Not being a gameop I tend to just read in this forum. At times though a question comes up in games that only gameops and eisonline staff might be able to answer. In several games recently, not only my corpies but also opponents were having chats about the settings for 'Max commands = 0' vs something like 'Max commands = 30'. On one server the commands were changed from 0 to 30 with everyone agreeing and it seemed to speed up the time needed to perform various tasks. At another server the 0 setting seems to be fine. Is that game setting flexible for individual games or is it global for all games? A couple gameops we asked seemed to prefer the setting for 30 and newer gameops had no idea about this setting. Is the difference in performance speed related to the power of the server? We are assuming at this point that 'Max Commands = 0' is the stock setting of games without it being redefined by gameops as they set up the edits for fresh games. I guess another part of my question should be 'what is the purpose of this edit and how does it affect various scripts?'. Thanks!

I can help you out with some of the basics, it is a global setting effecting each individual game on that TWGS, (0-255 with 0 being Unlimited.)

This setting will limit the number of commands pocessed for each player. The purpose is to limit the advantage of Helpers over manual players. It will also improve system performance when Helpers are being used.

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"Setting it to 0 means that an unlimited number of commands can be processed every cycle. Setting the value to greater then 0 actually specifies the maximum number of commands that a player can process each cycle. Setting to 1, for example, will limit the player to a single command per cycle, including manual players. A cycle is typically 1-second, which can be set with "Processing Interval" setting."
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Processing Interval, is also a global command effecting all of the games on that TWGS. it may be set from 1-4, (system seconds, depending on speed of the TWGS computer being used.)

[semi-quote]
This determines the amount of time that passes between periodic processes. Processes handled on this interval include record synchronization, interactive messaging, non-player ship movement, etc. This is the “heartbeat” of the game, and it is recommended that it remain at 1-second. A slower interval will relieve overloading on slower system by increasing idle time. Increasing this value will slow all of the above mentioned processes, as they only occur once per interval.
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Both of these options are located in Editor Two-H S-for Max Command 1-for Processing Interval.

Max commands = 0 is unlimited. It won't speed up things from that end, altho if everyone is flooding the server and it's getting laggy from that then restricting the max commands might fix the problem.

The purpose is less about helpers and more about doing stuff by hand (versus macros). A helper can always pace itself, it's macros that are generally effected. A while ago I saw a post about what does and does not constitute a "command." Sadly I can't find it atm, so if someone can dig that up... rock on.

Anyway. Scripts that use macros internally or people that send bursts to the server would be the most effected. Move already has a delay built-in, but if you executed a sloppy macro with a lot of extra commands then you might find yourself running into a wall and slowing yourself down (ie bad mowers). Otherwise it might take an otherwise time free event and delay it (like xporting out for safety... lol).

Things get screwy when you use a setting of max commands = 0. Dr. Bad broke it down wonderfully a long time ago, but sadly, I don't remember the details anymore.

I have played with this seting a lot. Really it only matters when you are having server side lag from a slow system: choke the max per cycle down and everyone has the same lag predictably each cycle rather than have it go fine then lock when several players all try to get interesting at the same time. I have been keeping it set low on my server till I can upgrade it. It got rid of the problem of having one player (node 1) running full out and the other nodes all lagged to nothing.