Can't keep up with server?

[Badgerlord]

My friend and I have been playing this game for a long while (Off and on over the past 6 months or so) and we have never had any issues before, but today, every 5 minutes or so the one who is not hosting the game gets disconnected saying "Can't Keep up with the server" we can recconect easy enough but it's lead to many frustrating deaths.

It doesn't matter who is hosting, the non host gets dropped. Is there a way to prevent/diagnose this because it was not doing this on sunday 4 days ago.

No hardware or software has changed on either of our ends.

Thanks!

[Morsk]

Try pinging each other while connected, to see if there's packet loss. Like "ping (their ip address) -n 30" from the Windows command line, or just google how to ping for packet loss.

You could also try lowering the game speed to see if it helps or not, but unless the factory is getting large and slowing down even in single-player, I don't think this is the problem.

[Badgerlord]

I don't know his IP address, we are using the steam servers.

I can say that we are on a Twitch Chat call, and I have streamed music going on in the background (I always do while we are playing) And those never faulter for a second. The factory at the moment is quite small, we are just starting a new game.

[Morsk]

I don't know how the steam servers work, and if that means you should be ping testing the servers, and not each other. Maybe someone else will know.

But I found this old thread where the problem may have been corrupt files, and the solution was to verify the game files.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/427520/discussions/5/1319961868328682431/

[Ancient]

It's CPU, not network related: https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=39319

The person getting disconnected needs to eliminate any superfluous CPU usage (browser tabs, videos, music, streaming apps, etc.) because their CPU is not good enough to both run any/all of those things and keep up with the host's game. You can also try raising Factorio.exe's priority to Above Normal and that may resolve it, but it may also cause pauses/stuttering in background apps when the game "steals" the CPU time from them.

If the PC is already stripped down and nothing else is running and it's still happening, then the client CPU is just too weak to run the hosted map and either a hardware upgrade may be required or the host needs to reduce the game speed so the slower client's CPU can keep up.

[Badgerlord]

It turns out it was an issue with my router, I got a new one and it's been working ever since.

Thanks all!

[ShutEye_DK]

Originally posted by Ancient:

It's CPU, not network related:
...

Well. Was it?