HughesNet satellite lag - could FA run without it?

[Setokaiva]

Hi there, I'm running on HughesNet satellite internet most of the time and it's lagging pretty bad every time I try to play FAF. Now I know what you're thinking; this is to be expected with satellite, right? Strangely enough, though, I have next to no delay when I give commands to my units; it's just straight-up lag, as if I have to catch up with the system or something.

Normally, I would accept this as unavoidable because that's just the nature of my connection; however, I now know for a proven fact that that I DON'T need that kind of lag. There is another game -- or series of games, rather -- made using something called the Spring engine, which is designed to create free and independent source RTS games (I currently play one called Zero-K) using LuaScript C++. Every game I've tried to play on those using my satellite, I have had absolutely NO issues with lag whatsoever, when I should probably be having a crapload of it just because of my satellite connection (because it's relayed transmission rather than direct line).

I have no idea how they managed to pull it off; it hasn't always been this way, too, because I only noticed this after they put through a new update geared towards improving overall connection speeds and reducing problems by a large margin (it worked). What I want to know, is if you guys might have any idea what could cause something like this; every other game or process I've tried to run on satellite has always had lag problems, and yet these guys are doing something different that actually managed to eliminate the lag entirely. It defies all logic, in my opinion, so I thought I'd ask around; I'll probably be doing the same on the ZK forums, too.

Thanks!

[eXcalibur]

i cannot tell you what they did different.

when you play supcom, try pressing F11 in a multiplayer game. this shows the ping of you to everybody else. when all pings are constantly over 500, your ping is too high and is therefore slowing the game down. when all the pings are very unstable, your upload or download speed is not enough for the number of players you are playing with.

when neither case is true and the lag gets worse during the game, your computer (or a computer of the other players) is too slow to run the game fluently.