Has a recommended internet speed been mentioned?

[Amos.37]

I know that there are curretnly no hard specs for this game, but has a recommended internet download/upload speed been mentioned by the devs at any point?
I can always upgrade my computer if need be, but I live in Australia, where internet is so bad it's meme worthy. So obviously I'm very concerned about what internet requirements for this game are looking like?

For reference, I average around 5Mbps/10Mbps for download/upload. Up to 12Mbps download in off peak times.

 

[riley]

Ping's going to be more important. Internet speed shouldn't matter too much unless yours is in the kbps range

 

[AlexiyOne]

A good wifi signal and connection or Ethernet is what I would recommend

 

[Amos.37]

Again, I'm in Australia, so Ping is guaranteed to be highish.
I'll be happy if it's under 100ms for me.
I'm already using ethernet connection, but the sheer distance between Aus and where ever the servers are located means ping will be on the higher end.
Best ping I've had when connecting to a NA or EU server is 70ms. More often around 100-150ms, if it's a well maintained official server.
Custom/private servers are more often around 200-300ms.
Alas, official servers are rarely based in Aus, but that just makes sense, seeing as Aus has a comparatively small playerbase, and is just far away from everywhere else.

 

[riley]

Again, I'm in Australia, so Ping is guaranteed to be highish.
I'll be happy if it's under 100ms for me.
I'm already using ethernet connection, but the sheer distance between Aus and where ever the servers are located means ping will be on the higher end.
Best ping I've had when connecting to a NA or EU server is 70ms. More often around 100-150ms, if it's a well maintained official server.
Custom/private servers are more often around 200-300ms.
Alas, official servers are rarely based in Aus, but that just makes sense, seeing as Aus has a comparatively small playerbase, and is just far away from everywhere else.

In Australia here also. I've heard Starbase uses a P2P model for a lot of simulation so hopefully that means us Australians won't be as disadvantaged.

 

[Atreties]

For reference, I average around 5Mbps/10Mbps for download/upload. Up to 12Mbps download in off peak times.

That's stupid slow.

That's much slower than the 4g we get floating around freely in the middle of a brick basemet lined with lead.

May god have mercy upon your souls.

 

[Amos.37]

Yes, it is.And that's pretty average for Australia. In fact, that's using NBN, Australia's meme worthy attempt at upgrading internet.
To be fair, they did upgrade the internet, it's better than it was before... but it's really not a high bar.

 

[Croomar]

If we take it very literal, the Steam Page lists "Broadband Internet Connection" as recommended network requirement.
And if we look up the definition of Broadband, we see that the FCC (USA) defines that as a connection with a speed of 25 Mbps down- / 3 Mbps upload. Before a change in 2015, it was set at only 4 Mbps download speed, however.
However, the Ofcom (GB) defines Broadband as a connection with a speed of 10 Mbps down- / 1 Mbps upload, so you'd be good in that regard.

Spoiler: Sources

FCC regulation: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/intern...-sets-new-definition-broadband-speeds-n296276
Ofcom definition: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/ass...843/summary-report-connected-nations-2017.pdf

Both valid as of April 10th 2019

 

[BadgerBadger]

I am also in Australia, land of the rubber banding.
My ping to starbasegame.com is currently 239ms, I hope the game server routing it quicker or can handle that latency. I commonly run into an issue in space engineers where I can't hand mine due to the latency.

 

[Nyefari]

That is a bit rough, Badger. The game uses a Peer-to-Peer Hybrid MMO style system, so the most important factor is your ping to the people your game has loaded in. Hopefully that will actually mitigate the issues that high latency causes.

As far as mining goes, usually when you are out in the belt you will be the "host" for your own session, so your computer is the one telling the server how the asteroids are acting when you mine them. You should be able to solo mine or mine with people from your area without issue. (And you should be able to mine with people farther away too, but your mileage may vary depending on who of you is the host of the instance/etc.)

Edit: Verbage used in the above is my understanding of an approximation to how it works, not meant to be actual technical details.

 

[Venombrew]

i do believe the company is out of finland, that may also be where the servers are if they are. So i feel for you Aus players, i mean your on polar opposites of the servers, it sucks i hope things work out for ya guys to play.

 

[BadgerBadger]

I am not sure about that @Venombrew, I have just tried pinging starbasegame.com and forum.starbasegame.com from my office, starbasegame.com is 133ms and 5 hops away and forum.starbasegame.com is 370ms and 20 hops away (Sydney>LA>NY>Amsterdam>Frankfurt> + few more hops). This kinda says to me that one is hosted in a datacentre/CDN and the other maybe closer to thier office with non-optimal routing.
I would imaging they would be aware of the extra latency of having the server in remote location and would be hosting the main server during EA in a more central location or in a spread clusters with backboning.
But we are just guessing, it might just be better to wait and see. The CA server maybe in a different location to the EA server. And the impact of latencey on playability not fully known yet.

 

[Venombrew]

i really dont know i am only guessing since i heard the company was out of finland and they dont really have to outsource for their projects i was only assuming servers were located in or near finland, but honesty i do not know.

 

[BadgerBadger]

Web facing servers are one of those things not many companies host in their office these days.
If hosting inhouse not only do you need to own the server but you need to have a second one as failover incase something fails on the first one (unless you are fine with days-weeks of downtime) you also need a good dedicated internet connection and upgrading the servers requires replacement in many cases.

