electric-cherry/docs/guides/metrics.md

Metrics

Metrics is under Analytics at /metrics (keyboard shortcut: g m). Choose the past 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days. The page refreshes every minute.

Overview and filters

Lobbies running shows the average and peak number of recorded lobbies in the selected scope. The average divides captured lobby-hours, including unknown status, by captured wall time. Empty spares are deliberate supply for new groups: the card shows their hours and share of all captured lobby-hours, rather than treating them as failed utilization. Unknown status can include lobbies starting or unavailable, so this count does not guarantee every lobby was ready to join.

Player-hours integrates reported player counts over time. No empty lobby shows the share of known map time when no tracked lobby reported zero players. Each game/map is measured separately, then its durations are pooled. This is not elapsed fleet time or a count of rejected joins. A partly occupied Zombies lobby does not count as an empty spare, even if player slots remain.

Last collected is the newest recorded batch, including unknown checks; Report refreshed is when this report was calculated. Collection stops when no servers are registered. Earliest retained observations do not prove continuous history or the original installation date.

Background refresh keeps the last successful report visible on failure and offers Retry. Returning to a visible tab refreshes immediately. Game and map filters apply to the whole report, including comparisons, signals, and the heatmap. Map choices preserve the exact recorded game/map pair and include retained occupancy, match, and autoscaling Provisioning history. Range and scope are shareable through the URL; refreshes preserve table controls and chart selection.

Autoscaling operations

The Autoscaling section follows the selected period, game, and map and links to the policies. Lobbies added and Lobbies removed count successful create and remove operations, including completions with warnings. Failed and cancelled operations appear separately. Counts come from retained Provisioning records linked to autoscaling, independently of occupancy samples; manual operations and changes in sampled lobby counts do not contribute.

An operation belongs to the period containing its finish time, including both endpoints. A request made before the period still counts if it finishes within it; pending operations and finishes outside the period do not count. Request to ready shows the average and maximum request-to-finish duration of successful creates with valid timestamps, including queue time. Each create has equal weight. Without valid completed creates, these timings are unavailable, not zero. Verified readiness does not establish browser visibility or successful external joins.

Scope uses the operation's recorded server name, which encodes its game and map variant. Game-wide policies do not combine different variants when filtering by map. Friendly map names, slugs, and unambiguous canonical map names are supported; an ambiguous engine label such as zm_transit is not assigned to a variant. History survives server removal and policy deletion, subject to Provisioning retention. Missing or purged operations are not estimated. The policy card's 31-day spare-deficit measurements remain separate from this section.

Matches and groups

Matches started counts retained matches whose recorded start falls within the selected period, including both endpoints. A missing start event uses the first recorded match observation, which may be later than the actual start. Active, completed, and interrupted matches all count, including matches that never reach round 2 and matches on removed servers. These counts do not use the leaderboard's completed-match or round qualification rules.

Average group size is the average number of distinct recorded player GUIDs per match. A player counts once across all reports for that match, including late joins and players who left before its end. Each match has equal weight in the fleet average; the average is not an average of map averages. This measures recorded participation over the match's lifetime, not its starting squad or peak simultaneous occupancy. Active matches can change as more players are recorded.

Solo games counts matches with exactly one distinct recorded player. Its share uses only matches with at least one recorded player. Matches with no recorded players still count as started, but their group size is unknown and they are excluded from both the average and solo-share denominator. If no matches have recorded players, those two values are unavailable rather than zero.

The map table includes these same match statistics. A map with match history in the selected period remains visible even without occupancy samples; its match statistics do not establish lobby-hours, availability, or an autoscaling shortage. Match statistics cover the selected period only and have no previous-period comparison.

Players over time

The player chart uses the lobby chart's periods: hourly for 24 hours, and UTC-aligned 24-hour periods for 7 or 30 days. Labels use the report timezone. Unique players counts distinct player GUIDs in every period overlapped by their recorded match participation, from first to last sighting. Multiple matches in one period count once, and the same GUID across Black Ops I and II is one player. Matches that began before the range still contribute participation inside it. These are recorded participants, not concurrent player counts or the lobby chart's player-hours.

New players counts a GUID at its earliest recorded sighting across both games. Game and Map filters limit unique players to matching retained matches; new players count only when their original sighting was in a matching match. A regular's first visit to another map or game does not make them new again. Period boundaries belong to the following period; a sighting exactly at the range's end counts in the final period. Range totals count distinct GUIDs across the entire window independently: daily unique counts cannot be added to get the range total.

