Bigger multiplayer teams

[Soulassassin]

Hi guys, what can we do about getting these dedicated setups to host servers for a bit more players? We are a big group of players that usually played arma3 together amd we would like to join forces together to get that rocket off the ground . But we are not able to get a server playable with more than 3 people on. And I am pretty sure its because of the p2p nature of the multiplayer side of this masterpiece of a game. Kinda puts one off because we have to split up now onto 3 seperate servers if everyone wants to play multiplayer. How do you guys do it? If anyone is doing it? I have quite a bit of networking experience but I am not able to figure this out. Is there no way to bypass the p2p structure? We usually play 50+ players on this same windows 2012 machine on arma3 without any issues. But for the life of me I cannot get this server to run smoothly with more than 3 players. Just want to say that this is not a post where I am badmouthing the game or devs. But surely there is something one can do to turn this into a massively multiplayer game? Or am I missing something?

Any advice is welcomed. Even if you are just saying I am a basic inserter for not understanding

[Robot721]

I can hardly even imagine the kind of massive base you can make with several dozen people on this game. That blew my mind. I'll be following this post, and would love to join if there is ever resolution to this issue.

Now with that said, yes it has to do with it being P2P. The user with the highest latency sets the pace for everyone else. It doesn't matter how high end of a server is hosting it, that is what defines the speed for everybody. I've seen this firsthand many times. The further people are spread out geographically, the higher it will go. 49 people can be on the same LAN and if one person is overseas, the lag will be horrible.

This is one of the more glaring issues with Factorio, so I could imagine it being solved in the upcoming versions. What you can do for now is determine where each of the players are located geographically, and go from there. For such a large number of players, start by grouping people by continent, ie EU and NA.

Another critically important thing to check is the latency of each player. I play on SU Gaming's servers, and here is something you can perhaps adopt from their practices:

viewtopic.php?f=53&t=21634

Have each of the players send you an image of their ping to your server. So grouping people by continent at least has everyone close to each other geographically, then this acts as a screen to filter out the highest pings from your server. With that many people, and with the game's current architecture, you will need to be very very strict about this.

Another thing to consider is the size of the server. The larger it gets, the more things that are going on, and the slower it could get. This is just speculation on my part, but seeing how this can happen with mega bases with only 4-5 users, assuming 50 people build 10x faster than 5, the lag will be proportionate with that growth of the map (more actions being tracked). And for that, I really don't know if there is a possible workaround to that at this time. If a dev with the game or someone who knows more about the innerworkings of Factorio can correct me, please go ahead.

[Soulassassin]

Thanks for the reply @Robot721

Our more immediate issue we are facing is the fact that we cannot seem to get past 3 players. So let me try and explain the scenario.

Let use some fake names *note that myself and Kevin are using the same ISP and we are situated approximately 30km from each other.

Myself, Josh, Peter and Kevin want to join forces.

The server is started....

I join the server and Josh joins. All good
Peter joins, still all good.
Kevin joins and immediately his latency in Teamspeak jumps from being a solid 30ms, to hovering around 700ms. And at this point the said lag is too horrible to even move because the screen updates every 700ms.

So we try and recreate the issue.

Josh and Kevin join but the moment that the 3rd player joins with Kevin in the session the above scenario resurfaces.

This happens even when he is on a physically different machine on a different router. So the only constant here, is the fact that both these machines are running on Windows 8.1 . But surely that can't be the issue? I am sure some of the factory workers here are running Windows 8.1 and playing on big multiplayer teams?

That's going to be our first point of focus to get him onto Windows 10 like all the other players. Because the fact that it causes his whole machine's network traffic to drop packets and the high latency makes me think that it's confusing the drivers on his NIC at that point where he is connected to more than 2 Peers on a UDP port. All this is speculation but that is my only theory at this point.

All that being said, I think the peer to peer nature of this game is the cause behind this because we have never had this issue with "Kevin".

At this point any advice or theories are welcome and we are willing to try them. Just not downloading anything from cNet or Softonic as a solution

Sweet, thanks again.

