Alias vs. IP connection

[BronzeDodger]

I think I read somewhere that FG only gets good stats on usage if people connect via the alias so I tried to get tonight's test session going by having the player connect that way.

I had the existing alias, and then I renewed it twice - he would get a (paraphrase) "cannot connect to server" error on all of them.

I gave him the real IP and he was connected in seconds, everything worked, boom.

I've never done any port-forwarding or the like so nothing to remap.

So more for curiosity than it's breaking the game - just wondering what would cause the alias not to find me.

On his end he downloaded FG from scratch on the PC just before starting so no history on the client computer end.

(Total aside: we used Discord for audio and we both agreed we'd happily dump our corporate web conferencing system given how perfect the sound was)

[Trenloe]

More info would be in the console.log file on the player's computer. This might help indicate if the alias resolution was the issue (not entered correctly, space at the beginning end, can’t reach the FG server, wrong IP resolution, etc.) or if there might be other issues.

[Nylanfs]

He could be in one of the areas that are being blocked by IP, the FG servers were hammered a couple of years ago and they were all from a small IP range so those just got blocked. Unsure if when they altered some of the security settings if those were unblocked or not.