Defcon one - Prepare to Crash rather than get nuked!

[defconUK]

Hi people,

I have had this game for a few days now. It's brilliant gameplay online. But when I reach defcon 1, people fire too many nukes and that lags the server big time. I get very annoying 'CONNECTION PROBLEM' red text appear with a countdown and it doesnt go away. However for a bizarre reason i can still see other players firing ICBMs, anti aircraft fire and planes destroying my radars, etc. Is it because i am on wireless and not directly connected to the router? I have five bars for my signal so do not understand it. I am near to the wireless router.
The whole thing just seems to lag after a while. Is it the server?? And why does it even lag when I select a ship to place? sometimes it takes a few seconds for the little circle to appear so i can position the ships/subs etc.
Is there a quicker way to add extra ships rathr than going through the menu each time? Why all the lag and connection problems? Its ok through defcon 5 to 1 but when players do too many things the latency just stalls. Is this a server issue? Apparantly a lot of criticism about this game is the fact that the servers are crap.
Thanks.

Neil.

[ynbniar]

Hi,

I'm not a techie but are you running the latest patch? Probably...

...if so sounds like a problem with your internet connection...

...I very rarely have problems with connection and I'm not aware that it's a big problem???

Have you tried playing games on any of the dedicated servers (DedCon)? Usually a more reliable connection I find...if you're having trouble with them I'd say it was at your end/your provider...

...but I'm not a techie so...

[bert_the_turtle]

Doesn't look like a connection problem to me, the amount of data sent over the network is pretty much the same in every situation and really low (<1kb/sec). I'd rather suspect insufficient CPU/GPU power.

defconUK: could you check how many frames per second of rendering you get? You can enable an FPS counter display by pressing F1 in game. Also, telling us what kind of system you have may help, and testing whether the problem only occurs in six player games or whether duels are affected as well. And you could tell us your system specs.

[xander]

I'm with bert on this one. It is almost certainly a problem of pushing the frames. Defcon sends 10 packets per second. If the framerate drops below 10 FPS, then Defcon cannot keep up that packet rate, and your client stops sending as many packets as it should, so it starts to lag. I would drop the graphics settings, perhaps drop the resolution a notch, and play with fewer people. For instance, my 5 year old laptop can't keep up with anything more than 1v1, so that is all that I play.

xander

[Blackbeard]

Try playing with lower quality settings. The game doesn't look as nice, but at least you can keep going when the action hots up.
Personally, I've reduced every setting to the minimum, apart from 16 channel sound, which makes those nice little pings when you click on a ship etc.
Maybe experiment, to see what settings you can get away with.

[defconUK]

Some great help here guys, thanks!! I will try them when I get a spare moment.