Bad Company 2 - FAQ & Known Issues

03 Sep 2010

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	Bad Company 2 - FAQ & Known Issues

Solution The following are common questions for Bad Company 2, if you have a problem please check the list below before submitting a support request

Frequenty Asked Questions
Known Issues

Pings aren't showing in the server browser
Currently pings in the server browser use ICMP echo, which is often blocked by firewalls both on machines e.g. windows firewall and on routers. If your client isn't displaying server pings check to ensure that your firewall isn't blocked.
In addition windows Vista and Windows 7 users may need to run BC2 as an administrator to enable pings to work

PunkBuster filter in the server browser doesn't work
The filter option for PunkBuster in the server browser currently doesnt work, it always returns zero results.

Server Name filter is case sensitive
If you use the server name filter to find your server be aware that it is currently case sensitive so searching for "multiplay" will not return servers with "Multiplay" in the name, also not you MUST click Search, hitting enter doesn't search.

Server list doesn't always display all servers
There is a known issue that is preventing all servers being listed all the time in the server browser, the workaround is to refresh the list and if this doesn't help to restart your server

Can I install a BC2 Daemon?
Due to security and other general problems related to running third party Daemons we will not be supporting them. All functionality that is provided by these daemons can be achieved in standard rcon based utilities so there's no real need for them anyway

Server Descriptions / MOTD isn't displayed correctly
Currently server MOTDs set in ServerOptions.ini -> ServerDescription don't display correctly, this is a bug in the BC 2 client

What the the available settings for Bad Company 2 servers?
The official documentation for the Bad Company 2 server can be found here:

Official Bad Company 2 Server Documentation

How does reserved slots work?
Adding players to the reserved list in Bad Company 2 is done by adding their player names to the reservedslotslist.txt one per line. Once added please note that when the named players arent in the server the number of available slots effectively be reduced by the number of players listed. So if you have 32 player server and 10 players in reservedslotslist.txt with 4 of those named playing your server will max out at 26 players, with only the remaining 6 players listed being able to join.

Settings only work for the first map / round
If you configure your server with custom settings via Startup.txt such as enabling hardcode then the server will only remember these settings for the first round of the first map.
This is a bug in the server, the only known workaround, which sometimes helps but not always, is to set these setting again using rcon once the server has started. To do this you can use ClanForge -> Server -> LiveControl -> Current Game -> Update Settings without changing anything.

All servers are crashing a lot
As you will have noticed Bad Company 2 servers aren't very stable and are crashing quite a lot. This is a known issue which is combination of the problem with EA Master servers, when the server looses connection to the EA Masters it will crash, and with some bugs in the server code which are causing crashes as well.
It should be noted that Squad Rush crashes more than other game modes, we suspect this is when 5 people try to join the same team.
Both EA and DICE are aware of the problems and are working to provide fixes for this issue ASAP, we hope to be seeing more patches over the following days / weeks which increase the stability of the servers.

Why can't I connect to a server?
The problems with the EA masters are causing a number of other issues beside server crashes one of these is that attempting to join a server will report it lost connection to the server, this is not the case the problem is that the Master server provided invalid information to the client so when the client tries to join the server it can't find it.
If this repeated happens with your server the only potential fix is to turn your server off for a while e.g. 30mins and then turn it back on, not ideal but its been seen to help sometimes.
Again EA are well aware of the master server issues and are working to fix them ASAP.

Why can I only see 5 maps?
Whilst Bad Company 2 launched with 10 maps in total, certain maps are only playable in certain game modes. For this reason when editing the map list in ClanForge you will only see maps that are applicable to the game mode you have selected. For example with Conquest mode you have the maps Panama Canal, Laguna Presa, White Pass, Atacama Deserts and Laguna Alta.

In order to access the other game modes, go to profiles within ClanForge and cretae a new one. Change the game mode to another type, such as Rush and you will now see the available maps will have changed in the maps tab for that profile. Profiles are a great way to keep multiple configurations of your server ready, as you can quickly change which profile is running on your server from the servers section within ClanForge.

What size / format should my banner be?
The banner in Bad Company 2 should be:

Dimension: 512x64
Format: jpg, png or gif
File Size: Under 127KB
URL Length: Less than 64 characters

Unban doesn't work
That's correct unban is currently broken in the server code. DICE are aware, hopefully they will release a fix soon. In the mean time you can use: admin.clearPlayerBanList and admin.clearIPBanList to remove all bans.

Banner / MOTD don't always display
There are a number of issues which can mean your banner doesn't display for details of these and how to fix see our post on the EA Forums here

It's also know that MOTD's don't always show this has been liked to problems with the EA masters, which is more and more rare, so you shouldn't see this problem very often any more

Rank Limiting doesn't work
As noted in the official documentation, linked above, rank limiting currently doesn't work.

Auto Balance doesn't work
Currently auto balance doesn't really work and its easy to get really unbalance teams, DICE are aware.

PunkBuster kicks for INIT failure **Fixed**
This was an issue with servers prior to R6, which was release on 09/03/2010 @ 14:00.

How do I setup a multi gametype map list?
Unfortuantely the game doesn't support multi gametype map rotations, we have raised this will DICE but we have no timescale for when support for this will be added

PunkBuster screenshots don't work
Currently PunkBuster screenshots don't work

How do I fix getting Disconnected after player for ~20mins?
Some users have reported that disabling UPnP on their routers fixes the problem of getting disconnected from Bad Company 2 servers after ~20mins of play, so if your experiencing this try disabling it on your router.
It is know to work on:

BT Home Hub
Thompson ST 780 WLT

Maplist doesn't play in order
Due to bugs in the server the maplist doesn't play in order and can sometimes play the same map multiple times before changing to a different map, this is a known issue DICE are working on.

Rubber banding when paying on Windows Vista or Windows 7
If you are experiencing "Rubber-banding" when a server is full and you're using Windows Vista or Windows 7, there are a few client side changes you can make to try and help. These are advanced changes and require some Windows knowledge, so please don't attempt unless you are familar with Windows including the Registry.

1) Try disabling the Windows Service "Receive Window Auto-Tuning" (type "netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled" into a command prompt)
2) * Open regedit
* Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile
* There will be an entry for network performance throttling, default value is 10; set it to FFFFFFFF hex (willl look like 0xFFFFFFFF to the right of the entry)
* Reboot

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04 Mar 2010 10:51 AM