Factorio Forums

I have been trying for a while to play co-op with my college roommate.

First we tried LAN play, but that didn't work. Then we tried internet play but that didn't work either---I was able to join public games but not my roommate's game, even though I could see it. I suspect this has to do with my college's networking setup. Perhaps we are behind a NAT, whatever that means.

To try to get around the college network, I created an ad-hoc wireless network from my Windows 10 PC. My roommate connected to the ad-hoc wireless network with his Macbook. Unfortunately, even then, we couldn't get LAN play to work. We were both on version 0.13.1.

Has anyone successfully played over an ad-hoc wireless network before?

We bought this game so we could play together and so far it's been frustrating to fail in every attempt. Any advice you could give would be appreciated. Thank you.

How have you been trying to connect?

If you have simply been typing in IP into google that will give you your external IP address (the IP address that people outside your network see). Since you have not forwarded your UDP port (I assume) this will not work. You need your friend to connect via your internal IP address (only seen by other devices on your ad-hoc wireless network.)

If you're on windows go to command prompt and type ipconfig. Your friend needs to connect using the IPv4 address displayed there. If you are on mac or linux there will be a similar command but you'll need to find that yourself.

Edit:

If you update your installation to experimental build 0.13.1 or higher there is the Play on LAN option that will automatically detect any games hosted on your LAN network

Yep, we're on 0.13.1+, so one of the methods we've tried is Play over LAN. We can see the game but can't join.

Is the MAC or windows firewall too restrictive? You might have to create an exception for factorio.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201642

I'll give that a try. I'm just hoping that there isn't some fundamental problem with an ad-hoc network for LAN play.

tedshot wrote:I'm just hoping that there isn't some fundamental problem with an ad-hoc network for LAN play.

Hi, I do not know enough about ad-hoc networks as you describe them but can't really imagine it being any different than any other network - as long as you have proper translation/routing within and between network(s) they all do the same thing, allow you to communicate with other computers over the tcp/ip (transmission control protocol/internet protocol) at the least.

Onward to problem solving;
Have you guys tried doing the reverse? ie him connecting to you, you connecting to him - in order to determine if the problem lies with either one of you or both.
If you are on a campus network, have you researched the various restrictions that apply to you as users? (I'm not familiar with campus networks but I would assume some could have restricting rules regarding what traffic is allowed to flow between connected clients and/or firewall software snooping for malicious activity that may detect factorio as a threat (far fetched I know, but you never know unless you are the administrator of the network))

If I was sitting where you are, I'd check if the problem was on either mine or my friends (temporarily disable firewalls/add rules for factorio etc) and after eliminating our computers I'd send a message to campus IT helpdesk asking why I'm not allowed to initiate udp connections on <port X> with <my friends ip here>

*Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about - but I find it odd that lan play is such a hassle for you