Scouting Causes Desync
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Now, I know how it sounds, but hear me out...
So, there was this one time I was playing some 4 v 4 TMM, I was playing land, the game went into a stalemate, both sides couldn't break through the lines.
When I realized that my Supreme tactics can't tip the scales, I zoomed out to get a fresh look on the map, to see the next possible course of action.
Situation on the map didn't look promising, so I came to conclusion that something useful for the team must be done - but what is the possibly most useful thing one can do for the team? Indeed... The Omni (and the fast one too).
Since there was no Omni Sensor insight from the team, the obvious decision was to build one (this in fact wasn't rushing an Omni (which usually gives the ultimate advantage over the enemy - but that is entirely a different topic)).
Omni went up, but the situation on the map became more grim. There was no proper scouting conducted by our air player, hence the map was covered with lots and lots of gray squares.
Now this caused some questions appearing before me, questions regarding the competence of our air player. So I checked his base to see what he was up to this whole time.
Now to be fair, he did have some ASFs chilling on the ground at his base - but that's not the point, he was finishing a Fat Boy - it wasn't a bad thing, since it was a stalemate, and a Fat Boy could easily break that.
So I decided to help a little bit, and do some scouting.
When I managed to muster two T3 Spy Planes and send them through the mid to reveal all those Omni signatures, our air player's Fat Boy was on the move to the front, just leaving his base.
And then it happened...
When the Spy Planes began visually revealing the gray squares, turning them into unit models, (BOOM!) out of nowhere - desync.
And who do u think was behind?
Yes... The air player...
It was obvious, that he was all hyped up about crushing those enemy lines with his Fat Boy, but damn... desync on him? At that very moment? Seriously? But yeah...
Nothing could be done, so after some tense convictions "Please leave, you caused a desync, the game is frozen, it won't continue unless you leave" - he left, one could easily tell, that he wasn't too happy about that.
Basically, visually revealing radar signatures causes data usage spikes (I don't know the exact mechanics behind this, but it is what it is). This phenomena is easily observable when the game has that "barely playable" type of lag, and you are scouting and directly looking at the revealing of the scouted units, micro freezes can be observed during these moments, when gray squares are replaced by a unit model.
And if some player's connection isn't that good, and by that I mean being barely managing to keep up with the game, these data usage spikes often seal the deal by a desync.
So the possible message of this topic could be: "Do scout 24/7, so each time you scout, there are less gray squares to be revealed, hence the smaller data spikes come to be".
By the way, we did lost that game...
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All of that is almost certainly pure coincidence.
That being said, post the replay number and if it happens again, post it here as well. Also post game and client and all of the other logs you can think of that might be helpful.
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Most desyncs happen due to data packet loss or data packets arriving in the wrong order however. Spotting units doesnt cause any big data spikes since every player's game already "knows" what is there (in order to simulate the game properly) and scouting just updates everyone's vision map and reveals the unit type.
