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Kiraly

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Sep 20, 2006
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Me and another player tried every day for several times to get a MP match running, but every single one resulted in an error message around rounds 2-4 ending the game, without it counting as a match.
Is this a known issue and what can be done against it? Or is it worked on?
 
Me and another player tried every day for several times to get a MP match running, but every single one resulted in an error message around rounds 2-4 ending the game, without it counting as a match.
Is this a known issue and what can be done against it? Or is it worked on?
Yes, BATTLETECH Multiplayer Stability is a known issue, and one that HBS seems unable to correct since it has been known and reported since Launch.

There are some work around we’ve settled on. We’ve found that restarting the game after a dropped connection helped ensure that the next Multiplayer game had a better shot at being completed. Despite the message that indicates the other player disconnected, don’t believe this. I’ve been on discord with very good friends and we both received the same message, pointing the finger at the other for disconnecting... neither proved true as we were both talking to each other and anticipating the upcoming match.

It has been my experience that my new computer cut down significantly on the number disconnects I’ve experienced. Just because a computer can play the Single Player game with little to no problem, don’t assume it can engage in Multiplayer BATTLETECH gaming without the occasional or more than occasional dropped game.


I really hope you and your friend manage to get in some BATTLETECH Multiplayer. It really is a great way to enjoy the BATTLETECH Experience. :bow:

Good luck and good gaming! : )
 
Hi,

Is this considered by HBS/Paradox to be an acceptable state-of-play for the game's Multiplayer experience?

Just saying because the OP isn't kidding when they say 'disconnects every game'; I tried to run 25 games with someone in my own house and 24 disconnected before loading in with the other one disconnecting mid-game. If anything the OP is understating the issue.

Before I get the usual 'have you tried unblocking it on the firewall/opening the port/having a fast enough computer etc etc...' yes, we have. Paradox games can be poor at best with Multiplayer games losing sync and so we also routinely run them over Hamachi when we hit issues. As I have such a powerful computer, I could actually run two sessions and I reckon they'd still disconnect for one reason: HBS/Paradox insist on players using their online servers. There is no LAN game option. In fact, apart from blocking a player there are no Multiplayer options at all.

Obviously looking around it does appear some people are getting their £40/backers promises worth out of this game (HBS did say that if they got $2.5m they'd include Multiplayer PvP, which I take to mean two human players able to play with the game, not a Multiplayer button that crashes the game out on a disconnect) so my question is:

How do you make Battletech Multiplayer work?

This seems to be extremely-poorly answered online. If there is in all truth no better answer than what was given above then might I suggest HBS/Paradox at least remove the Multiplayer tag from the game in Steam, as it's more of a lie if it's not possible to complete one Multiplayer game and people like me decide to buy these games on the strength of that tag.

Cheers.
 
Hi,

Is this considered by HBS/Paradox to be an acceptable state-of-play for the game's Multiplayer experience?

Just saying because the OP isn't kidding when they say 'disconnects every game'; I tried to run 25 games with someone in my own house and 24 disconnected before loading in with the other one disconnecting mid-game. If anything the OP is understating the issue.

Before I get the usual 'have you tried unblocking it on the firewall/opening the port/having a fast enough computer etc etc...' yes, we have. Paradox games can be poor at best with Multiplayer games losing sync and so we also routinely run them over Hamachi when we hit issues. As I have such a powerful computer, I could actually run two sessions and I reckon they'd still disconnect for one reason: HBS/Paradox insist on players using their online servers. There is no LAN game option. In fact, apart from blocking a player there are no Multiplayer options at all.

Obviously looking around it does appear some people are getting their £40/backers promises worth out of this game (HBS did say that if they got $2.5m they'd include Multiplayer PvP, which I take to mean two human players able to play with the game, not a Multiplayer button that crashes the game out on a disconnect) so my question is:

How do you make Battletech Multiplayer work?

