Online connection problems; is there anyone who is actually playing this MP?

[firearms2k]

I've been recently introduced to this gem through the free trial, as of such, I've found out this game is extremely addictive, and caters to a great deal of challenge instead of luck over mind like in various other RTS's(CoH). I've recently had this masterpiece purchased as well, including Red Tide, through Steam - It's insanely good, almost too good.

Playing this game multi-player online however is one of the best experiences in a game - the short few minutes you are connected. I've been trying to get a match going all the way through for over 4 days now, and out of all the games played(too many to count by far now), I've only managed to stay connected through ONE entire match. This problem isn't just for me, I've been playing this with 5 other friends, one of which we even tried to play it LAN to see if it would hold out - this didn't work either.

- TL;DR: Insanely good game, been playing it for a while now with persistent MP connection problems, doesn't even work on LAN with friends close by, same problems for my peers playing this game.

The various types of problems I've seen through this, to mention a few, are "Connection lost(cd:3)", the game stops and it displays in the upper part of the screen "Waiting for server" until I give in and exit, then it gives me another "Lost connection" error, "(cd:4)" I believe on return to the main menu. I have also got the "(cd:0)" message quite a few times. It seems to pick one of the above at random in every game. Sometimes it even CTD's trying to join a lobby too.

What do these error messages mean? How can I/we fix them so I can actually play this game? Is anyone actually playing this at all without connection problems!?

I'm on the Victory Day edition, 1.17.5, though the Steam version 1.11.3 persists with the same problems. The problem is NOT related to firewalls/ports/Anti-Virus, because I have nullified all of these simple "burdens". Hosting games myself end up in the same fashion as well.

Looking through the various forums related to this game, it seems like there's a lot of people out there that actually have these same problems. The game is virtually unplayable outside of the SP Campaign, and nobody seems to have a hard, conclusive answer to what is actually going on. This is why I'm making this thread, to ask if there's any way to brighten the mind to a few(Although it seems like all of them to times) players with these same problems, and actually have an insanely good time playing this - instead of setting it up to decay on the shelf with these very frustrating, seemingly minor problems that make the game entirely unplayable.