!!!GAMEBREAKING!!! Strange Lag on Every Multiplayer Server With No Apparent Cause

Hello, I am seeking help because I am at my wit's end. This issue turned me off of Space Engineers for 8 months. I figured I'd try it again after all the updates since then, with no luck.

Here is what is happening...

Whenever I JOIN a dedicated server, I can play just fine for a bit without problems. After a while things start to lag (I'll give more detail in a moment.) and after that point no matter how many times I disconnect and reconnect, it stays the same on that server.

The lag I am talking about is not normal lag. Animation and movement throughout the world is unaffected. What is affected is the actions and interactions with game objects. For example, if I try to get into my cockpit, by pressing the "Use" key, nothing happens... Well for about 30 seconds to a minute... Then, no matter where I am (I could've jetpacked 500M out into space), I am ported into my cockpit. Sometimes the action doesn't take place at all... It's almost like the server is keeping track of where I am, but ignoring me otherwise...

I'll tell you exactly what happened today...

I had just about finished building a small ship in the server. Just needed a couple more blocks. My suite energy warning came on, so I went to the med bay and tried recharging... My suit was not recharging... In fact, it was like I did not interact with it at all. I started frantically mashing the "Use" button as my suit counted to zero... I died... When I respawned, I grabbed the items for the last couple blocks on the ship. started welding them... The welder lit up but there was no construction happening. The required items bar did not move. I walked away for a sec and, after about 30 seconds, there was the clunk sound of the blocks being finished. I ran up to the cockpit and pressed "F" (my remapped "Use" key) to jump in... Nothing happened. Pressed repeatedly, nothing happened. Went to my Station reactor and turned off all systems (thinking the lag was due to too many processes). All the systems shut down immediately... As soon as which, I was suddenly in the cockpit of the ship I tried to get in 40 seconds prior. The weird part was that I was still in the control menu of the station, with no antenna or any way of remote access. I closed the menu and flew off into space to try out the new ship. Flew great. Came back to the station and turn on inertia dampeners... Slammed into the asteroid... The inertia dampeners were stated to be ON but no action was executed. So I tried to repair the ship... I went to my cargo and took out some resources (Station Cargo)... Well tried to... I tried moving them a dozen times and the inventory items would not budge. I was frustrated (Doing one of those Conan The Barbarian Battle Cries and wildly flailing the mouse around) so I walked away from the cargo and back to the ship. Pressed "F" and nothing again. I waited for about 30 seconds and I was in, AND that inventory that I tried to grab was there now too. The ship was still operational, but not pretty. I tried to bring it in closer to the landing platform I had built, in one of those weird doughnut asteroids. I landed and brought it to a COMPLETE STOP... As soon as I jumped out (30 - 40 seconds later - you get it by now, assume it every time)... As soon as I jumped out the ship took off upward and exploded on the asteroid wall, as if someone was in it holding the spacebar down. I raged again with a deeper battle cry than before... I finally started to vent to the rest of the players, but they were not experiencing the same thing. They had no lag. and so they started giving me the usual NOOB rundown. (You know how it is... You are a seasoned player, but they insist on questioning your ability to use the basic controls, "Did you press "Z"? Are your thrusters on "Override"?"). At that point I knew I was alone. I checked my internet connection, 7Mb Down, 1.5Mb Up, all good. I checked Shift+F11: Simulation = 1.00 good, both download and upload packet activity good, PING was 20 good. I changed my settings to normal rendering quality and render interpolations on and still nothing. So I left the game and here I am.

This happens to every single server I join eventually. It makes the game unplayable. I spent so much time just trying to get one ship going in a PVP server and it ended in disappointment. Why is this happening and why does it seem like I am the only one affected?

Please Help! Thanks!

PS. Single player works flawlessly on all high graphics settings.

 

I get the exact same problem and have had the problem for a while now so I know exactly how frustrating this is.

I've tried everything on my side apart from a windows reinstall (it's about time I do this anyway)

Its not fps lag (fps is 30-60)
Its not internet lag (pings are low and when you send the command (ie moving items or accessing ships) everyone else sees the update before you do)

It's not mods. This happens even if you have none installed.

