I’m pleased to confirm that the server is back online. Thank you sincerely for your help.

I used the TCP Optimizer program to determine the exact MTU that’s appropriate for my connection, and set it accordingly. The server was indeed restarted each time I set a new value.

At first, there was no change, even when trying other MTU’s, but the errors no longer occurred the day after.

While I’m not 100% sure what finally fixed the issue, the new MTU value is mostly likely to credit. I wouldn’t have thought to check this on my own.

The server’s presence now reflects on flserver.de once more.

Thanks again!

Hi HeIIoween, many thanks for your reply.

Stepping down by 10 from 1472, I found that 1322 returned successful replies. However, the same reconnection problem persisted.

I understand that packets have 28 bytes added as overhead, so I decreased the MTU to 1294 instead, but sadly the problem is still there, despite the successful pings with this MTU to flserver.de.

Is there something else I could try?

Greetings all,

I successfully hosted a server for just over a year, until a problem described in the title began around October 2021. If you have any input or suggestions on this matter, I would very greatly value your feedback! I thank you in advance for taking the time to read.

My server’s basic details:

• Name: [ZA] South African Freelancers

• Vanilla, with only an adjustment made to one file, which grants a very small XP boost for all factions when killing Nomads.

• PvE (PvP is disabled).

• Installed to and running on Windows 7.

• Hosted from a home network via cabled ethernet.

• 200Mbps fibre connection, upload and download.

• Set up to reliably run 24/7, with a large UPS backup in case of power interruptions.

• I do not (yet) have a static IP for my internet connection. I do not know this is required or not, as I have not seen mention of it in any tutorial so far.

Problem:

• Server repeatedly connects, disconnects and reconnects to the list server.

• My server’s graphs are no longer generated on flserver.de

• Server is likely no longer visible to anyone outside of my own local network. I have not yet been able to conclusively test this, but since flserver.de no longer sees the server, it’s likely not visible to anyone else either.

Symptoms:

• The following code repeats many times, starting about half a minute after the server is started up:

Connecting to list server…
Established connection to list server…
Sending game information to list server…
Lost connection to list server…
Connecting to list server…

• Server is no longer listed on flserver.de, and no graphs are generated for it.

• I saw minimal, yet reliable traffic before the problem started. Most players only stopped by for very short periods, with the occasional player staying to rank up a character. However, no connections have been made to the server at all, from outside my home network, since last year.

What I have tried to troubleshoot the problem:

• Turned off all other devices connected to my router to ensure that only the machine the server is running on has all the available bandwidth.

• Ran only FLServer.exe, without any other programs open that might affect bandwidth.

• Fresh installations of the game, configured as follows:

  • With and without decompiled game files.

  • With and without saved accounts and configs (no Freelancer folder in the “My Games” folder).

  • Installed to an entirely different computer, which also runs Windows 7.

  • Confirmed that IPv6 is disabled.

  • Forwarded all necessary ports, and some extras, all UDP: 2300-2400, 9928, 6073. No connections forwarded for TCP.

  • Deleted all empty accounts (those without any characters), in case there were too many, which could somehow affect the server’s ability to function.

  • Disabled the router firewall for IPv4 and even IPv6.

  • Enabled DMZ in my router for the host machine.

  • Attempted to host the server from one town over, on a completely different internet connection with a different service provider. The exact same symptoms persisted.

  Additional info and closing:

Good day,

My apologies for reviving an existing thread, however I’ve encountered a problem similar to the one from before.

At present, while my server appears to be able to connect to the list server initially, that connection doesn’t stick, and is somehow intermittent. FLServer repeats the following code in its console:

Connecting to list server…
Established connection to list server…
Sending game information to list server…
Lost connection to list server…
Connecting to list server…
Established connection to list server…
Sending game information to list server…

This repeats for a while, until it appears to give up, where no further code is generated, and the server likely isn’t visible to anyone else through the internet.

According to the graphs available on flserver.de, the server “[ZA] South African Freelancers” hasn’t shown as online for several days.

I have tested that everything is correct with my installation again, as with my original post above. Nothing has changed on my router since, and tests on my internet connection itself are fast and stable. Upload and download speeds show consistent results.

Can anyone advise whether the list server might be encountering trouble, or is there something I may still try to restore the connection? Has someone encountered the same behaviour when hosting a server before?

Many thanks for your attention in advance, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Very, very rarely do I recall noticing the same, where factions that are supposed to be allies appear to be firing on one another.

As a player, when accidentally causing too much damage to a friendly or neutral NPC, that unit and all their friends will turn hostile toward you, until you leave the area.

Does anyone know if this perhaps works in the same way for NPC’s? If an NPC unit happens to accidentally down the shields of another unit in an allied faction, would they turn hostile towards one another in the same way, for the duration of that encounter? Would this even happen between units in the same faction?

An update on the above, upon further digging I discovered that the PlayerControl plugin wasn’t being loaded, it appears to be due to the way PlayerControl’s files should be installed, which don’t work with FLHook 2.0.0. Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

1 . FLHook 2.0.0 works with my server, but the PlayerControl plugin requires a “dlls” folder in the “flhook_plugins” folder, which isn’t there by default. Creating it manually does not rectify the problem.

