[SOLVED] Very Strange Lag Issues

[utoxin]

I really need some help. Me and two of my friends play Factorio together. For the last several months, an issue has been developing that I'm completely unable to figure out.

Our server had been running at Nodecraft (more on this later), and works great for my two friends. But I've been having weird network buffering issues that can result in my FPS getting dragged down to 4 or 5. I've turned on the multiplayer statistics overlay, and when this is going on the buffer numbers and the jumps number both go NUTS. Hundreds of jumps and hundreds+ for all of the buffer numbers. Meanwhile, the other two players are doing just fine, running along at 60 fps/ups.

We've done.... a LOT of troubleshooting. Things we've tried:

• Rebuilt my old computer. Helped a LITTLE, but not much.
• Replaced my consumer wifi AP/network router with a powerful pfSense router. No change.
• Had one of my friends host the server, instead of nodecraft. No change, maybe a little worse.
• Tried a VPN. Worse.
• Hosted the game on my local box. A fair bit better, but still had some issues when a lot was going on. (I was streaming during this test, so my computer had a LOT going on.)
• Hosted the server on my Unraid server, in my local network. Minor improvement. (FPS still drops way down, but at least when it's local I can /move/. When it's outside my local network, I'm locked in place.)
• Tried disabling my PC's firewall, in case packet inspection was causing a problem. No change.

After moving it to my local network on my Unraid server, I've tested and eliminated EVERY single piece of networking hardware involved (other than my new PC's NIC, but I had this problem before the new PC, so that's effectively eliminated as well.) To the best of my ability to tell, none of it is the source of the problem.

During all of the tests above, my friends have had zero issues. Minor FPS hiccups when we do something like lay down a MASSIVE blueprint, etc. But fast recovery, and stable framerate normally.

Turning the tick rate down to 36 UPS lets me run fairly well, with only occasional bits of FPS stutter. My system is a recently built machine, with better specs than at least one of my friends (And tied with the other guy, I think), so it shouldn't be computer related.

Our server/factory is a Space Exploration map, and while we've got some big builds, I wouldn't put us into the 'mega' classification yet.

I need ideas. What else can I test? Is there anything I can try to fix this? It's... really annoying.

Computer specs:
CPU: Ryzen 7 5800X
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 64 GB (4 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16
GPU: Geforce RTX 3070 Ti

(I posted this over on the reddit, and got no substantial responses other that questions about my troubleshooting.)

I desperately need some new ideas for things to test. It's probably something simple, but I can't think of anything we haven't tried.

[Zavian]

From everything that you post it sounds like your pc is having trouble keeping up with the server. It might be worth testing without other software running on your PC, to see if that improves performance. (So close your streaming software, video capture software, web browsers, etc).

I'm assuming you have seen viewtopic.php?f=7&t=68653 ? Posting the screenshots requested in that post might be useful.

[robot256]

How big is the save file? Have you scanned any planets that you aren't using? You can delete them and rescan later if you need to. Fully scanned planets full of biters doing nothing use a surprising amount of UPS.

Do you have Rampant installed? It leads to very different algorithms than stock so lag xan show up at weird times. Not recommended for mid- to late-gamr Space Exploration.

Have you tried playing with and without Steam (via standalone client/zip download)? How fast does the game run if you load the server's save on your machine in single player mode?

[utoxin]

Okay, a couple responses.

I've looked at most of the data in that post about performance issues, and I'll see if I can grab some of those screenshots later. As for my computer struggling: I'll try doing some more testing with minimal software running, but I've already tested it without my capture software and without browser running. I have a handful of system tray stuff running, but none of it /should/ be an issue. But I'll try with all of that closed down.

But I'm skeptical about it being a direct performance limitation though. It could definitely be some piece of software I'm running, but I haven't found it yet. The reason for my skepticism is that one of my friends is running an almost identical build, and the other is running something a couple generations old (10 series Geforce, and an older CPU) and neither of them have any issues, even when the server is inside my local network.

The save is a couple hundred megs. We only have a handful of large surfaces. Note: The server UPS never suffers (It will flicker a little when we do something intensive, but it will run happily at 60 most of the time.) It's ONLY my client side FPS that suffers.

I haven't tried outside of steam, but I can try that tonight.

No Rampant in the pack.

I want to try and do some troubleshooting with a pure vanilla world, but I don't actually have a large factory save laying around for Vanilla. I had one in the past, but it got lost at some point when switching systems, and I haven't had much luck trying to find a save to download.

[utoxin]

Okay, I set my debug options as that other performance problem post suggested, and took screenshots. I also sat and looked at the numbers for a bit, and I think I see the "Problem" item, but I don't know how to dig deeper and figure out more.

The "Entity Update" step of Game Update is taking 12 ms, which is most of the frame. There's also a couple mods that are using a fair bit of the script update time, but that's an order of magnitude smaller than the Entity Update step.

Is there any easy way to troubleshoot that further? (I'm going to have my two buddies check their debug screen to see what their line says for that.)

screenshots

Debug data when no buffers are present (at 36 UPS)

Factorio-NoBuffers.png (6.46 MiB) Viewed 14729 times

Debug data when buffers are present (Server set to 60 UPS)

Factorio-Buffers.png (5.85 MiB) Viewed 14729 times

[Loewchen]

Your machine is simply slower than the server and both are not fast enough to simulate this save at full speed.

[utoxin]

My computer is faster than the server, and the server can happily run it at 60 UPS. And both of my friends who have equal or slower computers than me can run it just fine.

[bigmond]

Check that your memory is actually running at 3600. Motherboards often default ram to a lower speed for stability and you have to enable the performance mode.

Factorio is very sensitive to memory bandwidth.

[robot256]

My computer is faster than the server, and the server can happily run it at 60 UPS. And both of my friends who have equal or slower computers than me can run it just fine.

I see the thread is marked solved. How did you solve it? Curious minds want to know!