So when I go into the pub i manually set cmdrate/updaterate to 66 since its a 66 tic server, a member told me i have to make it 100, is this true and if so... server is 66 why set 100?

I know it's 100 for a fact..not sure how that all works though so I can't explain the why..just the what.

fomenta!

Well the downrate from what I see is at 66 while the updrate is at 66.

personally I just set both to 101 and call it a day and dealing on my ping I set the rate from anywhere between 20000, 25000 or 30000

Haha, whenever someone is in doubt, lol. His name is shouted, funny.

It really doesn't matter on our server anymore, the server will force your cmdrate and updaterate to 66 -- if you want to check on this, type just

cl_cmdrate

without a number after it. If you have a number higher than 66, it will return a message like this:

"cl_cmdrate" = "66" ( def. "30" ) min. 10.000000 max. 100.000000
** NOTE: The real value is 100.000 but the server has temporarily restricted it to 66.000 **
archive
- Max number of command packets sent to server per second

You'll get a similar message for cl_updaterate. The same thing goes for cmdrates and updates that are set below 66 -- you get this message:


"cl_cmdrate" = "66" ( def. "30" ) min. 10.000000 max. 100.000000
** NOTE: The real value is 10.000 but the server has temporarily restricted it to 66.000 **
archive
- Max number of command packets sent to server per second

The rate setting is a different story -- we do allow for a little bit of variation here -- and since you can easily figure out what the acceptable range is by setting your to 1 and then 100 million and seeing what the message says its restricted to, I might as well tell you that the range currently is 15000 to 30000.

EDIT: A note for admins:
The numbers you receive when you check ma_rates is what the client wants them to be at and not what they are forced to -- because of this new restriction I've added recently, you shouldn't need to tell players their rates are wrong, even though they appear wrong in ma_rates.

See Fomenta someone noticed!

AHAHHAHA -- Hey Dice -- what made you ask that question?

What will the difference be between 15000 and 30000? Is it a noticeable one?

From what I understand from here,
-- cmdrate affects how frequently your input devices are polled and transmitted to the server
-- updaterate affects how frequently the game transmits its state to your client
-- rate is simply an incoming bandwidth limitation

Since updates from the server to the client are of variable size, having only the updaterate as a control could possibly make your client experience a ton of choke when the bigger packets were transmitted. Choke destroys gameplay, and accommodations can be made on the server side to deliver you less content but still give you an enjoyable gameplay experience. Therefore, by informing the server of the maximum amount of bandwidth you can receive reliably, you are allowing it to make a server-side decision about if and when to throttle down the packet sizes, rather than it being oblivious and having the client experience disastrous choke.

In terms of the actual numbers, rate is actually in bytes per second, so if you can reliably continuously download around 300kbps then I'd suggest staying with that. If you're getting choke, however, you should drop it.

Since we've standardized the cmdrate and updaterate, the difference isn't in the frequency of updates anymore, but rather in the amount of information contained in each message (it can't send as much of the map as it would have at higher rates). It should be noted that the difference is really only in the worst case, as 150kbps is still an enormous amount of bandwidth and hardly used after a few seconds past each spawning.

(Sorry for the long ass message, but I figured I'd type it once here and then redirect people here later when this or similar qs comes up again)

I think I have finally grasped the general concept of rates. Thank you fomenta.

We should install a "FOMENTA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111" button on the top of the forums. When you click it fomenta's fomenta senses tingle and he dons his fomenta suit and comes to the rescue.
Or it delivers a small electric shock until he comes to fix the problem...your choice really...

I vote fomenta posts his cell number so we can all call him day or night whenver we have a question about anything.

i second that!

I've never noticed a significant difference playing with different rates.

since i started playing a few weeks ago ive been doing extensive reading into how the cs netcode works, since i seem to never hit what I shoot at.

I always match my rates to the server's as shown in netgraph - so when I connect to n00b server i'd manually set them to 66 (or lower when the server is full and my choke goes up), and a few admins have called me out for having improper rates which, honestly, confused the F*CK out of me. They said set it to 100, and since im a nobody i didnt really want argue the matter too far but I did want to ask about it on the forums.

Also, I did notice that even after setting to 100 like the admin said, my console still read 66. Nice =]