This seems to be extremely-poorly answered online. If there is in all truth no better answer than what was given above then might I suggest HBS/Paradox at least remove the Multiplayer tag from the game in Steam, as it's more of a lie if it's not possible to complete one Multiplayer game and people like me decide to buy these games on the strength of that tag.

Cheers.
You Sir make a number of very true and very painful points.

Over the years I have become an apologist for HBS and the State of BATTLETECH Multiplayer.

It is my opinion we are lucky to have a Multiplayer Capability for BATTLETECH at all.


But let’s focus on the best question I have heard in a long, long time, your “How do you make BATTLETECH Multiplayer work?”

I’ve run a 91-player BATTLETECH Tournament and participated in a couple dozen other BATTLETECH Tournaments and Tournament Stages. There are some actions one can take to give yourself the best shot possible at completing a BATTLETECH Multiplayer match.

1.) Restart the game client. After every disconnect, have both gamers restart their game client. We found this actually increased game stability about 40-50% by my best estimation.

2.) Have the player with the better Computer host the Multiplayer Match. While I never saw any metrics to prove it, in my heart And after

3.) At one time I only had access to a computer which barely played BATTLETECH on its lowest settings. If this is the case for either gamer trying to play Multiplayer... expect desyncs, and expect many of them. It is all to frequently the “Price of Poker” when a computer struggles to even play the Single Player game.


@SimonBlore, I am very interested in your efforts to hold those 25 matches in your own house. Yes, you were in the same house, but you didn’t use a LAN did you? Both computers still reached out over your Service Provider to connect, didn’t you? How would you characterize your Internet Service? Just curious as it fills in some of the blanks for me as I try to advocate for BATTLETECH Multiplayer. : )
 
You Sir make a number of very true and very painful points.

Over the years I have become an apologist for HBS and the State of BATTLETECH Multiplayer.

It is my opinion we are lucky to have a Multiplayer Capability for BATTLETECH at all.


But let’s focus on the best question I have heard in a long, long time, your “How do you make BATTLETECH Multiplayer work?”

I’ve run a 91-player BATTLETECH Tournament and participated in a couple dozen other BATTLETECH Tournaments and Tournament Stages. There are some actions one can take to give yourself the best shot possible at completing a BATTLETECH Multiplayer match.

1.) Restart the game client. After every disconnect, have both gamers restart their game client. We found this actually increased game stability about 40-50% by my best estimation.

2.) Have the player with the better Computer host the Multiplayer Match. While I never saw any metrics to prove it, in my heart And after

3.) At one time I only had access to a computer which barely played BATTLETECH on its lowest settings. If this is the case for either gamer trying to play Multiplayer... expect desyncs, and expect many of them. It is all to frequently the “Price of Poker” when a computer struggles to even play the Single Player game.


@SimonBlore, I am very interested in your efforts to hold those 25 matches in your own house. Yes, you were in the same house, but you didn’t use a LAN did you? Both computers still reached out over your Service Provider to connect, didn’t you? How would you characterize your Internet Service? Just curious as it fills in some of the blanks for me as I try to advocate for BATTLETECH Multiplayer. : )

Hi Prussian Havoc,

Thanks for the quick replay! It sure is a painful experience, you get no arguments from me (or my Wife who bought the game exclusively for the Multiplayer) there.

I'd actually disagree about being lucky to have it. In fact HBS (specifically, although Paradox by association I guess) owe the backers (I'm not one of them, as it is but feel strongly on this - not least of which because I paid for the game anyway) for raising the $2.5m on the very understanding there would be Multiplayer PvP added for reaching that amount of backing.

Moving on to your points:

1. On timing the connection out, errors to the effect of 'opponent timed out' or 'opponent disconnected from the game' have confirm/ok buttons respectively, pressing these drops all sessions to a black screen which I've read to be very common - for this reason I have no choice but to restart the client for another attempt/single player session/even use of my computer back. As I have four screens on my PC I could just ALT-TAB out I guess but that wouldn't help so I ALT-TAB out and kill the application with Task Manager. My Wife does the same (she has one monitor so has no choice, I guess). My Wife also gets a really annoying error message about 'Cosmic Rays and the Comstar Relay' on entering the Multiplayer menu which irritates me because it has zero technical information on which I can act! She actually got this on the game that worked so far as disconnecting halfway through as well.

