Laser Antenna Connection issues

Hmm doesn't that make the laser antenna rather useless? I always wanted to use it for connecting bases. Moon to Earth to Asteroid to alien Planet etc... With 10 km, not really an option

what they've done with the game is a disaster

At Michael Schietzsch : Check the wiki and do some tests with distance and power in mind. A while back I had a discussion with someone that wanted laser antenna from earth-like to mars-like and that needed 4000+ solar panels to operate. Earth-like to moon would need be about 17 solar panels.

I know the power draw is quite big, but i tested it with just 15 km and quite a lot of reactors and also in creative mode.

I tested the same thing and neither of my stations had any indication of low power consumption while testing. I set them to 200km limit, about 130km distance away. My station had a large reactor and about 20 batteries full, and while the Laser Antennas would connect, nothing would be visible in the Remote Access panel and in the Laser Antenna blocks, the Known Receivers list remained empty for both of them. So they would report as connected, but not do anything else.

My example is rather... exceptional? I suppose.

The two laser antenna are over 6500km apart and drawing on 1.09 gigawatts each. Both grids are owned by me, both grids are also in safe zones maintained on nearby (yet separate) grids. Each has turned to face their respective counterpart and is drawing on an, honestly, ridonkulous amount of power, but I've seen modded drones with a better success rate against asteroids than these two antennae are having at connecting.

I have the same problem, almost exactly. I am trying to connect a space base on an asteroid to a second base on the earthlike planet. The distance between them is 59.35km. I have the range of both antenna set to 100km and both have the correct receiving laser antenna locked in. However, they are stuck on status "Searching for a laser at GPS coordinates". Both of them - I have teleported between both sites and tried everything I can think of.

Both are reporting they are owned by me, both bases have a masive oversupply of power, both antennas are visibly pointing in the correct direction and I have flown the route between them to verify there is no voxel blocking the signal (rogue asteroid etc). There is not. The only complication I can think of is that the space base has two laser antenna on it and the ground base has three - though only one of each is trying to connect to anything.

I have the same issue. One on a planet, one on an asteroid 38KM away.

- Antennas are ~38.9Km away from each other

- Both have range to >=38km (tried infinate too)

- Both have much more than enough power

- Both have each other's co-ords copied to the other

- Both have line of sight (Quadruple checked there's no debris or asteroids in the way)

- Both grids I have ownership of.

- Single player mode.

Still a problem. I cannot connect my ground base to my satellite in orbit, less than 50 km apart.

I'm on a mars planet with a station on the ground and a relay sat in orbit above. so that i can have comms with any rovers and not have to rely on standard antenna's. the LA are trying to establish connection but are unable to.

This is 100% bugged. The laser antennas used to work fine. Was trying to set up a recon drone to watch something important with a camera. Stuck on searching for laser at GPS coordinates. Was testing before implementing in c survival. Won't connect at 500m.

The antenna is configured correctly. I've been playing since 2014 and have over 4,000 hours in game so not a noob issue.

Oh, I just tried in a survival game and there it seems to work. Maybe it's creative related?

No survival. When I reported 20d ago

Trying to use it to connect a battle station to a base. 2.7km distance, does not work. The base is in a safe zone, but the battle station is not.

Rotating the antenna works. Then it is stuck forever in the "Trying to establish connection to Laser Antenna ..." stage.

Line of sight is not blocked, but the other receiver is in a safe zone.

When I try it from about 30m distance with another laser antenna (which is not in a safe zone), then it works.

Apparently the safe zone is a problem, blocking/distorting the laser.

The laser antenna is seriously bugged. We tried again to use one last week in a survival game. Connecting our orbital station with the ground base. Both lasers say they are 'connected'. But no connected grids can be seen or controlled neither in terminal nor in communications menu. Both bases had a remote control block on them (not that this is required imho).. I hope Keen will fix the buggy laser antenna once and for all. So we can actually start using it in our. games.

