It's gonna be complicated for FIBS .... ? ! !!! ?

[Tomawaky]

Here is what I saw when trying to connect at Fibs 

*** Trying to connect to Fibs.com...
*** Connected to Fibs.com.
The number of users on this system is currently limited to 160. Your

connection would exceed this limit. Please try again later.

*** You are disconnected.


Is it a bad joke ? but we are not the First of april ?
Is it our christmas gift ?
Or a best wish for this new year to come ?

[diane]

Yes - this came to a few people yesterday, with 240+ users logged in. Maybe it is time for FIBs 2 

[moonshadow123]

Despite the fibs server status page indicating servers were up and running, I unsuccessfully attempted to log on 8 or 9  times around Jan 3, 2011  00:48 GMT.

A few times I got connected and got as far as the password where it seemed to freeze.

Would this be related to the aformentioned log on problems in this thread?

grrrrr.

I am going to change my vote to ban phone users.

And half the bots-- no need for 20 of them.


PS:  About 15 minutes later I was finally able to log on, but there were only 150 users so I don't know what the problem was. I will let the computer geniuses figure it out as its over my head.

[diane]

And half the bots-- no need for 20 of them.

If this really is a capacity problem, then reducing bot numbers would make some sense...but, could they be taken off at peak times? Given the low population density down here, we really do have times when there are very few people logged in, and even fewer ready to play. At that time, I am very glad of the bots.

It should be fairly trivial to see when peak times are, and log half the bots out for those times. I expect the fact that we have just had a holiday, so people off work will also have added to the numbers who are on because it is their usual log in times - and this might not be such a big problem, yet.

[Patti]

There are two sides to taking the bots down during peak times.  One is that it would allow more humans on.  The other is that the bots are always 100% busy at that time.

The actual limit is 249, and yes we've hit it quite a few times.  If it wasn't for the 5-minute timeouts under heavy load, we'd hit it a lot more often.

[diane]

There are two sides to taking the bots down during peak times.  One is that it would allow more humans on.  The other is that the bots are always 100% busy at that time.

Yeah, this did occur to me, and they do provide a good opportunity for the phone users to play, they dont turn players away based on interface, non chattiness or slow moving.  Also, there is little point having more BOTS on during off peak times - mostly they are sitting around doing nothing!

[Patti]

The advantage of having bots around during off-peak times is that it allows people to resume with them more easily.  Making the bots go away sometimes would make it a bit harder for me to punish bot droppers, as they could just claim the bot wasn't online to resume.