I’ve been struggling with horrible game performance ever since returning to EVE after a few years away. Login was painfully slow, undocking took forever, and even simple commands (activating modules, aligning, jumping) had a noticeable delay. Here’s what I found and how I ultimately fixed it.
First, open the Network Stats window with CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + M.
The key value to watch is Machonet Ping, especially any large spikes. My normal latency is around 300ms, but it kept shooting up to 2–3 seconds, which explained the sluggish gameplay. I went through every possible local cause: PC, network settings, router - but nothing helped.
It turns out the problem wasn’t on my end at all. The culprit was my internet provider.
I’m playing from Dubai on Etisalat using a 4G modem (about 20–25 Mbit/s up/down). Players in-game told me that game engine uses small packets to communicate between the client and the game server, and some ISPs tend to de-prioritize traffic like that.
The fix:
I now route all my EVE traffic through a WireGuard VPN. Since doing that, my Machonet ping has been stable and consistently under 200ms. No more 3-second spikes, no more delayed commands, and login/undocking are back to normal.
If anyone else is suffering from unexplained game slowness, it’s absolutely worth trying a VPN tunnel. It completely solved the problem for me.
Hope this helps someone out there. o7