Factorio Forums

Hello,

We encouter an issue with malicious people griefing server by pasting in the chat extremly long messages, which make the server very laggy or freeze indefinitly every players' client if message is long enough. Last case (attached log) was a game with about 30 players, everyone got frozen and server was inaccessible for few min the time for it to digest the message. I wouldn't post here if it was an isolated event, it seems to become a trend in the griefer community.

My request is to put a size limit to messages in chat for non-admins users. I know lot of people use big commands in chat for modding purpose so it's better if it doesn't affect admins.

I added the log from this event, it stop abruptly when my client froze, message was much longer.

Thanks in advance.

Another thing they can do is just paste a massive bp in text, so the savefile of current game gains like +60mo per message (depends how long they did their message..), which make new players download a massive savefile for nothing.

While not desirable (and hopefully addressed some how): public Factorio servers will always have these issues. To prevent *all* of these kinds of issues would limit features intended to exist in the game; how big is "too big" for a blueprint in chat?

What about giving the choice? A check button in server config "allow unlimited chat/restrict chat message size" would solve the issue for public server with large traffic who endure malicious people, while not impacting the other who want to keep pasting BP in chat.

Most likely something like that will be the solution. But it won't stop the root issue; public servers invite trolls because there's no accountability. They will just move from one to the next.

Yes indeed, it don't solve the root issue. It's an endless race protecting players versus people who seek for glitch to troll them. But i'm very glad if a solution like that could be implemented, because this exploit is very damaging. Thanks