Periods before the earliest retained match are gaps, not zero players. This history boundary is fleet-wide, so filtering to a quiet map does not hide recorded zeroes. The chart notes limited history and marks periods clipped by the selected range or the retained-history boundary with hollow points. Totals cover available history only. Select a point, use Left/Right or Home/End, or open Inspect a period for the exact interval and counts. View exact time data provides the same values in a keyboard-accessible table, with missing history shown as a dash.

History begins when leaderboard recording started; earlier play cannot be recovered. Players already playing then count as new when first recorded. Participation spans do not prove continuous presence between reports, and unrecorded matches are absent. Match retention removes participation, which can shorten or leave holes in this history. The durable first-seen player identities survive retention, so removing an old match cannot make a returning player new again. The original map cannot be recovered from an expired match. The chart remains available without occupancy samples.

Timeline and tables

The timeline defaults to Average lobbies running, split into With players, Empty spare, and Unknown. Each bucket divides those lobby-hours by its captured wall time, so changing lobby counts remain visible. Collection gaps are excluded from that denominator. The average-lobby axis uses whole-number ticks; period details preserve fractional averages. Switch to the share view to compare proportions, or hours to compare absolute lobby time. Periods without captured time remain gaps.

The timeline has labelled axes and marks partial edge periods. Select a bar or use Previous/Next to inspect its exact interval and values. The time table supplies the same figures for comparison and assistive technology. Zero captured time is distinct from an observed empty lobby. Short durations use seconds or minutes so a real observation is not rounded to zero.

The map table supports numeric sorting and local search. Lobbies (avg · peak) shows the time-weighted average and peak concurrent lobby count for each recorded game/map pair, with empty lobby-hours beneath. Sort this column by average count. The average divides all captured lobby-hours, including unknown occupancy, by that map's captured wall time; collection gaps and periods without recorded lobbies for that map are excluded. Peak is the largest captured concurrent count, not the number of distinct lobby names. Empty lobby-hours sum time with zero reported players across the map's lobbies. Unknown occupancy is not counted as empty; empty time is unavailable when no occupancy is known. Lobby counts are unavailable without captured time. Per-lobby match and activity history is available on server pages.

The map table's No empty lobby column uses occupancy alone and retains the known map-time denominator in its details. Unknown map availability stays distinct from zero time without a spare. Evidence can be limited by short observations or unknown occupancy, never by missing player limits.

Comparisons and activity

Previous-period comparisons use the preceding equally long window with identical filters. Average lobby counts compare recorded supply, while player-hours changes are relative percentages. A previous observed zero can show New. Missing evidence remains unavailable. Partial retained history is labelled; a 30-day comparison usually has little previous history because default retention is 31 days. Collection gaps are excluded, and comparisons do not prove uninterrupted collection or adjust player-hours for fleet size.

The activity heatmap groups captured time by weekday and hour in its displayed timezone. Color represents occupied / known lobby time. Exact cell values include unknown time and contributing dates. No-data cells differ from observed zero; repeated DST hours contribute their actual elapsed time. Occupancy share describes how the fleet was used, but can change simply because a policy adds or removes spares. Read it alongside player-hours, lobby counts, and empty-lobby availability.

Autoscaling signals

Signals compare each map's observations with its current applicable policy. Game-wide policies apply independently to each supported map variant. Each signal links to the policy on Fleet → Autoscaling; a map without a policy gets a link to add one. Signals are advisory and never change a policy or a lobby.

A global pause appears once above the signals. Historical shortage signals remain visible while the fleet is paused, including suggestions to review the maximum or spare target. Review these findings and current settings before resuming. An individual policy's own pause or disabled state still prompts a policy review.

Recorded condition	Suggested action
No empty lobby for at least 2% of known map time, mostly at or above the current maximum	Review raising the policy maximum.
No empty lobby for at least 2% of known map time, mostly below the current maximum	Review the spare target and check creation time or blockers.
An applicable policy is off or paused	Review the policy and its pause or activation conditions.
No applicable policy and known occupancy is available	Consider adding an autoscaling policy to keep spares available.
Occupancy unavailable	Check telemetry/RCON reporting and wait for known player counts.
No shortage signal	Keep watching empty-lobby availability.

