Bad Company 2 Heavy Metal Server

I forgot about that command. That command often helps with fixing terrible lag when playing online. Not sure how that works. :) Thanks.
What it does:
Refreshes the cached DNS names that are stored on your PC.
if server.bfbc2.com is located at 1.2.3.4, and gets moved to 2.3.4.5, that command will clear out the cached location of that resource and force your PC to look ip up, get the new IP, and then record the new IP.

Now, this will only work if you are using DNS caching on your PC, which, honestly, no one should really do. Your best bet is to use a non-caching set of DNS servers. Additionally, most people are behind a router, and they are pointing to that for a refrence set for DNS.

Example:
Your PC is at 192.168.1.10, your router is at 192.168.1.1.
You plug your PC into your router, which automatically assigns an IP address within that range, and the IP address of your router is also going to be your DNS server for your network.
The router might look to your ISP's settings that come automatically and assign those DNS servers to your router (or they will have you put them in.)

If allowed, use external DNS servers from your ISP. I guarantee that a good majority of ISP's will cache DNS to reduce traffic on their own network (which is laughable at best, as DNS queries are miniscule and quick, and it's all internal anyways).

OpenDNS
Cloudflare
Google DNS (which ...they do both caching and non caching)

Now, how does it speed up? Well, EA uses a CDN (content delivery) to resolve these servers. It's possible that they are not spending any time (or money) to update their records on the CDN, so you are spent looking up to see who has that updated record to connect. IF you are in Washington DC, and a CDN server in Washington, DC doesn't have it, but one in Montana does and that is further down the list, well, you are waiting for a while in order to get that new host.

All in all, the activity of flushing DNS does NOT speed up the Internet to your computer, it just says "hey, this resource potentially moved, where's it located at now?" It also has zero to do with latency to that specific resource. its only for updating locations of new resources. IF you have latency with online gaming, that is a different issue all together as that has to do with distance (hops) between your pc/network and the server you are connecting to.
 
That is one of the most thorough explanations of local DNS cache and DNS and CDNs I've seen. Nice.

FWIW, here are the things that keep me playing on EGO and things that keep me away.

All servers have balance issues. Most games do. Sometimes you just have to go 5 rounds before getting that perfect match. I don't mean you win. I mean you have a great round, and your blood is pumping. W-L is in every player-player encounter, it's the stuff in-between reloads. And good teammates on both sides. Well, for me anyway. For me it's about a good push, which sometimes/often leads to a win.