[Ninja_Dog81]

Hi, "Kevin" here... following

[Robot721]

Let me start by saying it may not be an OS issue. I'm on 7 and have zero latency issues... just saying. If there is a problem with his computer, it would be his hardware, as you said. But IMHO, I'm almost positive it is just his internet connection. Sometimes connections can bounce around in latency, and not necessarily from just traffic in his local network. Spikes in traffic on his local ISP node as well as the route to the other connected computers will have an impact, and to put it bluntly this problem is more noticeable on shitty/rural ISPs. It could also be the modem itself. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what the problem is. Use the process of elimination. "Kevin," direct connect your computer to the modem and then try. If the problem is fixed, it was the routers; if not, remove the routers from the list of possible things that are causing the problem. Make sure all the chipset drivers and all that are installed on your machines, and try it again.

Ah, forgot to bring this up... give me a break its 5:30am lol. Traffic on his computer or the network can most definitely have an impact. Did you accidentally leave uTorrent on? Is Steam automatically updating stuff? Is someone using Netflix in the house? And also, do you have latency issues often with your connection, or is this a first time thing?

Lastly, I'm assuming these computers are at least somewhat new. When you play single player, the game runs butter smooth, right?

So to summarize...

1) It could be your modem. Old modems can be quite the piece of shit.
2) It could be your routers. Perhaps both aren't fast enough.
3) It could be because of some drivers you don't have installed.
4) It could be your computer. A Commodore 64 might slow things down.
5) I didn't bring this up yet, but it COULD be the wiring in your house if its an older house, or if the coax is damaged (assuming you have cable internet). My grandparents had internet installed in their house, and the internet fluctuated from lightning fast/responsive to AOL dialup. It turns out the coax line connecting their house from the box in the alley was damaged. The ISP tech came over for an hour or so, and that permanently fixed the problem.

Isolate and test each variable, and you will fix the problem. It might be slightly time consuming, but there's only a handful of things that can be causing this. Here's an idea "Kevin"... take your router and computer to Soul Assassin's house, plug them in, and see if you have lag still. If you do, you know it is one of those two things. If not, you know its the other two things (modem or actual internet connection). Regardless, your focus to fix the problem will get slashed by 50%.

HTH

[Ninja_Dog81]

Your effort in trying to help us is much appreciated Robot. Let me answer you as best I can.

I live on the outskirts of a major city but our lines (in my neighbourhood) are quite prehistoric since it is quite rural. I'm using a 4mb (4 down, 0.4kb up) copper ADSL line. My ping to the server is around 60 on most other games as the server itself sits in another city. Our players are all in the same city, my city. All with pings ranging from 20 to 80.

* I have tried connecting directly to my router as I have a "booster" router between myself and the modem router. No change.
* I have tried using two different ISP's. No change.
* All drivers etc are up to date (albeit windows 8.1).
* My pc is more than capable of running the game at FPS60+
- i5 3570k
- 16gb Ram
- SSD
- Nvidia GTX970
Thus, single player runs like a dream.
* I could look at the modem itself, it is an old generic router that is handed out with an ISP installation/signup.
* My cabling, setup at home is otherwise perfect. Keep in mind this is the only game I struggle with, however I do tend to have slightly worse connections than my friends - due to my "remote" location.
- However, at work, which is located far more centrally, I had the same problem. A third ISP was involved, 4mb line, a laptop (win 8.1). Exactly the same behaviour is observed. Ping spikes on TS, the game lag etc.
* Internet in South Africa is a relatively "new" thing so our houses aren't wired for it. It is something we tend to install ourselves. Therefore, all the equipment is new and up to date (except for perhaps the router).
*As Soulassassin stated we use the same router but live in different locations within the same city.
* Connecting from another location is possible, I will try this weekend at my girlfriends place and see what happens, however her line is a 2mb I'm sure it will be fine.

The only factor that we have noted that be different is the OS... I'm wary of going to Win10 so I would prefer to leave this as a last resort.

On a side note, we have noticed that we do not have a config.ini file, is this something that needs to be created by us like the bat file? We simply use the default bat file command lines to start the server.
Would it be prudent to test running the dedi server through steam instead of the bat file where we can disable peer-to-peer?

Any other suggestions are most welcome! Thanks for your help but go now go get some sleep man, you should operate factories while tired!

[Soulassassin]

That's what happens