I have noticed this though. If you're the only one on the server it seems ok. As soon as others join it starts to "delay" and updates in large chunks.

 

Is there a way to check how many packets get lost? Ctrl h menu does show more than half in red, but i somehow got used to it being delayed.

For me symptomps are worse when there are multiple active pcs or even a tv on the same home network.

 

This issue does sound like a issue related to packet loss - similar issues have happened to me in other games where I've experienced heavy loss and when I do finally get a good connection to a server, the server tries to play catch up with my client and all kinds of crazy things can go wrong.

If you can find the IP address or host name of one of the servers you have tried, you could try running a ping "ip" /t from a command prompt for a bit while you are in the game and connected to that server to see if it spikes/loses any packets. It only takes one packet in a game like this to cause issues like the one you are seeing.

 

I've ran into this problem (also in other games) when some idiot uses a flea market used microwave within a couple houses of me (since I play on 2.4GHz wireless) Sometimes if I just sit still and/or get to an area where nothing's going on for a while, it'll catch up and resynch (less likely to work in space engineers than other games).

 

Based on the info from radam with ctrl + h and Stout I managed to solve the issue for me.

I had tried my connection directly wired into the router and it was still the same. My internet connection was quick enough and my ping to the host was low (outside of space engineers)

With Ctrl + H my ping times would spike into the 20k+ and in most cases wouldn't even come down.


Since I knew it wasn't the host as I was the only one in our group getting this issue it had to be something that changed on my side. My pc hadn't changed, no new hardware installed in it etc. My internet connection was the same but the only thing which was changed in the past year was my router.


I used to use the shitty BT Homehub3 over a year ago when I had no issues but the wifi kept dropping out and the router would keep rebooting so I replaced it with my old Linksys WAG54G2. When all this happend I wasn't playing space engineers much so I didn't really notice it.

I logged into my router for shits n giggles as everything else had been tried. Found a section called spi firewall (spi firewall is a stateful firewall that inspects packets) didn't want that on and while I was at it I disabled all the qos crap too.

Logged back into the space engineers server... Ctrl + H.. Ping 100. <Insert massive grin> went strait to a assembler and took some items out.. Updated my inventory instantly <Grin gets larger> so far seems stable.


Had a few lag spikes but that was the host as everyone else had the same (was caused by someone crashing their ship into a roid)

 

When you're having this issue, do you notice if the assemblers and refineries are also running slow?

 

Yes they run slow to the person affected. (items not moving as quick)
To everyone else it looks normal.

 

I have no clue if this is the same issue but here is my take on super lag on multiplayer:

I play with friends, everything is fine until a SPECIFIC player connects to the game. Stating that point EVERYTHING breaks except moving around. The SHIFT-F11 stats are as fine as can be expected.

But, I do notice the following on the server console starting at that specific moment: if any player leave the game, I get two "player disconnect" messages, the first one with the player name, the second one is ALWAYS empty. If indeed the player "stream" get duplicated I would expect everything to fail except perhaps movement.

Problem is ridiculously easy to duplicated.
Problem is systematic.
Problem repeats itself on every multiplayer game, dedicated or not, new host or not.

 

Educated guess: It sounds like this person has a bad internet connection? The current multiplayer can be affected by everyone connecting. So a poor connection may downgrade performance for everybody. This will (hopefully) be remedied with the new specially designed multiplayer.

 

Ive been bitched to from my subjects on my server about this, one tried to grief my shit, they said it wasn't grinding, but it was for me, so I banned him, and he kept on complaining, mainly about the quote on quote "False Ban" that I handed down, but I said he hacked my stuff, he said he didn't. Then he sent a video of his side of the gameplay, which he was recording. I was shocked to see that it WASNT grinding at all for him. KEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN! You fuck'd up multiplayer! Byebye LSG survival world!

 

Edit : on the server console starting at that specific moment: if any player leave the game, I get two "player disconnect" messages, the first one with the player name, the second one is ALWAYS empty. If indeed the player "stream" get duplicated I would expect everything to fail except perhaps movement.
Easy fix. Remove code for the blank disconnect entry in src code,

 

TL;DR Check firewalls?