30 Hz
one update every 33.3 ms
What this test sends:
30 packets per second of 500 bytes, matching Star Citizen rather than a generic ping.
estimated
CIG publishes server frame rate, not a fixed tick rate, and it varies heavily with server population.
A note on the rate: Star Citizen has no fixed tick rate to simulate. CIG's servers run at a variable frame rate that falls as population rises, so this test uses 30 Hz as a representative figure and labels it an estimate. What it measures - the loss and jitter on your own path - is unaffected by that, and it is precisely the half of the picture the game itself cannot show you.
Run the test above for at least 60 seconds. Here is what each
number means for this game specifically.
Packet loss (the 30k metric)
Sustained loss breaks the client's connection to the game server, and the client reports that as a 30k error and returns you to the menu. It is not the only cause - servers fail too - but it is the one that is yours to fix, and it will appear on this chart as red before it appears in the game as a disconnect.
Jitter (desync in a physicalised world)
Nearly everything in Star Citizen is a physics object, including the elevator you are standing in and the ship you are walking through. Uneven updates make the client's picture of those objects drift from the server's, which is why the characteristic failure here is not a warping player but getting stuck in a lift, falling through a floor, or watching a ship you are inside move without you.
Ping (pick the closest region)
The launcher lets you choose a region, and playing on a distant one adds latency to every server interaction in a game that already has more of them than most. Under 80 ms is comfortable. Beyond that, the interaction delay on doors, terminals and ship systems becomes noticeable even when nothing is actually wrong.
What you see in game, and which number on this page explains it.
Most online games hold their update rate fixed and let quality degrade elsewhere when load rises. Star Citizen does the opposite: its servers run a full simulation at whatever frame rate they can manage, and that figure falls as more players and more physics objects enter an instance. A shard at a healthy frame rate and the same shard hours later are, functionally, two different qualities of service - at identical ping.
This matters for diagnosis because it produces symptoms that overlap almost completely with connection problems. Delayed door interactions, ships that will not spawn, inventory that does not update, a character that clips through geometry: all of these can be a degraded server, and all of them can be a client whose packets are arriving late or not at all. From inside the game there is no reliable way to tell.
The physicalised world sharpens the effect. In a conventional shooter, the only objects whose state has to stay synchronised are players and projectiles. Here, the lift you are riding, the ship you are walking through and the cargo box you are carrying are all server-authoritative objects with their own state, and your local physics is being reconciled against all of them continuously. Uneven updates therefore have far more surfaces to go wrong on than they would elsewhere.
That is the case for measuring your own line separately rather than reasoning from symptoms. This page cannot tell you what a server's frame rate is - nothing outside the game can. What it can do is remove one of the two variables: if your connection is demonstrably clean over several minutes and the game is still behaving badly, you have your answer, and it is not one you were going to fix by buying a faster line.
If the chart above shows packet loss or high jitter, work through
these in order.
What is a 30k error in Star Citizen?
It means the client lost its connection to the game server. That can be your line, the route, or the server itself. Sustained packet loss on this chart at the same moment points at your connection; a clean chart points at the server, and no local change will help.
Why do elevators and doors stop responding?
Because they are server-authoritative physics objects, and when your client's view of them drifts from the server's, your interaction is aimed at a state that no longer exists. That drift comes from uneven update delivery, which is what the jitter figure here measures.
Does Star Citizen have a tick rate?
Not a fixed one. The servers run at a variable frame rate that degrades as the instance fills, which is why the game feels different on a quiet shard than on a busy one at identical ping. That is a server property and separate from the connection this page measures.
Will more bandwidth stop my disconnects?
Usually not. The game's continuous traffic is small; what breaks sessions is loss and long delay spikes, not a lack of throughput. A gigabit line that drops packets is worse here than a modest one that does not.