2. This makes a lot of sense. Hosts normally have to do a little more of the work, even with the game actually running on an online server. I couldn't say exactly how much in this case but I'm generally the host.

3. I've heard of people running this game on laptops below the minimum spec (according to Steam). Whilst my Wife's computer is pretty much at the minimum spec (for GPU) and just above it (for CPU), I'd expect it to cut the mustard at least one game in say... ten. I do get your point though, we play HoI3 and Stellaris and experience some issues with those from time-to-time, nothing as bad as this, however as HoI3 allows for direct IP connect with Hamachi-assistance and Stellaris has good online server support in addition to allowing LAN games.

No, I did not use LAN for the games, I am not sure how to. A sticky on this forum on how to do that would be awesome if there's any way to do that. I'd even take an option to increase the timeout on disconnects to be honest. My internet connection is pretty stable (I'd say uptime is 99.9%, on a shape of 50Mbps down, 5Mbps up and 19ms ping) so I'd not expect to have issues unless it's a very fussy server I'm going to.

Hope that info helps.

Cheers
 
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One other option you can try (if you're running via STEAM), is to download the Paradox Launcher and link your Paradox Account to your Steam account. Using the Paradox launcher has reduced a number of disconnect issues (not all) for those of us in the ISW League when one or both players are using the STEAM client.

Not a guaranteed fix, but it is worth the shot.

I have the GoG version, and so far have only experienced DCs vs STEAM opponents, but that could be any number of reasons why, including just plain coincidence.

Good Luck.

Cheers :)
 
Is this considered by HBS/Paradox to be an acceptable state-of-play for the game's Multiplayer experience?
It's not considered acceptable. At the same time, unfortunately, it's not something that is going to change soon until HBS can hire a new Multiplayer Network Engineer. If that is even being looked into.
 
One other option you can try (if you're running via STEAM), is to download the Paradox Launcher and link your Paradox Account to your Steam account. Using the Paradox launcher has reduced a number of disconnect issues (not all) for those of us in the ISW League when one or both players are using the STEAM client.

Not a guaranteed fix, but it is worth the shot.

I have the GoG version, and so far have only experienced DCs vs STEAM opponents, but that could be any number of reasons why, including just plain coincidence.

Good Luck.

Cheers :)

Hi Dark Khaos,

Thanks for the suggestions... I have removed both Steam copies and attempted to run the game from Paradox Launcher only with the same results.

Here's the settings I tried:

Both systems: Version 1.8.1-64OR in Windows 10
Battle: Clash (15M) to keep game size small for now
Timer: Unlimited
Lances: Full and Stock only - both sides take Light Support to avoid other stated bugs with custom Lances
Map: Arena - River Crossing
Mood: Vibrant Day - to avoid the client machine having to draw rain/fog etc...

Ran a second game with Hamachi linking both machines in case that helped (as it generally does with good-old Paradox games) - in both tests Connection Lost error on the Host (my machine) after a couple of minutes waiting for opponent at the loading screen. My Wife at the client machine also gets that nasty Cosmic Rays/Comstar Relay error still.

Hmm... one thing I did notice was that the Paradox Launcher's install used the Steam copy's game settings (I was instantly running Windowed 1440p UIltra settings and my Wife was instantly running Windowed 1050p on Low which we each selected in the Steam games we tried before).

I plan to run more tests, especially following Prussian Havoc's 40-50% comment; which has me very interested indeed in submitting tests in some numbers (even though so far I'm something like half a game in 28!)

Another thing that 'struck' me if you want to call it that... the installation and patching took a long time on my PC. I don't expect to have to wait that long tbh for anything (it was 20-30 mins I reckon) but on my Wife's PC... oh god... something around 4 hours! Following that I am going to invest in an SSD for her (she has a tiny one to boot OS from and other storage is a quaint old HDD that's a bit noisy - I checked the event logs and there's nothing erroring there disk-wise but maybe it'll satisfy the 'price of poker' as Prussian Havoc put it!

