Ship of Fools uses a peer-to-peer connection - this means it is reliant on your internet connectivity, your friend's internet connectivity and the access to the platform's relay server in between.
Firstly, try to avoid using proxy or VPN servers as these tend to impact your connection negatively.
Secondly, in some regions of the world, access to the relay server may be causing some issues.
You can attempt to bypass the relay server and connect directly to your friend to establish a stronger connection. To do that on Steam, both you and your friend will need to make sure this setting is applied. To do this:
- Open your Steam library
- In the top-left of the Steam client, click on Steam and select Settings
- In the left-hand panel, select the In Game tab and scroll to the bottom
- Here you should be able to see Steam Networking with a drop-down menu
- Select Friends Only in the drop-down menu instead of Default
This should work for most of the cases depending on both of your firewall configurations (it's easier to bypass the firewall if using the relay).
If you are still having issues with disconnections after attempting these steps, we would recommend working your way through the steps in our Troubleshooting Network Connectivity article.