How DOES comms between players work?

[FoxTwo]

I've been trying to play with a friend but 90% of the time, we always get "Unable to connect to Commander" error messages.

Only twice we managed to see each other's ships. Out of those 2 times, during one of those times, he just *poofed* right in front of me, 30m away staring at each other head on with ship lights on (he was trying to see my skull decals). To him, I vanished from his view. To me, he vanished from mine.

Creating a pvt group and flying to remote parts of the galaxy did almost nothing tangible to help with connection.

Hyperspacing in and out of the same system trying to get into each other's "islands" seem to do nothing.

Both my friend and I are using the same ISP and we're in the same country, both on fibre connection.

So... is there a more detailed "do's and don'ts" on how to get comms up with your friend(s) and subsequently being able to see each other in the game?

 

[Deleted member 38366]

-- Deleted --

 

[FoxTwo]

Is he located geographically close to you ?

Geographically, you guys might consider that he's just on the "suburbs" since he's only like 7 to 8km away.

But over here, it's a completely different city

Heck the entire size of my country, Singapore, is 1/10th the size of London, England.

Other than that, both of you have to make 100% sure there is nothing in your Network that could block P2P network traffic (i.e. UPNP needs to be enabled in both Windows and any involved Router gear, any Firewall needs to allow the Game entirely unrestricted Traffic).
If large "Internet Security Suites" are used - try temporarily uninstalling them entirely. Some bloatware I've seen did wonders for Gaming - but only after being uninstalled.

Even tried one of the dev's suggestion of using our own UDP port and disabling uPnP. No dice.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

-- Deleted --

 

[FoxTwo]

While I don't know the policies of Singapore's ISPs on P2P networking, I know some ISPs intentionally block or downright delay/reroute such traffic (thinking it's something like EMULE / BitTorrent carrying questionable traffic).

Hmmm that could be it. However that doesn't explain why there were 2 ocassions we COULD see each other Also, while this may be completely irrelevent, matching via Steam to connect to other games work without issues, so I'm just wondering what could cause the problem here, since in all other cases the connection seems to work fine.

In any case, thanks much for the suggestions. I'll try them out with my friend and see how it goes.

 

[fergal]

I've has the same problem with players in parts of Europe.
If you get this error you also wont see them if you are at the same place.
Best solution I've has so far is going in and out of supercruise, that seems to jump you around to different servers the quickest.
You can jump to other systems and back, or log off and on, but thats slower.

 

[FoxTwo]

Thank you @fergal, that's part of what we tried too Didn't help much. Once we lose contact with each other we are hardly ever able to get it back again. No amount of cruising or jumping or relogging helps (most of the time).

Like I mentioned above, all these effort only yielded positive results TWICE, but in one of those times, the connection was lost midway while we were both looking at each other's ships right in front of our canopies.

I'm investigating FalconFly's suggestion of my ISP's P2P throttling, and seeing if that is indeed true. I'd have to test it out using a VPN first of course.

 

[fergal]

Thank you @fergal, that's part of what we tried too Didn't help much. Once we lose contact with each other we are hardly ever able to get it back again. No amount of cruising or jumping or relogging helps (most of the time).

Like I mentioned above, all these effort only yielded positive results TWICE, but in one of those times, the connection was lost midway while we were both looking at each other's ships right in front of our canopies.

I'm investigating FalconFly's suggestion of my ISP's P2P throttling, and seeing if that is indeed true. I'd have to test it out using a VPN first of course.

Do you every see any players at all?
One other problem I've had is with 2 other players on my friends list.
If I'm in a system with one of them it works all the time, but when all 3 of us are in one system one of us isn't in the same instance / island.

No idea why.

 

[FoxTwo]

Do you every see any players at all?
One other problem I've had is with 2 other players on my friends list.
If I'm in a system with one of them it works all the time, but when all 3 of us are in one system one of us isn't in the same instance / island.

No idea why.

Yes, on the odd ocassion I'm around core systems, I do see 1 or 2 hollow pips on scanners in Supercruise. Sometimes I see a couple of hollow pips entering or leaving a station I'm at.

But when it comes to the important one - my friend - the connection just fails