If there's anything else you feel like adding for me to try - please let me know and I'll run a few tests down those avenues too, otherwise I will persist since you're all so helpful!

Cheers
 
It's not considered acceptable. At the same time, unfortunately, it's not something that is going to change soon until HBS can hire a new Multiplayer Network Engineer. If that is even being looked into.

Fair. I think it's sad really as HBS are probably all-too-aware that there's going to be quite a few people who backed this game because they wanted to play good-old Battletech from tabletop games online, often with old friends who they use to play the tabletop/book game with.

Personally I didn't back it but I do remember it being a popular tabletop staple when I was younger and to me it's just good-old fun blasting robots - which never gets boring.

These here 91-player tournaments do however tell me a couple of interesting things:

1. Multiplayer can work. Don't ask me how - but if I find any reliable answer I'll be sure to post it all over the end of this thread!
2. There's interest for it. Probably enough in all fairness for HBS (if they're still on the scene) and Paradox to monetise it with streams/sponsorship which can pay for the support.

If those are correct in any way - there's both hope for the game from a Multiplayer point-of-view and it's definitely still got my time.

Cheers
 
...These here 91-player tournaments do however tell me a couple of interesting things:

1. Multiplayer can work. Don't ask me how - but if I find any reliable answer I'll be sure to post it all over the end of this thread!
2. There's interest for it. Probably enough in all fairness for HBS (if they're still on the scene) and Paradox to monetise it with streams/sponsorship which can pay for the support.

If those are correct in any way - there's both hope for the game from a Multiplayer point-of-view and it's definitely still got my time.

Cheers
Just to keep the record straight, there was a single 91-player Tournament, which I held just two weeks after Launch, long enough for gamers to be familiar with the game, but not so long that interest has a chance to wane.

Thanks to Challonge, we have a record of that tournament:

67350765-7653-448A-90FB-8C5202791942.jpeg

(*the tournament was a double-elimination tournament, so there is a whole other sheet where Kidzin makes his epic run back to Championship contention and a rematch with WilliamVon.)
 
I’ve often wondered if the MP disconnects were due to packet loss, high ping/latency or router issues. This is why I’d suspected bypassing the Steam servers and using the paradox launcher allowed some of the players in ISW to actually successfully connect.

I’ve also been successful in running two instances of MP on the same PC (using 2 diff accounts) and completed the skirmish without a hitch... which again lends towards external factors causing the disconnects imho.
 
It is this Paradox Launcher angle that has me so hopeful. Increased Multiplayer Match Stability would be a great boon to many would-be BATTLETECH Tournament and League gamers. : )
 
the biggest help we could get for MP matches is *snapshot* saves (data written after the end of each turn to both players computer) so if a DC happens, both players can restart the match from the last completed turn. At worst, you'd lose 1 whole turn vs the whole match. One can dream....
 
A re-introduction of the “Surrender” button to Multiplayer would be greatly appreciated too.

It would cut down on Rage Quits as it would give the frustrated and losing player an option to move both he and his opponent onto their next match in a timely and orderly fashion, rather than being forced to play out a losing hand with what precious gaming time remains.
 
the *losing player* could always EJECT each of their remaining mechs - longer process than the surrender button, but shorter than playing through a lost cause (aside from rage-quitting Alt-F4 of course)
 
I would very much hope to play multiplayer matches as well, I've tried with a friend but out of 2 evenings and 4-5 hours into it we only managed to complete 1 match, and got 1/2 way through a rematch before we were booted...
 
Hi,

Thought I would return to drop a message on this thread as a few things have changed and now I am successfully playing Battletech with my Wife!

So first of all the facts I learnt:

1. The solution to my problem was to forward TCP Port 11001 (I did Inward and Outward) on Windows Defender Firewall - I'd post the link to the thread here but these Forums block URL posting for people who've not made a lot of posts (there's not much more to say apart from forward the port I have mentioned though - perhaps if someone with more posts could drop the URL in - might save someone a bit of time).

