[2.0.42] Experiencing heavy lag on client side with equivalent PC

[gadams9319]

I host a headless server on a separate Linux system. All my friends who connect don't have lag issues and we have very similar hardware. I would expect that with me hosting on my network I would get better performance. It has gotten much worse as the base grows to the point where it is unplayable for me but my friends can still play. If I play the same save on this PC the performance improves.

[Loewchen]

This is the classic "too slow for the server" issue. Since you control the server, you can slow it down: 68653.

[gadams9319]

So does that mean the server is too slow or that my computer is too slow? I have nearly the same specs as my friends so I have a hard time understanding why it is just me. Also is there a way from the debug screen that I could tell how much to slow it down by?

[Loewchen]

The client is slower than the server and slower than normal speed. Just try a speed of .8 and see if this fixes the issue, it will not stay constant for long anyway.

[gadams9319]

Is there anyway that my connection with the server, even though it is in my house, could be limiting the client? When monitoring hardware performance there is nothing that seems like it could be causing the issue. Slowing down to .8 definitely helped but I would still like to understand the cause a little better.

[Loewchen]

Is there anyway that my connection with the server, even though it is in my house, could be limiting the client?

You would drop from the server or get a connection timeout, you are experiencing neither.

When monitoring hardware performance there is nothing that seems like it could be causing the issue.

No idea what you are looking at.

Slowing down to .8 definitely helped but I would still like to understand the cause a little better.

You are slower than the server, the server does not slow down, you fall behind the server, you stop rendering the game to catch up, you catch up, you are slower than the server, the server does not slow down, you fall behind the server, you stop rendering the game to catch up, you catch up, you are slower than the server. . . . . . .

[Jap2.0]

When monitoring hardware performance there is nothing that seems like it could be causing the issue.

If you are monitoring CPU usage and whatnot, note that Factorio is largely bound by single-core performance (and a few other things such as memory latency/bandwidth which are more complicated), so the CPU can be a bottleneck even if it does not show near 100% usage.

The drop in framerate is (probably) because your computer can only just barely keep up with the server, so it skips rendering some frames to be able to keep up.