Sector overload

A sector overload occurs when too many objects appear in one sector. Once active, every ship will start taking damage until the number of objects in the sector is reduced. The sector overload effect is purely technical in nature; its purpose is to reduce the amount of Internet traffic required on the game server, as the game was designed to be playable on a 36.6Kbit modem connection.

It is rather unpopular as a loud warning siren is played on every pilot's ship, and can be used to damage enemy ships which are hiding (such as stealth bombers) rendering such tactics useless in large games. As sector overload normally occurs when important battles are occuring it does little to reduce lag, as every player needs to be in a single sector to help with the offence and/or defence.

The damage is non-directly proportional to the number of objects exceeding the threshold. Rocks, floating items and bases do not count towards it and pods count only as "half" an object.

The threshold is set in the core file using ICE. The ICE Global "BaseClusterCost" sets the limit. It is phrased as a negative limit, for example for a 36 ships limit you would use -36.

The value differs among cores, this could be for balance reasons or the core not being updated for a long time.