Good:
  • Amazing player community
  • I like the Respect rule. Some players, even here, have no understanding of it. I think they would be surprised what would happen if there was VoteKick. And that's why I like it here - disrespectful players are the exception, not the rule. Some can't seem to kill someone without also pouring salt on the wound, and can't have a bad round without calling their teammates idiots. No one likes them anyway. The vast majority are excellent to play with.
  • Good Admin presence during peak hours
  • Quick spawning (faster action), long rounds
  • During peak hours, a bunch of rocket pros who can counter a Heli, and there are lots of pros.
  • Server is reasonably populated when I want to play. This is just coincidental but it's how I ended up here.
I'm called this section "Bad" originally, but it's not really bad, it's just the way the game is. So I'm calling it "Thoughts":
  • Sometimes you get a good pilot, good gunner, and all the good rocketeers on one side. The other side gets 8 recons and 1 pilot. The result I find to be worse than Baserape, because with Baserape you can go and kick them in the jewels if you escape the uncap. (It's like breaking out of A to cap C while they're all moved up too far but more effective). But that's the game, that's the balance odds. This isn't the bad. The bad follows: Where this system breaks down is empty-ish server. Like Major said, anything that moves dies. No chance to even counter with a rocket (except the top-top-rocketeers, who only play when it's not empty, so irrelevant). It's guaranteed misery for one side. This is exactly why Baserape is contentious. There is no difference, you're just getting it on a different part of the map.
    • IMO, this can be fixed with a rule that says "No Heli before 8v8", or something to that effect.
    • There's actually one benefit of allowed baserape, that makes it better than an empty server with helis allowed: the baserape-allowed game will end faster. Less misery. Here, it's drawn out as people camp A's treeline because they have nowhere to go.
    • Sometimes I imagine a "VoteSurrender" command, when it's already decided with 300tix to go. Again this is where baserape excels - it just ends faster.
    • All that said, IDC if a server allows or disallows baserape. I enjoy both variants, as long as it's equal rules for both sides. They're both fun variants to me and I respect server rules whatever they may be.
  • There used to be a server with Recon limits per team. Auto-kill after like 2. On smaller maps, I play Recon with a G3, forward-capping. Motion is awesome. This rule sucked. But on a bigger map, I would really like to see this. This would eliminate some of the camping problems. The camping is really bad on this particular map.
    • To be fair, I could see this also emptying the server more, because then people who just surrender would leave instead of sticking around until the next round as a sniper.
  • That scramble thing that makes it be 4v12 at match start, like someone else said, during the crucial opening move for B, can tank a round in minutes flat. I know there's no way to instantly post-balance since it's balancing the top players of the previous round and a bunch of people leave. Balance is hard in general because there's no way to tell if someone was just being passive one round or maybe they came in for the last 5 tix. I feel like no extra scrambler was better overall. IDK. ... EDIT: I think I need to retract this statement that it was better. Without the scramble the teams never shuffle at all, so OP Team 1 just keep being OP for 2hrs. With scramble there's a chance that we B can be re-captured. Anyway, like I said, just thoughts. No clear answer.
So there's like 1 solvable thing that I see as a negative to jumping into a semi-empty server, which I don't bother doing any more unless I feel like being the pilot. Even then, I'm not the best pilot, and on an empty server I might not even get a gunner, so I can't even help counter. And my rocket ain't making it from C-field to the heli-with-gunner over B. I think this one is partially solved with just a rule. Then again, when it's empty, there's not always an admin to enforce, so... IDK.

All of those pain points exist on all the servers, mostly. It's not the fault of the server, it's the game. Overall, I think the various existing rules do improve the server and the community, it's why I'm here.

Perhaps a weird solution, but I have a thought. Hear me out. There's a lot of things that we can't really solve. So, we're gonna have pain. Now introducing: the Less-Pain-Patch-350. Make it 350tix maximum. It would make the pain shorter. Quicker rounds, more chance for a better lot next round. Rather than chasing pain elimination, maybe just some pain management? 250 probably too low, but multiple one-sided 500tix rounds can be excruciating.
 
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I am not on board with your conclusions.

And once more a helicopter ruins the game and empties the server , I'm so tired of coming onto our server to see a helo dominating the game , I'm almost to the point of kicking the pilot every time he / she gets in a helo . I don't mind when the server is populated to at least 1/2 capacity , but when there are 6 to 8 players total and none of them can shoot down a helo and they all end up leaving because they are just dying over and over and can't even move from one flag to the other that really annoys me and I end up leaving the server also , just like approximately 20 minutes ago , thought of going in and populating the server because there were 6 players in there already , but instead the helo is just killing anything that moves and the server empties again , for the 100 + times . I wish we could set up some days with no helicopters so the normal players can actually come here and have fun .
Yes, I would really like to have some kind for at rule forbidding Helo before 12 o 14 players.
 
Yes, I would really like to have some kind for at rule forbidding Helo before 12 o 14 players.
I get what your saying, but messing with anything on a server that has lasted this long could go south quickly. Trying to implement something like that on a server that can go from 6 players to 20 something then back again in a short period of time would make it difficult to do something like that. I'm not against it, just worry it might kill the sever.
 
TRUTH, there are times when there is no need for helicopters, for several times that I already said that the helicopter was under maintenance .... but people don't realize it and want to make points ... regrettable this lack of perception on the part of many , it drives people away and the server empties ... I found a server recently that had 2 apaches in HAVY METAL ... a hell of a mess ..... I believe that the developers had someone to do some updates ...
 

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