2 . FLHook 1.6.0 and 1.6.0-p3 both do not work with my vanilla 1.1 server, where FLHook.dll fails to load upon the server starting up. These versions of FLHook do however have the “dlls” folder that PlayerControl requires.

Can anyone advise how PlayerControl should be installed to a 1.1 vanilla server? Specifically, which versions of both FLHook and plugin should be used?

I have done my best to try and find different versions of both, mixing and matching to try and get both to work together as intended, with no success so far.

My thanks for your patience in advance. I’m very new to Freelancer modding, and have little in the way of programming experience.

Hello all,

I’ve been hosting a public vanilla server for a while now, where exploration and co-op is the primary goal, instead of PVP. As such, for the sake of improving the player experience, I am trying to let players retain unmounted equipment and cargo upon death.

It appears that the “death_penalty” option in the freelancer.ini file does not actually do anything, and applying any value from 0 to 100 has no intended effect.

I understand that the only alternative is to make use of FLHook with the “PlayerControl” plugin.

I have been able to install and configure FLHook to my server, but upon repeated testing and tweaking, regrettably I cannot successfully configure things so that unmounted weapons and cargo are indeed retained upon dying.

Does anyone perhaps have experience with this kind of setup? I was not able to find a previous forum post here or on Lancers Reactor on this topic with a confirmed solution.

For context, the primary reason for wanting to implement this change, is because of the famously buggy mine fields. Dangerous enemy ships are simple enough to avoid, and dying to them feels more fair. In contrast, dying to an invisible mine, which all do significantly more damage than the visible ones, feels like being cheated out of the intended experience.
Even the strongest VHF shield in the game can’t take more than a handful of hits from invisible mines, so the situation is even more hopeless for players with middle or lower-end shields.

To sum up, my intention is to run the server as close to vanilla as possible, with only this relatively minor change, so that a player keeps their equipment and cargo after dying.

If anyone has any advice, or a potential solution in this context, I would greatly appreciate the help

Many thanks for your feedback. At the time of writing, I can confirm my server was able to connect to the list server again, much appreciated.

Hello,

For approximately a year I have hosted a server titled " [ZA] South African Freelancers". In the last few days, my server has unfortunately not been able to connect to the regular list server. I can connect to my server over my own network, but looking at the graphs on flserver.de, it hasn’t shown as online since about a week ago.

The only recent change of note is that I moved my server from an older machine to a newer, significantly faster one. After the move, my server was able to connect to the list server exactly as before, until the console started showing a repeating error of it failing to connect. Nothing changed on the machine I’m hosting from, or on my router.

This is what I have tried to resolve the issue so far:

• Ensured that the workaround patch is correctly installed. Both the gls_workaround and libcurl files are present, and added to the dacom.ini Libraries section.

• Port 2302 is forwarded for ports 2300-2400 in my router as before.

• IPv6 is disabled in that machine’s Local Area Connection settings.

• No special mods are installed, apart from an HD Textures pack and a widescreen fix, which had not caused any problems before.

• The old machine still retains the original installation that’s been running for about a year. Upon starting that older installation of the server up, it also fails to connect to the list server. I assume this means that the given installation of Freelancer and its settings are not at fault?

• Ensured that the Official 1.1 Patch is indeed installed.

• Disabled both my antivirus and firewall temporarily, but the issue persisted.

I am able to see and connect to other servers in-game, so I assume the issue lies with my own server or its machine somehow. What’s perplexing is that the problem started abruptly, in the middle of a hosted session. Given my current situation, I do need to occasionally shut the server’machine off for extended periods, as the graphs on flserver.de show.

Can anyone advise whether the list server itself is having trouble right now, or if there is anything else I can try to get the server back online?
Could the list server have blacklisted or otherwise blocked my address as a result of my server starting up and connecting too often in a given time frame?

My sincere thanks in advance for your time and attention to this post.

• Blinky

Hello! Long-time visitor, first-time poster.

I’m based in the Western Cape of South Africa, and have been a serious fan of Freelancer since first playing it in 2005.

It was a big hit between my circle of friends in that time all throughout high school. We had no proper access to the internet then, so we had fun speculating about various ships and areas in the game amongst ourselves. Trying to determine where you could find the best equipment, which ships were optimal in certain scenarios, how many systems and secrets we were yet to find, etc.

The Borderworlds like the Omicron, Omega and Tau systems have a serious mystique, and were a real challenge for us to get to, so their unknown possibilities were especially fun to discuss.

I now run my own Freelancer server, something I’ve been meaning to do for many years. You can find it as “[ZA] South African Freelancers” if you’re ever in the mood for a vanilla PvE experience!

The latency for European and Russian players is likely around 200, whereas North American connections range from 230 and up. Admittedly it’s not ideal, but I’ve spent a lot of time playing with this kind of latency on “overseas” servers myself, so it should still be playable as long as the connection remains consistent. You’re welcome to message me here if it isn’t

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to contributing here in the future where appropriate.