Bas, have you played a locally hosted survival game or someone else's Troch based server? They often use a server side plugin named "Concealment" which tends to turn off remote grids if there is no player nearby. Just asking for completeness, so we have all the information here.

It was a locally hosted game, hosted by me. Both me and a friend tried to configure the laser antenna's. All we got was 'connected to ..' (name of other grid). But no way of actually interacting with the other grid.

this is still a issue today

looks like it was reproduced here https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/pc/topic/laser-antenna-connection-issues

@bodyboarder2528 Great that you found that other ticket with the repro.

It looks like there is light at the end of the tunnel now. It may be fixed in one of the next updates, if all goes well.

I'm keen on using Laser antennas for the first time! (Apparently they have been broken since I've been playing SE or I got unlucky with them.)

And this is why I hate Keen. I only submitted this two freaking years ago. And it only broke a major portion of my Guideline Planetary Defense System, that being the spy satellite uplink used to detect and lock on to approaching ships (still usable, but now it had to have its own broadcasting on and give away its position). It worked fine for years until they broke it in an update. When you break something existing, standard product support practice is to make fixing what you broke #1 priority. Instead, their priority was paid DLCs.

Yeah, they suffer from "priority inversion", indeed.

Remember: There are always a good reason and the real reason.

is the Guideline Planetary Defense System a script?

No, it's a mobile planet-launched capital ship killer using Easy LIDAR Homing Script. Enemy ship shows up in orbit, and you detect it using the spy satellite, lock on by grabbing its coordinates with the satellite (with Raycast Target Painter), and then obliterate it before it can detect your base.

I have the exact same issue and a quick google search shows countless other reports of the same problem many of which have been posted to this platform. The lazer antennas straight up dont work they do not do anything at all when simply trying to connect two of them together as they are intended to do. They just say searching for connection and never actually connect no matter the distance and even with clear line of sight.

Just a quick question, what kind of hardware are you guys using to check the game on?

There are countless trivial issues with the game that many players experience yet you mostly cant reproduce the issue so i am asking what kinda supercomputers are you guys playing/working on?

I have a Ryzen 3800x slightly underclocked and a GTX 1070 overclocked with 32GB 3200 RAM.

Thanks Ondrej;

I am trying to use them on a dedicated server not hosted by me. So I am sot able to send you a game file. I have raised the issue with the server owner. He saw no reason why they should not work on his server.

I was able to get a connection in a single player environment. Why shouldn't Laser antennas work on a dedicated server?

Cheers

CrazyMoose

I am also having this issue. Would a save file be helpful? It's a 9MB zip, so too big for posting. Email it to you?

Hello, Brian.

Yes! Definitely that would be a great help! Also some steps what you are trying to do on that world with the antennas as already asked for it before (or video - that would be the best). It must be something "special" or just one little thing that you do, that we don´t when trying this. And believe me we did try it tens of times - still working for me and my colleague as well.

When the file if too big to attach it here, please use google drive for sharing. Make sure that the settings are set in a way so everyone (us) can view, use and download the files.

Thanks in advance.

Hope we can finally reproduce it as well.

Kind Regards

Keen Software House: QA Department

Done.

Save: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CmPh3_TWnL_-M-eKOturxoHCiGW-PrNG/view?usp=sharing

Video: https://youtu.be/ZLfH3yOXubg

Oh, and don't fall in the hole... ;)

Hi, Brian,

thanks for both - video and save! It was really big help. Issue was finally successfully reproduced and thus put into our internal system.

Let´s hope that´s all with laser antennas at least for some time :)

Kind Regards

Keen Software House: QA Department

P.S.: Yeah, I did fall to the hole couple of times :D

So, I am wondering if maybe a mod is breaking it? Will have to test mod free. I have my non-creative world, have link, remote blocks and can see the grid, but can't communicate... Odd...

See attached.

