Netcode for Entities – Snapshot too large warning after upgrading from 1.3.16 to 1.5.0, even with no ghosts spawned

Unity Engine
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Hi everyone,

After upgrading my Unity Netcode for Entities package from 1.3.6 to 1.5.0, I started encountering this warning:

Expect client input loss, and a reduction in gameplay, physics, prediction and interpolation quality. Server Tick Batching should only occur in exceptional situations.

Server Tick Batching has occurred due to the server falling behind its desired `SimulationTickRate`. An average of 1.75 ticks per frame has been detected for the last ~4 frames.

I read the 1.5.0 package release notes and found this behavior-breaking change related to snapshot sending:

When even a single ghost is too large to fit into a snapshot packet, the number of send re-attempts is now capped at GhostSystemConstants.MaxSnapshotSendAttempts (8 attempts), which means the snapshot packet size was increased 128x, likely causing heavy fragmentation. Also, a performance warning is now logged on each failed send attempt iteration when NetDebug.LogLevel is set to LogLevelType.Debug. Furthermore, the GhostSendSystem.SerializeJob.GatherGhostChunksBatch step will no longer be repeated, reducing overhead.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

  • Used the Network Snapshot Debugger — only 2 ghost types found, both under 60 bytes.

  • Disabled all systems and removed all player ghost spawning — client connects to server but no ghosts instantiated.

  • Confirmed only connection occurs, no gameplay or ghost spawning.

  • Burst and Release mode enabled.

  • Inspected snapshot sizes; no ghosts appear oversized.

Despite no ghosts being spawned and all gameplay systems disabled, the warning persists.

Are there known workarounds or debugging steps I can take to resolve or narrow down this warning?

Any advice or pointers for troubleshooting this would be highly appreciated.

Thanks!

Update:
To isolate the issue further, I created a brand new empty Unity project and installed Netcode for Entities 1.5.1 — without adding any ghost prefabs, systems, or gameplay logic. As soon as the client connects to the server, the **same warning still appears.

Additionally, after upgrading, I noticed that animation transitions stopped working correctly. Transitions that were previously smooth and responsive are now either not firing at all or behaving erratically, even though no animation-related code has changed on my end.**

This strongly suggests that the issue is not related to my specific project setup, but might be caused by internal changes or behavior in Netcode 1.5.1 itself.

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Hey @vbfs12 , this warning is actually due to a tooling improvement in Window > Multiplayer > PlayMode Tools, which shows you whenever the server is batching ticks (which is expected when burst is off, particularly in debug, where framerates may not be high enough to hit the target ServerTickRate). You can disable it by unticking Warn When Ticks Batched (pic):
image

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Hey , did you also upgrade your Unity from 6.0 to 6.1?

I created a new empty project on 6.1 and Netcode For Entities 1.5.1, there is no connection, and I see these warnings anyway. https://youtu.be/tnAdEO-bJ-k

Also, I upgraded my working project from Unity 6.0 to 6.1 without updating Netcode (1.3.6) and I saw some issues with ICommandData components that I wasn’t having in Unity 6.0

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kool, you got it right!