So you guys that host the huge servers do you see the task manager network for the Empires mod like reach 100% usage when the servers full?? I see mine get near the top and the CPU usage is nutty like almost 90%... I also host Zombie Master and when My ZM is full and Empires is full the lag between the two is insane... I am reading all of this and experimenting with the settings seems I been putting way to much out for my other servers... I have the Empires on the 3rd CPU and ZM on the 4th CPU but they reach a staggering rate on the Network... I reduced my Empires to 32 slots 16 reserved for Admins and Clan members but it still gets insane... Only way for me to run a huge Empires server is to shut all the other servers down. I reduced all the network settings for all my servers hopefully it will help.
Cozmicshredder: CPU use from Empires server doesn't change linearly with players. There are buildings, turrets, vehicles, grenades and normal soldiers (mortar, rpg). Bandwidth - Empires needs 30kB/s for 1 player.
No, I never really have that problem. It could be because of the issue with affinity setting to one core and that one core being over loaded. But otherwise, I don't have that issue. I mean at one point, the Empires server was full, I had 16 people in a CS:S server, and two full 32 man TF2 servers. Not to say I wasn't having problems with the bandwidth we were using, but the server ran well with no problems at all. And from a past post, I assume you have the same server I do. Mind telling us some of the CVars you use for your server? I found out the hard way that 100, even 66 tick can take a toll on server performance when it has around 32 people.