Evidence includes no-empty map time and how it splits above/below the current maximum. Less than one hour of known map availability, less than 80% known map availability, or less than 80% known lobby time makes advice tentative. Player limits are not needed. These thresholds are advisory rules, not demand forecasts.

Policy settings may have changed during the selected period. Comparing historical counts against today's maximum does not establish which settings applied then or whether autoscaling was enabled. No reported empty lobby also does not prove failed joins or unmet demand. Review provisioning delays, blockers, host resources, and game-key availability before changing targets.

Definitions and collection

• With players: a successful observation reported at least one player.
• Empty spare: an observation reported zero players.
• Unknown: failed checks, provisioning, or otherwise unavailable occupancy.
• Player-hours: reported players × observed time. Bots count if the server includes them.
• Empty lobby available: at least one lobby on the game/map reported zero players.
• No empty lobby: at least one lobby reported occupancy, and none reported zero. Mixed positive and unknown counts mean no empty lobby was reported; an unknown lobby might actually have been empty.
• Unknown map availability: every lobby on the game/map had unknown occupancy. This interval is excluded from the known-map denominator and is never counted as a spare shortage.

Observations come from the existing status worker. Each complete collection stays valid until the next collection, up to the 90-second freshness limit. Longer gaps are excluded, not counted as unknown or zero lobbies. Captured wall time includes intervals with at least one recorded lobby in the selected scope. Unknown lobby time and unknown map time use different units: several unknown lobbies on one map contribute several lobby-hours but only one interval of unknown map availability.

Charts split time at UTC hour/day boundaries; partial periods remain partial. Map variants use the configured variant when it matches the reported map. Player capacity may be retained in raw samples, but no metric or signal requires sv_maxclients or an assumed four-player limit.

Occupancy collection begins after this feature is installed; earlier occupancy cannot be reconstructed. Samples default to 31 days of retention; Admin → Settings can change this period. Cleanup runs during collection and in the background. Samples survive removal of a server and contain no player identities.

Match statistics use existing saved match history, independently of occupancy samples and raw telemetry diagnostics. Match history retention under Admin → Settings → Matches & players defaults to indefinite. Expiring a completed or interrupted match also removes its player participation and changes these statistics; active matches are protected. Increasing retention cannot restore expired matches. Saved match history survives removal of a server.

API

GET /api/metrics supplies the same report as the page and disables HTTP response caching. Query parameters are days (1, 7, or 30), game, map (requires game), and timeZone (an IANA zone). Invalid ranges and zones fall back to the defaults; invalid scope syntax is normalized. Fleet collection timestamps remain separate from selected-scope evidence timestamps. Collection boundaries are determined before scope filtering, so samples from other groups still end a batch interval.

running contains average, peak, and capturedHours; timeline points include their own capturedHours. Report-level matches and each map row's matches contain started, withRecordedPlayers, averageGroupSize, solo, and soloShare. withRecordedPlayers is the denominator for the group average and solo share; soloShare is a percentage from 0 to 100. When that denominator is zero, averageGroupSize and soloShare are null, solo is zero, and started retains the recorded number of starts. Match scope uses the exact saved game and map_name labels, and its time window uses the saved started_at timestamp. Occupancy collection and evidence timestamps remain independent of match history.

players contains the separately deduplicated range totals uniquePlayers and newPlayers, plus historyStartAt (the earliest retained match, in epoch milliseconds). Every points entry also has uniquePlayers, newPlayers, and playerHistoryPartial. Counts before retained history are null; known periods with no scoped participation are zero. Player charts treat either partial or playerHistoryPartial as partial. Participation timestamp changes and durable first-seen identity changes invalidate the report cache.

Map rows expose noEmpty, availabilityObserved, and availabilityUnknown durations, plus current policy context and noEmptyAtMaximum / noEmptyBelowMaximum durations. pooledAvailability combines map durations and coverage. autoscalingPaused reports the current global pause separately from each policy's own pausedReason. Policy edits and global pause changes invalidate cached metrics reports, as do changes to the match and player participation data used by the report.

autoscaling contains added, removed, failed, cancelled, readinessSamples, readinessMeanSeconds, and readinessMaxSeconds. Counts use finished_at in the selected window; readiness uses finished_at - started_at for successful creates with nonnegative, valid durations. Both timing values are null when there are no readiness samples. Changes to Provisioning outcomes or autoscaling source links invalidate cached reports, including when no new occupancy is collected.