At this point I have literally no idea what could be causing to problem so I am terribly sorry if some of this information is useless or if I have omitted something important. Please advise.
Also I'm sorry for my bad english, it is not my first language.
[EDIT]
I have just found out about downlords-faf-client.
I read "Constant outbound traffic blocked? Try ..." Is that my problem? I have yet to try a game with the alternative client.
I launched it and it says on the bottom "faf connected" "chat connected" with a green dot. "proxy" instead has an orange circle with an exclamation mark. I have forwarded ports 6112, 6113, 9103, 30350-30351 and now "proxy" has changed to "public connection" and has a green circle.
I tried joining multiple lobbies with the new client. No difference whatsoever. Still cannnot connect to some random 3-5 players in every lobby.
Also, let's say in a lobby 1 I can't connect to hypothetical "playerA", so I leave.
I join lobby 2 and I connect with him no problem there (but I can't connect with two other random persons...)
OR
I rejoin lobby 1 and maybe, maybe I can connect with PlayerA, but then I still can't connect with other random players
[EDIT 2]
Still no progress, I tried changing the port to one I did not forward. -> downlord's lobby now says "proxy connection" with an orange circle with exlamation mark instead of "public connection". BUT first lobby I try to join I instantly connect with everyone, 5 players.
- The game starts, no problem whatsoever
- While i'm building the third extractor EVERYONE except the host goes "silent", f11 shows the host "behind -4" in the tab on the top right of the screen.
- I can't read anyone else but the host in the ingame chat, I leave after one minute
The "unhandled exception" window was open when I exited the game:
Spoiler: show
Problem description:
In the game lobby I see some players as "Connecting to *playersname...". Thus the game cannot start and I can't play.
Additional Info
- For years, I think, I have played faf without any problem and without any port forwarding. I think upnp in the client is enabled by default and I never touched that, so that must have been active too.
- I had not played FAF for a couple of months (maybe?) before yesterday, when the problem appeared.
- The game (both FA and FAF) has always worked well.
- first two matches yesterday everything worked flawlessly.
- second game ends, the problem appears. I cannot connect to some players in whichever lobby I try.
- FAF has not thrown any errors, nothing about ports or connection, nothing at all.
- the number of players i can't connect to isn't fixed. Varies between 1 and 5(?). It's never ALL players present in the lobby. Sometimes if I leave and return to the lobby I can't connect to different players, and the ones I was connected to before leaving are unreachable.
- sometimes I try to join a lobby and it appears to be stuck at "connecting", I can only click abort.
- other times I connect to all players in lobby, once we are all ready to start I see the error "host connection timed out" or something similar, with options "give up" and "keep trying". "keep trying" has no use, i have to "give up" and leave the lobby.
- while trying random lobbies earlier today for some reason I was able to play one full game with 9 other players, flawlessly. Settings were: Windows Firewall activated (but faf and fa all traffic allowed), router firewall activated and NO port forwarding at all (simple port tester indicated ports 6112, 6113, 9103, 30350, 30351 CLOSED, both UPD and TCP. I did not test other ports).
- Right after that I tried to join another game and once again I could not connect to all players.
- After that I have tried to join yet another lobby, without changing anything. It connects intantly to all players. Once ingame it immediately hangs and I see the attached screenshot. First time seeing that. Nobody answered me in the ingame chat. I left the game after about one minute.
Attempted solutions
- I have reinstalled both FAF and FA, cleared data, cache, settings, logs, mods (only UI mods), maps. These UI mods I have then re-enabled.
- I have restarted the router, unplugged the power for 30 seconds.
- I guess I have tried all sensible permutations of Windows Firewall settings and rules, Router Firewall status and port forwarding.
- If I forward ports 6112, 9103, 30350-30351, or any combination of them, or any other port, they result open according to SimplePortTester, both UDP and TCP, whichever I forward.
- Tried with both upnp enabled and disabled in FAF: no difference. Tried setting a different port in FAF, one that was forwarded and used successfully to host another game (Factorio) and I know it works: again no difference.
- I followed instructions from the wiki title=Connection_issues_and_solutions (which I can't link to in this post and I think is outdated, perhaps?), no difference.
- One thing I noticed: if I forward port 6112 (and use that in the FAF client) this line in forever.log:
connectivity.helper.ConnectivityHelper Connectivity state is STUN
changes to
connectivity.helper.ConnectivityHelper Connectivity state is PUBLIC
this still makes no difference in my ability to connect to some players in the lobby.
- I have checked with both the "netstat -ab" command and the "cports" program, FAF appears to be listening on port 6112, FA on port 6113 once the lobby is launched, and FAF has a lot of other ports around the 50000-50200 range or something similar. I have not forwarded those ports. should I? should I forward every single port to my desktop?
The logs attached here are from the last "game", the one in the screenshot.
Thank you for your time and help.
