And it was a joke. We decided to host Local Multiplayer, as surely this would work best on a LAN. The first game we tried was 4 players vs 4 i, PAX map, local server. We had 2 people disconnect within the first 10 minutes. No way for them to reconnect. We tried again, and one of the other people disconnected that time, even faster. So we tried on a smaller map, the single planet 8 player map 4v4 ai. Another disconnect after a few minutes. We raged out and played some other stuff for a little while (bear in mind this LAN was FOR PA) and then tried again. Next game, small map again in internet mode, but this time one of the players got the start point selection without a UI, and couldn't progress. We all had to force quit our clients because the game was then stuck in limbo for everyone. We then spent the rest of the night trying to troubleshoot the issue to no avail. We all bought this game to play together, and it was a bit of a joke. We did not end up having one game. Is this normal? All PC's work with all other games no problem. We play depth, chivalry, poe, starcraft, starcraft 2, etc etc etc and no DC's or issues for anyone. I performed a full packet size infinite ping test to all clients, from all clients, at the same time, and no dropped packets so it is not our hardware. We tried on wireless as well just as a test. No difference. All in all, very dissapointed.
PA has massive stability, reliability, and performance issues. Numerous people have commented on this in Steam reviews and on the Steam forums. It's been the case ever since launch as far as I've seen and read. Personally, I've had the same sorts of issues as well, despite having completely up to date catalyst graphics drivers for my HD7950, fast reliable internet (100Mbps), and every other game I play being reliable.
Install this: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-connect-buttons-1-0-1-76456.65769/ It allows you to reconnect
I too would be disappointed if the game was doing this to me so I can empathize with that. Unfortunately multiplayer LAN is ok but only if you have a reasonably powerful PC to run the server from. I'm just wondering what the specs of the PC's you were running PA on as it is very RAM hungry. A game between my wife and I can easily eat up my 16GB on my system if it's hosting the game and that's with 8 planets I think. I agree that it can't be a hardware issue for the LAN side of things but could there be something more underlying on the PC's that you were playing on? Could you perhaps have a look here as it could be relevant: http://steamcommunity.com/app/233250/discussions/2/558751813508748383/ We have some very helpful members here who I'm sure would be able to help you further such as @SXX, @DeathByDenim and anyone else who I may have forgotten.
How did they disconnect? Really just "lost connection"? On a lan? That is weird. I would not consider this normal. Exodus yesterday made 30 player game on an unofficial server that basically was running in "lan" mode over the internet and they could play through to the end. So either something about your systems is not very good for PA (ram, you really need 8GB+) or you had bad luck with some issues or something. dxdiags would be very helpful to tell if it is an issue that can be fixed from your side.
@Ashtefere what was your upload speed? And for that matter your download speed? post your dxdiag report and we'll try and help. Really? "Massive"? I've been playing it smoothly for months, so have thousands of others. Obviously some people have been affected by odd graphics/renderer bugs and so on, but they are definitely the minority. A lot of Steam users, being young and casual, will say 'this game sux it no work on my brand new pooter' and not have the skills to troubleshoot it myself or the wisdom to ask for help. Out of date drivers are the major cause, and often people think they are up to date when they are not. I don't even go to the Steam forums. Scary place Anyway, clearly your PA experience is being affected by someting, and it might be a rare bug particular to something about your system (conflicting software or hardware for instance). Please post your dxdiag report, I'd be happy to take a look and try and help diagnose the problem you're having.
For the LAN mode we were all on gigabit ethernet. All 4 machines had 16GB ram, one of them actually had 32GB ram (the host). Host pc had 32gb ram and gtx 970 One client was a laptop with gtx 860m and 16gb ram (laptop) One client was a pc with 16gb ram and gtx 760 One client was a pc with 16gb ram and r9 280? All had an SSD of one kind or another. All of us running 8.1 with all updates, all running the latest steam version.
ok, did the thing say "Connection to server lost" or did the .exe stop responding? If they .exe stopped repsonding then that's 99% likely to be a hardware issue, like graphics drivers. If you know for a fact that the graphics drivers are completely updated then my only logical explaination is that the Pultergeist is living in your house xD Seriously, LAN disconnections like this are near impossible, even for PA.
well then I have no explaination. The only time i've seen "connection to server lost" is when the server crashes, which means ALL players are removed from the game, not just one or two. Don't know what else to say.
Id be suprised if this was the game- but also if not. As mentioned earlier wevery done massive 30 player matches hosted on dedicated servers (something uber doesn't really support, unlike lan) so you'd imagine a 4 player lan game should work perfectly. Heck Ive done a lan game with my friends using the SAME copy of PA Before! And I remember someone here hosted a big lan party at their university.
Virus scanners and VPN such as Himachi sometimes get in the way too. PA is different from other games as it uses the client-server model, rather than the peer-to-peer model that most other RTSes use. This is great since it prevents cheating as the clients only pass on commands to the server and receive only what they are allowed to know from the server. And more importantly if one computer is slow, it doesn't affect the other players. It does however mean that all of the network stress is on a single computer, i.e. the server. In a test I tried just now with an AI game with me against three AIs on a small system, gave an average download speed of 40 KB/s, which according to what I read on-line is about ten times higher than for Starcraft II. So with 8 players that can get quite hefty, but it should still be ok for a LAN obviously. So if there is something funky going on with the LAN, the bandwidth-hungry PA would be the first to notice. Did you try using one of the other computers as the server to test? Obviously, the one with 32GB is to be preferred, but I'm just wondering. Did you try disabling virus scanners and firewalls on the server? Or any other programs that you might think of that interact with the network? ASUS GameFirst III for example is especially horrible. Annoying that it didn't work properly for you though...
It doesn't matter, if it's offline, on a LAN, 40KP on a gigabyte connection would never fall into a bandwith issue thats just a fact... their could be something funky going on with the actual network itself which I hope the OP should have looked at, and the ways to try and test it out is to have hosted the matches on one of the other machines, see if the same thing persists, see if its the same two machines that get dropped from the game all the time, closing down any anti-viruses (even avast seems to be causing a lot of crap lately) would be things to try. I haven't hosted a LAN yet but I did try play by myself against a single AI just to try it out and see what the performance was like, and it was shocking considering what I have in my PC right now... 14 out of 16GB of RAM was taken up in just over an hour.... The simulation started to take its toll and slow down badly, granted im not using an i7 and only a 8320 @4.2ghz but that is still an 8-core cpu which never really went above 60% usage. PA has performance issues, and has had them from the start, this could directly be related to unlimited unit count, but to get dropped from a lan game could mean anything as well as the game itself. I would close down any router firewalls you guys might have used as well... (don't need to be online for lan so firewall isn't essential)
Could you check the folder %LOCALAPPDATA%\Uber Entertainment\Planetary Annihilation\log for files that say they are server logs? If the server crashed then there usually is a link to a crashreport there so Uber can fix it. Though since only a few people disconnecting it seems to not be a server crash, but rather some form of connectivity issue, which is .... weird considering it even works over the internet usually.
