Starting at server build 2689 (unless backed out in a later build), when using OneSync, there’s a few differences regarding entity lifetime compared to before.
- Entities that are owned by a script (not marked as no-longer-needed, or re-assigned as mission entity) will now be able to be in an ‘unowned’ state in which the server is the owner of the entity. This happens when no player is having the entity in scope (as in – the entity is out of range of any player), and this state ends when it goes in scope for a player.
- Script ownership is now correctly synced across the board. No longer does the owning script ID vanish when an entity migrates or is recreated. This should fix a lot of cases of mission entities getting deleted anyway.
- Faraway entities are no longer controlled by their original owner. This means that any entity that would be out of scope will be culled and migrated/disowned. It might lead to a small number of script compatibility issues, but in return a lot of cases of unenterable vehicles (because the owner is too far and doesn’t know you) especially with Infinity/Beyond modes should be fixed.
- Entities that aren’t owned by a script get reassigned and, when impossible, culled when out of scope. This is a difference from the old behavior where this was up to the game behavior of the owning client. Typically, the owning client would have cleaned up non-script entities early anyway, so this should not be a significant difference.
In addition to these changes, a number of improvements to ‘entity RPC’ are planned to allow for more robust server-side entity creation/initial configuration of entities by taking advantage of this ‘unowned entity’ state, resolving a large number of issues with current server-side CREATE_VEHICLE/… calls.