Nope, same issue with no modes (the no-connect issue).

Start changing your reviews to negative on Steam. They only start fixing things when their reviews drop a tier.

Are you sure you have enough power on both endpoints?

I have a huge sun-tracking solar array that previously worked for a 50+ km connection no problem. Once this bug was introduced, it just stopped connecting. This is not a tiny array, either.

Was using fusion power for my setup, Many GWs available.

Could you please attach a test world where this problem happens?

(ZIP the world, exclude the sbsB5 file and the Backup folder)

If you have a lot of grids in the world, then please also write down some instructions where to look to find the laser antenna pair.

asdf

I am not from Keen.

I tested this last year and works without issue. Documented it on Steam.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/244850/discussions/0/3053990075120060735/

Try with the save game from my previous post: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/pc/topic/laser-antenna-connection-issues#comment-48630

Even recorded video of the issue.

Brian, the save file does not exist when I try to download it.

Maybe this is because the laser antenna on Mars is looking very close to the horizon, but it needs to be proven.

I can debug this issue with your save file if you can paste a working download link. Thanks.

I'm not from Keen either. :)

I don't have a working link either. "Sorry, the file you have requested does not exist. Make sure that you have the correct URL and the file exists."

Since you are doing this in creative anyway, try it moved higher to not be hitting the horizon, or see if it works in the open space above mars, there's a lot of different things to try before calling it broken.

The test I did on Steam was in open space. You could have asteroids in the way in your game. Also, it looks like laser antenna do not work well from atmosphere to space.

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/pc/topic/laser-antennas-dont-work-through-safe-zones-or-atmosphere_3

In limited testing I did just now, about 20% of random locations near mars allowed connection to the earth based antenna.

Could you please upload your test world?

In ZIP without the Backups subdirectory. You can also delete the Sandbox.sbsB5 file to make it even smaller.

I would like to reproduce the problem and track down the issue. Thanks!

Hi!

Could you please attach a test world?

(ZIP, without the Backup folder, you can also remove the sbsB5 file to save space)

It would help us to reproduce the issue. I can debug it.

We have two separate issues here. One with the voxel line-of-sight test, which happens without safe zones. Another one is the safe zone issue you see, but I could not reproduce before. Now with your help it would be a chance to address that as well.

In case your main base is on a planet: Is the line of sight near the horizon?

Sorry i should have clarified that in the Scenario outline.

Not on a planet everything is space based one planet that is close 60-80km is the planet triton

Could a gravity field between the two be a issue?

Hi,

Thank you for the save world and provided info. Unfortunately, we were still unable to reproduce the issue. It is possible that some of the mods are causing unpredictable problems with the antenna. Did the issue happen only on this world (or on a different world with the same mods enabled)? If the issue happens again could you share what you did before, so we could have a better idea of steps to reproduce the issue?

The "Paste coordinates" is there to paste coordinates for the antenna/receiver you want to connect to and can be used when you don't have any known receiver and there are no selected coordinates in the laser antenna or to add more to the list. The "Connect to coordinates" needs to have some coordinates already in the laser antenna as receivers, otherwise it does not work.

Kind regard,

Keen Software House: QA Department

op, could you maybe confirm if this is the behaviour you are experiencing?

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/pc/topic/44687-laser-antenna-needing-server-restart-again

Update: It appears that laser antennae will connect successfully if, and only if, they are both within render range of the same player. Attempting to connect to a laser antenna outside render range or within the render range of another player will fail as described.

Additionally, the laser antennae will disconnect if one of them leaves render range.

I'd also like to link this post: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/pc/topic/laser-antenna-connection-issues

Crazy Moose and I no longer have this issue and have not experienced it for a few years now. There does appear to be a problem with dedicated serveres when initially connecting laser antennas for the very first time. They will show as connected however we can't see or interact with anything on the other end unless the server is restarted. As my server auto restarts every 6 hours its not a major issue we just wait.