No message recieved 5 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec etc etc

[Damacles 0]

Could anyone please tell me what this means, I've recently been getting this message flashing up on my screen, with an update every 5 seconds. I've been playing ArmA for several months without problems but now, a few seconds after joining a multiplayer game, I can't go anywhere and the above message comes up and I have to exit out of the mission.:wall:

[DaSquade 0]

Maybe not the full and correct story, but this happens if you encounter big desync values often linked to high pings. This can be either due to your connection or the server connection.

Maybe you can tell more about your own connection?

It is always best to join server with the lowest possible ping...

The yellow and, more worst, red chain in the bottom right corner of your screen is an indication your are about to loose connection with the server or the server itself is at it bandwitdh.

Sometimes you get away with the message and you catch up with the game, often the counter only raises and you loose connection or the server shuts down.

PS: it is also handy to check your ping, bandwitdh and desync. We had a frequent 'playerX is loosing connection' on the Armaholic server, but since they stepped to a 24Mb line we don't have it anymore and if it happens it is 99% due to players connection.

You also quickly encounter (huge) desync values when there are lost of players and lost of driving vehicles, at least that is what i noticed.

Not sure if there is a good fix for it, appart from staying away from huge player servers with not that good pings. Witching to a better provider or internet package is often a better solution, but depending of your location this can come at a priece.

[Damacles 0]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure its the answer though, although I suspect somewhere in the right direction. I use an 8 meg line that runs at approx 2-3 megs and by and large the games I join are sub 100ms when it comes to ping values, I'll check my line though to see if something is adrift.

[daikan 1]

it means the server has disappeared and is not reachable anymore, for whatever reason (crash, shutdown, network issues). plain and simple.

you can try that by temporarily and manually unplugging your internet connection while being on a server.

on the other hand the 'red chain' means there is desync happening. the server being still reachable, however.

not sure, but i suppose that the arma netcode uses something technically refered to as a 'heartbeat signal' in order to figure out whether the server is alive or not.

[LoboE 0]

Are you using any mods? Like xam?

[Damacles 0]

Yeh I'm using lots of mods, like 6th Sense and various others, all installed through Kegetys launcher, I'm not however using the XAM mod, I heard it was causing servers to crash. I don't know why it started because I managed to play without problems before and my Internet connection seems fine enough, low pings and a 2-3 meg speed even when slow. I think maybe I'll try offloading all the mods and seeing what happens as and when I bring them back on line to see if that makes a difference.

[Damacles 0]

It might be even worse than I feared I tried the Kellys heroes server, but had the same problem so exited out, but because it was good fun I tried to rejoin the server again but couldn't find it in the list. Five minutes I later looked up the server list and there is Kellys but with no players, so I suspect it may have crashed and even worse I may have been the cause, how is this possible ? Maybe I've been leaving a wake of grief and despair behind me at all these servers were I've had this problem How can I check to see if I'm causing problems and how to fix it ?

[LoboE 0]

Try with clean arma... no mods...

[Damacles 0]

Yeh, just tried it, apart from being killed a lot, no issues so far. I'll have to try each mod one by one to see which was causing the problems, I certainly didn't have anything exotic in the mix.