Some players struggle to connect, lots of network errors

[HywelPhillips]

Hi,

For the last week or so we have had problems with some players connecting to my FGU games. Last night I ran a game where all the players eventually connected but it required multiple retries to get them to connect. To debug we tried with a different campaign, just in case it was something corrupt in the particular game I was running, so we reconnected with the campaign we'd finished the week before (and which everybody had previously been able to connect to with no problem). Same issue.

It seems to affect some players worse than others. This evening, with a different group of players, I got 4 out of 5 to connect but number five just plain could not. Restarting FGU seems to help a bit.

The first symptom is a series of the following messages in chat:
"Lost connection to cloud service. Players may not be able to join game. Attempting to reconnect...
Connection to cloud service restored."

This afternoon I left the game running for several hours, and I only got this error message once a player started to connect, which fits in with a previous observation that it seemed to be somewhat correlated in time to player connection, at least on the timescale of minutes.

Some players connected straight away, reporting no more than usual delays. Others were stuck at the attempting connection stage, and had to repeatedly retry; once they got through they did eventually connect but the whole thing was very slow for them until they got through, taking 10+ minutes to complete to connection and claim characters.

One player could not connect at all this week.

He had been able to connect at the start of the session last week, logged off to help run some tests, and has not been able to log back in to my game since. I'll attach some console logs from this player. He ran a game on his own computer last week and confirmed that the other player who could not connect to my game at all last week could connect to this player's game - once they'd done that test neither of them managed to reconnect to my game last week.

The console log pops up fairly early on, I get one error - looks like some XML issue in either SWADE Sci Fi Companion or a map pack - that is new this week, and doesn't seem to be related to the problem. But looking in the log file, there's a lot of errors even before that.

Then there's a whole ton of what look like network-related errors, of the form:
[29/05/2025 19:01:07] [WARNING] NETWORK: Noble Connect [31674]: Failed to send over socket: 169.254.64.164:50710 -> 192.168.0.82:49666
No route to host (HostUnreachable - 10065)

[5/29/2025 7:02:30 PM] [WARNING] NETWORK: Noble Connect [114859]: Socket exception while sending
No route to host (10065)

I haven't tried a blank new campaign but it occurs in multiple previously-known-good campaigns. I've not tried turning off extensions but the only ones I have are what you might call "system ones"- SWADE Fantasy Companion etc. and it happens on a campaign which doesn't have most of those switched on anyway.

I tried rebooting my router, I've not got any software firewall or antivirus on my Mac as its behind a hardware firewall on the fibre connection, and I've not done any recent system updates as far as I can recall. I ran check for updates last week and several times this week, as have all 10 players across the two games. Speedtest shows my internet connection is performing at the expected speed and has a decent ping time. I don't see any evidence outside of FGU of any broader network issue.


Log files from tonight attached from me and the player who could not connect.

Any idea what on earth could be going on? Any help greatly appreciated!

Hywel

[HywelPhillips]

Player log

[Moon Wizard]

The network/matchmaking code has not been changed for many years; and even the types of messages passed over the network have not been changed in the last 5 weeks (only image bug fixes released since then in the application client). Unfortunately, the logs do not tell us anything other than connections were dropped (network connection services are provided by OS) or that routes were unreachable (a symptom of blocked/missing network connections).

Since it's multiple players affected, the assumption at this point is that this is an issue with the GM machine connection to the Internet.

Since this is a recent issue, my guess is that something has changed on the machine (operating system, firewall, other security software, ...), network (wifi interference, ...), router (security settings, throttles, filters, ...) or Internet service provider (bad connection to Internet provider, new security settings, etc.)

You'll need to start ruling out which systems could be blocking.
* You can try connecting from your machine to a mobile hotspot to bypass Internet provider/router.
* You can try connecting via wired network cable to your router, instead of using wireless.
* You can double check all the various settings in OS, router and ISP account. Some suggestions in the Network Troubleshooting wiki.
https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FGCP/pages/1981349889/Network+Troubleshooting

Regards,
JPG

[MrDDT]

"Lost connection to cloud service. Players may not be able to join game. Attempting to reconnect...
Connection to cloud service restored."

This message right here is the first thing that will tell you 1 of 3 things happened.

1) You are having issues with host internet (packet loss or loss of internet).
2) FG cloud server went down.
3) Localized connection issue between GM (host) and the cloud server.

At this point right here, you can do a check to see if there are issues, you can also bypass the cloud server by simply having people directly connect to your IP. However, this could cause other firewall issues. Which is why the cloud server is the best option to use.

To troubleshoot FG issues or host issues, you would check this IP option first. If they are not having an issue with the IP you can keep using that and find out why the cloud service is not working for you, which can be bunch of reasons.

[Moon Wizard]

Since we have not had any other reports of the lobby server (i.e. cloud service) being down from other users; it is unlikely that the would be the issue in this case, as I would assume we would have many reports if it was a general lobby server issue.

Regards,
JPG

[claedawg]

There is at least one other post in regards to players not being able to connect (with people piggybacking on that). This is a fairly new issue (just the last few months) and doe snot seem to have a cause. It happens to random players (at least one per session) almost every session we have run over the last few months. Our GM decided he didn't want to run a game last night so I did. It took the normal GM 5+ tries to connect to my game, he & I were the only US players with one in the Philippines, one in England and another in Australia.

I have only had this happen to me attempting to connect once so far, but all of the players in our Thursday group have had this happen (we play weekly, usually).

[HywelPhillips]

Since symptoms and OS match the "Mac OS Sequoia intermittent connection problems" in the troubleshooting, I'll try everything in that and see if we have any luck. Most likely means MacOS stealth-applied a security patch I didn't notice and triggered this.

Thank you everyone for your help, fingers crossed we'll get it fixed for next week's games.

Cheers, Hywel

Addendum: after making sure all Mac updates are done, and resetting the local networking permissions, the player who couldn't connect last night was able to do so with no problem.

I last updated MacOS several weeks before the problems started, but during the update it had stealthily switched security updates to default to on. I assume this led to a security patch a week or so ago, which in turn triggered the problems with local networking and FGU.

This is why I have auto updates switched off. Causing problems with FGU is an annoyance, but if it happened to a job-critical app it could cost me money as this is one of my production work machines.

Fingers crossed this has fixed the issue.

My plan B is to fall back to my ageing iMacPro on an old version of MacOS and run FGU on there if I have to, let's see what happens at the weekend game.

If you are on MacOS Sequoia, check whether it has decided to turn auto security updates on during a recent OS update.

[Nylanfs]

doe snot

hehehe, - posted by my inner 12 year old.