Now compare this to getting a server hosted for you (like AWS) you can have a server up and running in hours/minutes, if you find that you need to upgrade it's RAM/CPU/storage it is just a few mouse clicks, it is hosted in a data center and has a fiber better then what you can get connected to the office and if you need to setup extra servers or move it to the other side of the world to be closer to your customers it is just a few extra mouse clicks. Most large providers also have optimized links between their data centers so you can have a low latency high bandwidth network of servers around the globe.
And best of all you only have to pay for what you use so can scale usage to demand.

 

[Joshua]

Ping's going to be more important. Internet speed shouldn't matter too much unless yours is in the kbps range

that or one mega byte of download speed. Even 5 mega bytes of download speed could cause issues. However I agree with Riley in how it should not matter much. You should know if your internet is bad or not, it should not prevent you from playing though.

 

[Joshua]

Yes, it is.And that's pretty average for Australia. In fact, that's using NBN, Australia's meme worthy attempt at upgrading internet.
To be fair, they did upgrade the internet, it's better than it was before... but it's really not a high bar.

its not completely terrible, in the US in certain areas it can be worse unless you have the proper wiring done so you can achieve high internet speeds. For example before I got a new provider I was stuck at 5mb to 1mb or less download speed. Now I get 1000mb of download speed however, I think my point is made since I played online video games at 1mb and lower download speed. I think the only issue was that people hated me for causing teleportation whenever I got close to them.

 

[MrFaul]

Ah Australia, the land home to a lot of the most dangerous species this planet has to offer and almost no usable internet.
Worse is only that your ISPs even have the audacity to call that service while charging exorbitant sums of money.

But with a bit of luck you guys could band together maybe the hybrid approach of this game makes it usable.

 

[BadgerBadger]

Well as bad as the internet is here I found it to be much worse in the USA, I remember standing in an AT&T store and needing to connect to their WiFi as the signal instore was too poor to complete the activation process. Here I can get ~75/35Mb down/up on my mobile with one provider and about 15/15Mb from a seconds 4G provider but the latency is crap as all the servers as so far away. They are in the process of running fiber past my place so I am hopping to connect to that in the next few weeks but being NBN I am not expecting it to be that much better, else there is always SpaceX's starlink coming soon.

 

[BadgerBadger]

I have done some testing and here are a few things I have found so far. I am in Australia so far from the server and I might be an extreme case.
TLDR; game is still playable with slow internet but may have issue (explained below).

1. Pinging the Starbase game SB02 EU server I get on between 320-520ms (normally about 360ms).
2. Doing a basic internet speed test my download speed is >35Mb Down/ >15Mb Up so at a glance would satisfy bandwidth requirements if there is no mention of Latency to EU.
3. Running a trace I can see my connection goes Me>Melbourne>Sydney>SanJose>NewYork>London>Amsterdam>Starbase EU server.
4. Having a ping of 17ms to Sydney, upgrading my connection is at most only going take 5-15ms of my total ping time.
5. Being on a LTE connection I am behind a number of NAT's (my router, and a LTE Carrier grade NAT), The game seems to have issue with this sometimes and I sit on the "Waiting for Server..." for a while before I can join the Universe.
   I have found using a VPN helps this, if I connect to somewhere along my route like Sydney, NewYork or Amsterdam which adds about 10-20ms to my total ping time.
6. I am using external tools to the game like Ping and Tracert, not in game tools. There maybe differences.

I have the following parts of the game seem mostly unaffected much by ping time (in general)(note my ping was >420ms when first testing with 183, but this dropped to about 360ms when build 187 was released):

1. SSC (the Ship editor), seems fine regardless of ping but I do have an issue saving a ship sometimes and have to use save as instead, I am not sure if this is ping related or another bug.
2. Mining alone in the safe zone seems fine, have not had issues with this
3. The mining job work fine (did have issue with 183, but fine in 187).
4. Shopping and moving around the station is fine.
5. Flying around in ships, repairing my ship

There are areas I did find my ping affected me:

1. PVP ship combat, the other ship would rubber band so it is hard to tell if you are landing hits. I seem to take damage fine
2. Getting out of my ship, there has been a few times after coming back to the station from a mining run where I get out of my seat but after if I move too far from my ship I get teleported back to my seat and stunned, to overcome this I have to de-spawn my ship
3. Loading the game, sometimes the "Waiting for Server.." takes minutes before I can enter the universe or change my settings.

Other notes:
I have not tested PVP FPS (non-ship combat) but can interact with other on the station without too many issues so far.
I am have ordered an internet connection upgrade which I should get in about a week, which should be better then playing over a VPN on a LTE connection but am not expecting a ping time below 310ms but will give me a static public IP so should not have any NAT issues and will have better bandwidth.

 

[Amos.37]

I've been in the CA and haven't noticed too many issues with lag outside of combat.
For context, I live in regional Australia.
Combat and interactions with other players is the most affected. Significant rubber banding.
1v1 isn't too bad, but the more players that are in an area, the worse the affects.

Also, if you're travelling in your own ship (that you spawned/built) there are no issues. But when travelling on other players ships, sync issues can be a problem.
1 particularly hilarious glitch is if you lose sync with the ship you are on you can be catapulted forward quite some distance. I believe the devs have made some changes recently that should have addressed this particular glitch, but I haven't tested much to try and recreate it.