Unexplainable poor headless server performance.

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Deftin
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Unexplainable poor headless server performance.

Post by Deftin »

Hi all,

I appear to be having an issue with my factorio server after a hardware upgrade.

I've just moved my headless windows server from a Pentium E6700@3.2Ghz Machine with 4Gb of RAM to a Xeon E3-1240@3.3to3.7Ghz with 16Gb, and am having strange performance issues that I'm struggling to figure out.

Running at gamespeed 1.0 My client machine's 'catch up' progress moves backwards slowly, eventually disconnecting me. When I move this down to 0.8 I'm able to get in after a reasonable amount of time, however if i then shift back up to 1.0 my FPS drops to between 15 and 30 while my UPS remains a rock solid 60.

Running the save file on my local machine is not an issue, with a constant 60/60 ups/fps, the server also runs the game at a solid 60/60 when launched from within the game itself.

I've had 3 other people try to connect remotely who all have the same poor performance. and connecting via 'play LAN game' gives me identical results.

I'm somewhat out of ideas as to what's causing it. Every element of the new server is an improvement, but something has changed giving me performance that is terrible.

Attached is my logfile from attempting to connect to the server over my public address and failing due to catchup, as well as the logfile from the hosted server as i tried to connect
factorio-current.log
Factorio_Client_Log
(8.34 KiB) Downloaded 81 times
factorio-current-srv.log
Factorio_Server_Log
(4.85 KiB) Downloaded 73 times

Loewchen
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Re: Unexplainable poor headless server performance.

Post by Loewchen »

That is the standard "Client can not keep up" result, see Performance Issues here: viewtopic.php?f=49&t=4400. The server is not the problem, the client is. You can reduce the game speed, improve the client hardware or play a less demanding map.

Deftin
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Re: Unexplainable poor headless server performance.

Post by Deftin »

But the Client hardware hasn't changed. I have powered down the newer server and powered up the prior one, I then connected and saw no performance issues at all. There is something about the new, more powerful Server that is causing the issues. It's the only thing that changed.

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eradicator
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Re: Unexplainable poor headless server performance.

Post by eradicator »

Factorio is a synchronized simulation, that means every client has to simulate the whole world on it's own. If the sever is faster at this then the clients go into panic-mode and drop FPS try to get more UPS, this can go as low as 1FPS.

Here's a significantly simplified example:
You factory has 100 assemblers. So you need a CPU that can simulate 100 assemblers.

Situation 1:
Your servers CPU can handle 98 assemblers, your client CPU can handle 99 assemblers.
→ Result: The server slows down the whole game to 98% speed, i.e. 58.8UPS.

Situation 2:
Your server CPU can handle 120 assemblers, your client CPU can handle 99 assemblers.
→ Result:The server runs the game at 100% speed (60 UPS), your client can not keep up and drops.

In Single-player your computer is both client and server, so you can always "keep up" with yourself. As a result in SP the game will drop UPS instead of FPS when it can't run at 100% speed. Additionally single-player is slightly less heavy to run. Having experienced this myself, your description sounds exactly like you're walking this very fine line where you can barely keep up. And the new servers speed increase changed the balance.

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Re: Unexplainable poor headless server performance.

Post by Dergonic »

seeing your explanations, I must agree with the other ones.
The issue is not your server, but the clients.

The new CPU (and other hardware) is such that the game is now faster than before.
I suspect than before, due to map size, you CPU was struggling and so lowering the game speed. Server is always the master. If it cannot compute at 60 ups, it lowers the game speed. This is how factorio is coded.
All your client's hardware were able to compute the game fast enough with this lowered game speed.

Once you upgraded the server, the game speed is not struggle anymore (or less) and so the game speed was back to 1 (to the normal 60 ups).
But your client did not change hardware. And they are not able anymore to compute as fast as the server.
Game does not automatically slows down if a client cannot compute fast enough !


Solution : You (as an admin) have to force game speed to be lower so that the amount of calculation the server do in a tick, can also be computed by your clients hardware.
Solution 2 : You and other player have to found a way (i.e. optimising the base) to lower the computation needed every tick. There are a lot of post about this in this forum. But in a summary : Prefer higher tier building that increasing the number of lower tier - Use modules and beacon - Kill the bitters - Lower game speed (obviously) - Avoid expanding to much - Keep the "active chuncks" as low as possible - ...

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