2. Comments about Cosmic Rays, Comstar and the like can be considered red herrings. Perhaps they're an indicator of network instability but I get the former literally every time and host just fine regardless. Obviously if your Firewall is blocking a port that's needed, as was the case with me - it's not going to work anyway.

3. Comments about restarting the clients are true. I have seen this in the games we have subsequently set up. It'd be a pain in most games I play but at this stage it feels much less of a price with Battletech to get it working.

4. Comments about minimum machine spec are true but only to a point. This game runs on some pretty barebones setups (CPU mark 4,000 and a GPU like an NVidia 1050 are actually just fine, even with the graphics turned-up). Obviously anything that slows load-in time like a bad disk or too little RAM will attract timeouts though (having seen both).

5. A comment (or maybe more accurately, theory) was made above about bypassing the Steam servers and using Paradox client ones - this makes no difference. I have even setup a situation where two instances of Paradox client were running two Paradox accounts on my machine and trying to multiplayer Battletech this way. The result was no different (you also need one hell of a lot of GPU power to do this - it maxed-out my ROG Strix 1080Ti OC).

6. Hamachi isn't needed to make this work (although I'm unsure if using it would improve stability as I haven't tested it since it now works yet).

7. It is most satisfying harassing your Wife's mechs with a nippy little Locust and blowing the legs and arms off them whilst they try to shoot through a huge evasion score.

Hope this finds anyone trying to play Battletech in multiplayer and is of help - it'd be nice to see a few more games up on the Multiplayer board when I log in.

Catch you all around.
 
Hi,

Thought I would return to drop a message on this thread as a few things have changed and now I am successfully playing Battletech with my Wife!

So first of all the facts I learnt:

1. The solution to my problem was to forward TCP Port 11001 (I did Inward and Outward) on Windows Defender Firewall - I'd post the link to the thread here but these Forums block URL posting for people who've not made a lot of posts (there's not much more to say apart from forward the port I have mentioned though - perhaps if someone with more posts could drop the URL in - might save someone a bit of time).

2. Comments about Cosmic Rays, Comstar and the like can be considered red herrings. Perhaps they're an indicator of network instability but I get the former literally every time and host just fine regardless. Obviously if your Firewall is blocking a port that's needed, as was the case with me - it's not going to work anyway.

3. Comments about restarting the clients are true. I have seen this in the games we have subsequently set up. It'd be a pain in most games I play but at this stage it feels much less of a price with Battletech to get it working.

4. Comments about minimum machine spec are true but only to a point. This game runs on some pretty barebones setups (CPU mark 4,000 and a GPU like an NVidia 1050 are actually just fine, even with the graphics turned-up). Obviously anything that slows load-in time like a bad disk or too little RAM will attract timeouts though (having seen both).

5. A comment (or maybe more accurately, theory) was made above about bypassing the Steam servers and using Paradox client ones - this makes no difference. I have even setup a situation where two instances of Paradox client were running two Paradox accounts on my machine and trying to multiplayer Battletech this way. The result was no different (you also need one hell of a lot of GPU power to do this - it maxed-out my ROG Strix 1080Ti OC).

6. Hamachi isn't needed to make this work (although I'm unsure if using it would improve stability as I haven't tested it since it now works yet).

7. It is most satisfying harassing your Wife's mechs with a nippy little Locust and blowing the legs and arms off them whilst they try to shoot through a huge evasion score.

Hope this finds anyone trying to play Battletech in multiplayer and is of help - it'd be nice to see a few more games up on the Multiplayer board when I log in.

Catch you all around.
Thank you @SimonBlore!
Hmm... you know, melee can be quite useful in dealing with ankle-biting Locusts. :)
 
Okay I will be trying this as well thanks a lot SimonBlore.
The only thing different from a base install is an additional inbound and outbound rule for 11001?
And restart after a disconnect does appear?