irnlake

I believe that with the state of technology in general, we are not able to launch as frequently or as reliably as we should. I feel that we have never truly been about progress, but 99.9% about profit. We will never reach the level of advancement that previous generations have dreamed of because of this problem. Machines with the intelligence of humans in 20 years? I'm guessing it would be more like 50. The means to prevent or escape extinction level events are far too costly at the moment because we have not advanced far enough to make them economical. The cost of resources that go into maintaining our most complex weapons would be astronomically higher if war did not push us to invest in it. Similarly, investment in a relatively profitless venture will not happen unless we take a hit from a super volcano, half mile wide comet, asteroid, or other major catastrophe that requires so much attention. The new propulsion technologies still require chemical rockets to launch into orbit. The plasma engine is an extremely low thrust high velocity engine that couldn't move itself at all in the atmosphere, but would increase to high velocity in space over a long period. Terraforming Mars would be a waste of time as we know Mars has no magnetic protection from radiation, and the temperature is so low that the excess of greenhouse gasses cannot even get the planet to an average of 0 degrees. What would get us into space faster would be a source of cheap(low maintenance and setup),abundant(easily implementable in many environments), and renewable(self explanatory)energy. Solar grade silicon is expensive and has a low shelf life. Methane is a good choice although pollution is still a problem. Ethanol is not the energy fix that we thought it would be(costs quite a lot to manufacture from economic and environmental standpoints). With abundant energy reducing our dependence on foreign oil, we would save a lot of money and allow that money to be used on less consumable items. Items that we desperately need like a better public transportation system that would further reduce consumption of oil because trains are more efficient than cars. Lets all just face it. The American Dream is what's killing America. We need a new dream. We need to seek not just personal independence, but national independence from foreign oil and from China. Our consumer lifestyle was fine when we had money, but we have consumed ourselves into debt and the road out is the hard road of production. Vacation is OVER! We need to make things that the rest of the world WANTS to buy, and we need to do it without screwing our environment(sorry China, progress too quickly in one area and you regress in others). Space is eventually where we will end up. The Earth is getting quite crowded and advances in aerospace technologies do benefit other technologies. Budget cuts should not be allowed to impede our space program, but as mentioned earlier, space does not provide immediate profit or profit that is evident to the capitalist world. As such, we can only HOPE that our economy gets better in time to prevent or reduce the damage of the next global disaster. As for a space colony,I know exactly where my space colony is. It is in China in the form of lead bricks...

Okay! It seems to have been the real-time spyware and/or antivirus scanners. Turned them off and proxy looks to be running properly.

Already did that. It doesn't work any more. Makes me feel bad about posting that fix haha! The quest is on for another fix!

So I made a second character to apply that fix. It didn't work. Both characters get bad opcode messages.

I can't gate, dock, or undock any more without the proxy spamming bad opcode messages. The game has become unplayable for me.

In this world of warnings about spyware, registry errors, and defrags, it is often forgotten that checkdisk is a regular maintenance that should be done quarterly regardless of whether or not we have any kind of obvious problems. I am glad that this worked for you.

Okay, so I reinstalled everything multiple times, but nothing seemed to work. Reset my router, cable modem, defrag, driver updates, reset updates, registry clean, etc. I thought that the bad opcode and proxy crashes might not be due to the server at all, but my computer! Support suggested that it is packet loss due to server error or connection, but another thing that causes data loss is corrupted areas on a hard drive! I ran checkdisk(my computer, rightclick: drive(usually C:), properties, , tools, error checking: check now, check both boxes, start, reboot. After the scan was finished, I have no more proxy crash, no bad opcode messages, and no CTD! Only issue now is the play server, but patience is a virtue and so is loyalty to our wonderful emulator team. I hope this helps someone. Note: This worked on an XP machine. My Vista machine does not have this problem, but checkdisk might work for Vista or 7 as well. Doesn't hurt to run a checkdisk every now and then...I think.

Hmmm...could we possibly have a feature like "donate to a cause and receive a reward" thing? I think I mentioned this in the old forums, but how about a character can donate looted equipment(shields,engines,devices,reactors,weapons)at or below their level for the construction of their race's flagship. Donations turn into points that can be used to buy exp(combat, exploration, trade) or some kind of awesome donation only weapons that consume ammo that can only be bought from the item donation center or equipment that have time limited effects(Illegally modified"insert random engine name" warp +1000 for 1-9 hours of game play(maybe the effect can last 1 hour per equipment level), non tradable, non manufacturable). Effect goes away after time is up and so the engine becomes a damaged "insert random engine name" with 25% quality. Way too much coding to implement until everything is the way it should be. Taking things too far: Donation centers keep a count of all the equipment received and reject types of equipment when the count is sufficient. When all shield, device, engine, reactor, and weapon quantities are met, a flagship is launched for a certain time which provides everyone of that race with buffs. Progen might get increased shields. Terrans increased missile range. Jenquai increased deflection. OMG! THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN: There is no indication of when a flagship will launch. It launches with a system message to notify all players that a race's flagship has launched. The flagships orbit a large asteroid at the center of a map. The map is a PvP map. There is no station in the map. Races with flagships in the map are allowed to enter the map from their home sector(Earth, Jupiter, Mars). Flagships can be destroyed to force the opposing race out of the map and discontinue the race buff. When a flagship is destroyed, the map is populated with many hulks with a 1-5% chance to contain a lvl 4-9 unique item. Flagships cannot be repaired, but over time will regenerate all hull and shields. Flagships are a boss type mob and will not attack its own race. I know I know. Too much to hope for, but I think the game could use something like this just for some good ole pvp action and it adds another way to get exp and random unique equipment.

