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Farm Rule Change

p0six

Well-Known Member
MVP+
PvP Tournament (Not Winner)
Looking at the current set of farm rules, I've noticed a rule that I think should be called into question

"7. Farms that release/suck up flowing water using pistons or dispensers with water buckets are not allowed under any circumstances."

I understand the spirit of this rule completely. Farms with large quantities of water have significant lag on the server, and have been shown to have this significant effect repeatedly in the past. However, I'd like to point out that key word of "large quantities". I would suggest that if a farm has a low density of water usage for automatic farming, then it should be allowed.

For example: A typical wheat farm might use 1 dispenser for every row of wheat harvested. On a large scale, this would result in horrible lag due to all the buckets getting released by say, 64 dispensers, on a single tick.
However, if this farm were to reduce its water usage to 1 dispenser or 1 piston for an entire 64x64 row of wheat, I have tested that this design actually has extremely little lag compared to farms that are already allowed on the server, such as the piston pumpkin farms that use extremely high lag redstone-detector systems.

Thus, I suggest that we should change rule 7 to say that farms with high density of water bucket usage will be not allowed. Our definition of "high density" can vary with what the server owners find to be appropriate, but I would propose something like 5 buckets of water should be allowed over a 64x64x3 area for any given farm.

Note: The farm I'm suggesting this for has been demonstrated to have no effect on tps while the server is running at a smooth tps count.
 
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Dakotaa

Owner
Staff member
Owner
Note: The farm I'm suggesting this for has been demonstrated to have no effect on tps while the server is running at a smooth tps count.
Sure, with one of these farms running. The problem with water is not a single farm, it's when many people are using them. It's not the pistons or dispensers interacting that cause the lag, it's the water flow physics. It doesn't matter how many water sources are being released, it's about how far and for how long the water flows. The performance impact may not be extreme, but with Farm-A already having a low average TPS, allowing potentially further performance-impacting farms is the opposite of what we want right now.

Also, this would add a lot more work for our staff while patrolling bases. Instead of looking at a farm and seeing that it is obviously a water-harvesting design, they would have to take the time to inspect it further to check if it's within the arbitrary limits that we've set. It's really just not worth it.
 

p0six

Well-Known Member
MVP+
PvP Tournament (Not Winner)
Sure, with one of these farms running. The problem with water is not a single farm, it's when many people are using them. It's not the pistons or dispensers interacting that cause the lag, it's the water flow physics. It doesn't matter how many water sources are being released, it's about how far and for how long the water flows. The performance impact may not be extreme, but with Farm-A already having a low average TPS, allowing potentially further performance-impacting farms is the opposite of what we want right now.

Also, this would add a lot more work for our staff while patrolling bases. Instead of looking at a farm and seeing that it is obviously a water-harvesting design, they would have to take the time to inspect it further to check if it's within the arbitrary limits that we've set. It's really just not worth it.

"The problem is when many people are using them... the physics system for water is too heavy"

Here's my issue. It seems like our farm has significantly less lag than a typical pumpkin farm, by around a factor of 10 (We use one piston and one bucket of water per layer of 64x64x3 farm). I turned the timer on so that the farm would harvest every couple of seconds, and still saw no impact on tps. I feel like if the rules are meant to limit farms that destroy tps, then they are acting to the wrong effect in this circumstance.

"It would be hard to manage"

I can understand this concern, and I really cannot comment on it because I am not a staff member. If you are saying that it would be too hard to check whether a farm is lagging the server due to an overuse of water, you may be correct. I do not know. I would suggest that players can ask admins for approval on whether they're using an overly-laggy farm, but ultimately I'm not the staff team that has to carry this burden.

(P.S. infamousage has specifics about the farm design I'm proposing)
 
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p0six

Well-Known Member
MVP+
PvP Tournament (Not Winner)
I want to make some notes

If our farm has say, a .05 tps impact when we complete it (which is why there's no measured tps difference when it's on)

that means, for our farm to have a greater tps impact on harvest than most pumpkin farms, then there has to be around 300 large-sized pumpkin farms harvesting at a time for the tps to drop to 10 at mid-day assuming that a pumpkin farm has around a .0333 tps impact

However, this is obviously untrue because there is obviously not 300 large-sized pumpkin farms. There is, at most, about 70 people on farmA at a time, and not all of them are using large-sized farms.

I think this is a very reasonable set of statements showing that if we can prove that our farm has between a 0 and .1 tps impact, then our farm should be allowed, as it would HAVE to be at the same TPS impact or less than a standard pumpkin farm.

I think it's reasonable to define a "large" farm as making up about 10 layers of 64x64, as most "large" farms will be considerably smaller in size than this.
Therefore, we intend to build our farm to 10 layers of 64x64 before having it tested for lag.
 
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Dakotaa

Owner
Staff member
Owner
I want to make some notes

If our farm has say, a .05 tps impact when we complete it (which is why there's no measured tps difference when it's on)

that means, for our farm to have a greater tps impact on harvest than most pumpkin farms, then there has to be around 300 large-sized pumpkin farms harvesting at a time for the tps to drop to 10 at mid-day assuming that a pumpkin farm has around a .0333 tps impact

However, this is obviously untrue because there is obviously not 300 large-sized pumpkin farms. There is, at most, about 70 people on farmA at a time, and not all of them are using large-sized farms.

I think this is a very reasonable set of statements showing that if we can prove that our farm has between a 0 and .1 tps impact, then our farm should be allowed, as it would HAVE to be at the same TPS impact or less than a standard pumpkin farm.

I think it's reasonable to define a "large" farm as making up about 10 layers of 64x64, as most "large" farms will be considerably smaller in size than this.
Therefore, we intend to build our farm to 10 layers of 64x64 before having it tested for lag.
Once again, this adds a lot of work and inspection for our already very busy staff team. It's just not worth the effort.

Also, that's not how TPS works. The TPS you see on the sideboard is just an average, players can not see the real-time TPS, and with how the ticks actually work, it's impossible to say what impact a particular farm would be having.

You are not allowed to build this farm. You can try but if you do, it will be deleted.

There's really no point arguing about this further, I don't see any way that we will change our stance. This type of farm is historically the most performance-heavy and that's not something we want on the already laggy Farm-A world.
 

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