Ugh, multiplayer sucks

[Plawerth]

Hello, I'm new to Factorio, I've been doing the single-player for about 50 hours.

Decided to try a big multiplayer map to see what happens. Ugh, that totally sucked.

1. On multiplayer map join, I suddenly start seeing a ton of Steam Achievements scrolling by. God dammit, now I will not be able to do these myself. How do I remove these from my "official" steam achievements lists?

- Automated Cleanup
- Automated construction
- Circuit veteran 2
- Circuit veteran 3
- Computer age 1
- Computer age 2
- Iron throne 2
- Iron throne 3
- Mass production 2
- So long and thanks for all the fish.

2. Catching up takes forever. I only have 1.5 megabit down / 256 kilobit up, after the map download, it says catching up for 20 minutes. The bit-rate from the server is only about 16 kilobit while catching up. Why?

3. Once actually connected, the server maintains a steady 16-20 kilobit connection, and I see lots of things happening, but I can barely move. At one point I was completely frozen, unable to move at all, meanwhile people keep chatting and materials fly by on the belts. ???

4. Often times when I go into the menu for something, I get stuck in the option menu for the machine. I try to press E or Escape to close it but it just reopens again all by itself, trapping me in the menu.

5. Decided to try clicking on the various menus in the top right, and they do nothing. But then at some point Statistics pops up, and now I can not get out of it. And because of the GUI size, the Statistics window covers the Gear button so I cannot even access the main menu to disconnect.

Press E to close statistics window, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens, press E to close, it reopens.

GOD DAMMIT. **CLICKS THE RED X IN TOP RIGHT TO FORCE QUIT FACTORIO**

[sillyfly]

"catching up" is when your machine runs the simulation from the point of the state you downloaded up to where everyone else is, so during this time you should only be receiving data of what others are doing, similar to the network utilization during normal gameplay. If this stage takes a long time it means either your computer is not fast enough (or just marginally fast enough), or your download took very long to complete, forcing your game to do a lot of catching up.

As for the other issues - it is my understanding that they all come down to the latency and latency spikes. If your connection isn't very stable (ping time fluctuates between low and high numbers), or you are relatively far away from the server you'll regrettably suffer from unenjoyable experience. This is exacerbated by the way Factorio handles network latency, making it change your latency value rapidly, flood your outbound connection, then lower it back down as your connection can't handle the rates.

Your best option is to find someone close by to play with (same country/city), or just play on LAN until you can get a better internet connection...

[Plawerth]

Is window redraw tied to the download tick rate? Normally in single player the game runs smooth as glass, but in multiplayer it was running at nearly a slideshow, about 10 frames per second or less. I rode a locomotive around the map for a while (couldn't get out of it) and the train leaps several meters down the track due to the low framerate.

Performance-wise, my rig should not be a problem.
- Core i7-3820 3.6ghz, 4 cores, 10 meg cache, 130w TDP
- 12 gig RAM
- 512 gig m.2 Samsung 950 Pro PCIe x4
- nVidia GTX 980 TI 6gb
- Samsung Curved 49" SUHD 4k, high-bandwidth UHD Color, 60fps YCbCr 4:4:4

The crappy 1.5 down / 0.25 up Internet however, I can do nothing about. That is the fastest available in this area.

[Klonan]

Is window redraw tied to the download tick rate? Normally in single player the game runs smooth as glass, but in multiplayer it was running at nearly a slideshow, about 10 frames per second or less. I rode a locomotive around the map for a while (couldn't get out of it) and the train leaps several meters down the track due to the low framerate.

Performance-wise, my rig should not be a problem.
- Core i7-3820 3.6ghz, 4 cores, 10 meg cache, 130w TDP
- 12 gig RAM
- 512 gig m.2 Samsung 950 Pro PCIe x4
- nVidia GTX 980 TI 6gb
- Samsung Curved 49" SUHD 4k, high-bandwidth UHD Color, 60fps YCbCr 4:4:4

The crappy 1.5 down / 0.25 up Internet however, I can do nothing about. That is the fastest available in this area.

You must be joining a very big factory, and simply it is too big for you to keep up with how fast the server is updating

[sillyfly]

Is window redraw tied to the download tick rate? Normally in single player the game runs smooth as glass, but in multiplayer it was running at nearly a slideshow, about 10 frames per second or less.

You can try saving the game and opening it in single player mode to see if it performs any better. If it does I guess it could possibly mean there is a relatively high overhead when running close to the network limit (I know I always get dismal performance in MP, and my connection isn't very good, but in my case I always blame the hardware, as I'm playing on a rather puny laptop).

[Shadus]

I'm running on a potato... i7 960 (1st gen)... with a damaged 560TI and half a memory bank burned out (it SAYS I have 16gb, but if I go over 12 in usage, the machine bluescreens). And I have no problems playing multiplayer.

I suspect your connection is more to blame than any performance issues of the machine. That being said... find someone willing to play with you and host a game... see what happens.

[sillyfly]

I suspect your connection is more to blame than any performance issues of the machine. That being said... find someone willing to play with you and host a game... see what happens.

True. And while the devs have nothing they can do about bad network speeds, I have a sneaking suspicion that Factorio simply doesn't handle this end of the spectrum very well, making clients with sub-par connections work harder than they should, which exacerbates the problem even more.

I'm not sure if the in-game debug info shows enough network statistics, but if and when the devs have time it would be nice if they could test with artificially limited connections to see if it's indeed an issue.

[LotA]

Being able to cancel a connection at a any point (downloading - loading - catching up) and get back to the main menu would be welcome.
Many times i killed factorio to start it all over again just because of eternal (or almost) connection time and i simply wanted to connect to another server.

[Tekky]

Being able to cancel a connection at a any point (downloading - loading - catching up) and get back to the main menu would be welcome.
Many times i killed factorio to start it all over again just because of eternal (or almost) connection time and i simply wanted to connect to another server.

You may want to consider making such a suggestion in the ideas and suggestions forum, if it has not been suggested before.