Here, you see that sometimes there is no bad opcode before I get kicked off. I don't know why the ports would need to reset so often. I do notice a considerable increase in the time that it takes to load the maps and trade with vendors compared to several months ago. 20/12/09 09:26:58 MVAS thread running 20/12/09 09:26:58 Received Master login confirm, new UDP port is 3515 Avatar_id = 1073787145 20/12/09 09:26:58 <server> Master Login received - UDP sector port: 3515 20/12/09 09:26:58 >> Commence Login check 20/12/09 09:26:58 Sending Login packet - connection active 20/12/09 09:27:36 ---> Server handoff 20/12/09 09:27:37 Received Master login confirm, new UDP port is 3635 Avatar_id = 1073787145 20/12/09 09:27:37 <server> Master Login received - UDP sector port: 3635 20/12/09 09:27:37 >> Commence Login check 20/12/09 09:27:37 TCP connection on port 3500 closed gracefully 20/12/09 09:27:37 Sending Login packet - connection active 20/12/09 09:27:45 Sending StartAck to Server 45321 20/12/09 09:27:47 >> Login check: Login OK 20/12/09 09:31:25 Bad opcode through to Proxy: 0x4900 Length: 0xc21 20/12/09 09:31:25 Bad opcode through to Proxy: 0x6e69 Length: 0x7242 20/12/09 10:43:23 MVAS thread running 20/12/09 10:43:24 Received Master login confirm, new UDP port is 3635 Avatar_id = 1073787145 20/12/09 10:43:24 <server> Master Login received - UDP sector port: 3635 20/12/09 10:43:24 >> Commence Login check 20/12/09 10:43:24 Sending Login packet - connection active 20/12/09 10:43:33 Sending StartAck to Server 45321 20/12/09 10:43:34 >> Login check: Login OK 20/12/09 10:44:07 TCP connection on port 3500 was reset 20/12/09 10:44:07 Client connections terminated 20/12/09 10:44:08 Client has terminated. Sending termination signal. 20/12/09 10:44:07 TCP connection on port 3801 was reset 20/12/09 10:45:58 MVAS thread running 20/12/09 10:45:58 Received Master login confirm, new UDP port is 3635 Avatar_id = 1073787145 20/12/09 10:45:58 <server> Master Login received - UDP sector port: 3635 20/12/09 10:45:58 >> Commence Login check 20/12/09 10:45:58 Sending Login packet - connection active 20/12/09 10:46:07 Sending StartAck to Server 45321 20/12/09 10:46:08 >> Login check: Login OK 20/12/09 10:48:03 Bad opcode through to Proxy: 0x0000 Length: 0x0 20/12/09 10:48:03 Bad opcode through to Proxy: 0x0000 Length: 0x100 20/12/09 10:49:09 TCP connection on port 3801 was reset 20/12/09 10:49:09 Client connections terminated 20/12/09 10:49:13 Client has terminated. Sending termination signal. 20/12/09 10:49:09 TCP connection on port 3500 was reset 20/12/09 10:53:34 MVAS thread running 20/12/09 10:53:34 Received Master login confirm, new UDP port is 3635 Avatar_id = 1073787145 20/12/09 10:53:34 <server> Master Login received - UDP sector port: 3635 20/12/09 10:53:34 >> Commence Login check 20/12/09 10:53:34 Sending Login packet - connection active 20/12/09 10:53:35 TCP connection on port 3801 was reset 20/12/09 10:53:35 TCP connection on port 3500 was reset 20/12/09 10:53:35 Client connections terminated 20/12/09 10:53:39 Client has terminated. Sending termination signal. 20/12/09 11:03:02 MVAS thread running 20/12/09 11:03:02 Received Master login confirm, new UDP port is 3635 Avatar_id = 1073787145 20/12/09 11:03:02 <server> Master Login received - UDP sector port: 3635 20/12/09 11:03:02 >> Commence Login check 20/12/09 11:03:02 Sending Login packet - connection active 20/12/09 11:03:03 TCP connection on port 3500 was reset 20/12/09 11:03:03 TCP connection on port 3801 was reset 20/12/09 11:03:03 Client connections terminated 20/12/09 11:03:07 Client has terminated. Sending termination signal.

Yes, bad opcode. Then, I get a series of TCP connection resets and a crash to desktop. This usually happens when I am changing areas or attempting to trade with a vendor. Happens some what at random. I am able to play for a bit, but no longer than 20 mins before I get bad opcode messages. Anyone else got this problem?