Considerably less spammy than a relay loop though.
But it is still very spammy/laggy, even considering just the smoke from the beacon.
Cut from the real script:
datablock ParticleData(ActiveBeaconParticle)
{
lifetimeMS = 8000; (lasts for ~8 seconds)
};
datablock ParticleEmitterData(ActiveBeaconEmitter) (this emits the smoke particle above)
{
ejectionPeriodMS = 20; (every ~0.02 seconds it emits 1 smoke particle)
};The active beacon, which emits the smoke, lasts for fourteen seconds. For every second it emits ~50 smoke particles, each lasting eight seconds. This means that after eight seconds of the beacon being present (or after putting the smoke emitter on a brick) it'll have
~400 smoke particles on the screen at any time for the next six seconds (or forever until the brick is destroyed if it's an emitter on a brick). If you can create 400 smoke particles from a single beacon or emitter eight seconds after applying it it can create an amazingly large amount of particles in an amazingly short amount of time.
While I don't know how many beacons can be present at the same time through time it takes them to be thrown,(Further down) I know this; in an average server (any server that hasn't increased or decreased the lights/emitters limit) 100 lights/emitters can be applied by a player. If 100 bricks are made and this beacon emitter is applied to all of them then that means
40,000 of these smoke particles can be active at one time by a single player.
So the Beacon Smoke emitter in the wrench menu is a ten times worse problem than beacons being spam-throwed based off of smoke.To get an idea of what is normal take a look at the fog A particle made by Badspot and included with the default game:
datablock ParticleData(FogParticleA)
{
lifetimeMS = 3100; (lasts for ~3.1 seconds)
};
datablock ParticleEmitterData(FogEmitterA)
{
ejectionPeriodMS = 75; (every ~0.075 seconds it emits 1 fog particle)
};For every second it emits ~13 fog particles, which last for ~3.1 seconds, this comes out to a max of ~40 fog particles at one time. That's ten times less than the max amount of particles you can get from one beacon. Through using emitters in an average server this only comes out as 4,000 of the fog particles that can be active at one time by a single player. Ten players using all 100 of their emitters to spam fog would do the same amount of damage as one player using their 100 emitters to spam the beacon smoke.
Through the script the mininum amount of time it takes to throw a beacon is 0.8 seconds (I myself could pull off 1 second without a throwing script), and the mininum amount of time it takes for an item to respawn is 1 second. This is about 1 beacon per second, and each beacon emits smoke for 14 seconds and ~400 smoke particles at any time between eight seconds after settling and six seconds later when the emitter is deleted(the leftover smoke still needs to clear up afterwards, but we aren't counting that, we also aren't counting scripts and scrolling through beacons and throwing them that way, or multiple item spawns. Also a reminder, we aren't counting the artillery shells). So while these beacons are thrown the particle count grows at some complex rate until it hits the max of 4,200 beacon smoke particles per second. Not counting the things above, continuously throwing beacons at a rate of 1 per second results in more particles and lag than 100 fog bricks. But AlphaicX, you are right. It is considerably less spammy than a relay loop, but how considerably? One relay loop would throw a beacon every 0.033 seconds, and one player would throw a beacon every second, so it's only about 30 times less spammy than a relay loop, but we're not counting multiple relay loops, either way you're right. But the point I was trying to make in my other post was that standing on a spawn for the beacon and repeatably throwing it is an alternative to relay loops, so I was kinda right there.
tl;dr: Alphaic was right, beacon throw-spamming is still an alternative for server-lagging/crashing starfishs though because it's only 30 times less spammy than a relay loop based on smoke, and as laggy as 100 fog bricks or 10 beacon smoke bricks. What really needs to be done is that the Artillery Beacon's smoke needs to be fixed.
Note:
I am not a server-lagging/crashing starfish. The point being made is that the Artillery Beacon needs to be fixed to be less abusable.
