as far as i know u cant turn off the "pleb has died" message, "pleb has joined" messages, i think there hard coded into the game, you shouldent have that much lag on a 512k connection tho, have you tried defragging your hd?

** uk server **
www.ko krull.com (without the space, dont u love swear filters )

yep...its a completely clean machine...2.6Gb processor, 1Gb RAM, 256Mb GFX and a 60Gb Hard drive with absolutely nothing on it apart from freelancer!! The perfect lancing machine with a 512 connection....but its just this one little problem thats dragging me down.

Its beginning to annoy me so much I think I may just give up on MP altogether.

it is not the message itself that causes the lag
and as it isnt your machine/connection and probably isnt the servers connection
i would hazard a guess that it is happening on servers in serious need of a reboot or even with borderline hardware
i have the same speed connection as you and get the same sometimes ,though only on certain servers
ive not noticed it on many i play on ever ie jolt ,**uk server** ,elite raw etc whereas on a particular server i know which is only using 256 of p100 and a borderline processor i get the same problem consistently
while i do not claim this is definitely the cause i have my suspicions based on what info i have

@steel thanks. I'll try playing a different server in that case. I tend to play Alpha Centauri 2 most of the time, because my best character is there, but if it means losing the lag issue I'll happily try out a new server. I wanted to play on Jolt but I can never get on the bugger!

I know these test sites are far away from Europe but have you tried this website to check both d/l and u/l speeds? Chances are your broadband is fast enough in both directions but a little checking never hurt.

You have a fast enough machine so I doubt it's firewalls or other malware. It could be the ISP, sometimes they throttle connections, block ports and other silly things. Things not necessarily seen in a ping. Again a remote possibility but worth a shot in calling your ISP to check.

My server runs FLSO and that can cause momentary lag. When the server is loaded, either due to lots of players or cheaters, FLSO checks to see who'e online every 60 secs. In doing so it takes from some of the CPU utilization causing FLSO to fall beehind and thus server load goes up. Even though I connect to my server through LAN and thus have basically no ping time, I see yellow lag occasionally every 60 secs. This should diminish once I get the new CPU, m/b and 1 GB of memory by the end of the week and upgrade the server.

The only time my players see lag when not fully loaded is when there are cheaters on the server. Just one cheater can triple server load! Imagine what would happen with more than one! I have seen my server with <10 players and have 8000 msec load! I usually run my server up to 150 msec load with max players. With a max of 50 msec ping, most players should just be under the yellow lag indication.

@steel - I play on jolt and when it is busy I get yellow lag often. It isn't high pings and I use the same connection my server (seperate 'puter) is on but the server is not close to full (9-10 players, server load {an indicator of bandwidth but not definitive} 55 msec). I assume it's jolt. So I agree with your observation it would probably be the server itself under loaded conditions.

Edit: rewrite for clarity
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Earendil
SysAdmin of Boston Freelancer server
See server news and server rules for server information

Edited by - Earendil on 18-11-2003 20:22:05