com (Gene Choi)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: GB vs LA Riot at Calvin
Date: 10 Oct 92 10:17:05 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)


The New Golden Bears played LA riot at Calvin.usc.edu.

I haven't been posting results and summaries of the game lately,
but today's game was so disheartening that I had to put add a
couple of comments about it.

The result: GB lost to LA Riot 19-1.

Again, we played on calvin.  As usual, we expected bad calvin lag.
And of course, we weren't surprised when there was bad lag.
But I have to add that packet loss was especially bad today.
Very bad.

When we all got killed when we started, 3 people were already
unable to enter for several seconds (including our base).
Packet loss was bad.

Thanks to pteuroductyl (Hadley) for fixing the ghostbusted
people quickly.  I was ghostbusted 20 times in the 2 hours.
Ghostbust times ranged from 20 secs to 1 minute.  The other
teammates got around the same results.

We started off bombing 'em out, but we lost our borders quickly.
I tried to protect 'em but it doesn't help when you're fire phasers
and torps and nothing comes out.  Phasering cloakers really
sucks when nothing comes out from your ship.  Yeah, you can
fire again, but your timing goes off.  Even when I phaser-locked
cloakers, it was useless most of the time since it was
very difficult to follup up the phaser.

I'll have to say I lost approx half of my commands
(e.g shields only came up about half the time, cloaking and
unclocking needed about 2-3 times before any response).  A
message I typed showed up 30 seconds after I typed it, etc.

Net lag is one thing.  That I can handle and compensate for.
But losing packets like today is another.

Yes, we lost.  There is no denying the fact.  But I felt
almost cheated (although this was not the case of course) 
playing with both my hands and feet tied. I have never
seen packet loss as bad as today ever (even before
UDP days).  Calvin had never been this bad.
Please don't think I'm exaggerating.  I am not.  Calvin's
gateway sucks and gives really burpy transmissions.  I expected
this.  But losing packets like today, shish...  I can't
finish describing....  What a horrible experience...

I must complement LA Riot.  They have a strong team.
Terence seemed to be the only outstanding player though...
In my opinion, had we played on some other server today,
we could have easily beat this team (and this ain't
a humble opinion either - sorry).  Thanks to LA Riot
for putting up with the bitching during the game about
the net, but yes, it was really that bad.  Several people
watched at our sides (including Duck) and agreed that
with that kind of packet loss, the game was unplayable.
It was only a matter of time before a genocide, since
a third of the team would be inactive due to 
the net freezing.

After a game like this, I am gonna push for a measure to
play future INL games in several neutral servers.  If
that's not possible, I would like to see a ban on
any INL games being played on Calvin (sorry dank), although
it could never be as bad as today....

Maybe some day before the season's over, we can scrimmage
LA Riot again on a server with a decent connection.
I believe the outcome will be very different...

Gene
aka Ginger Lynn