Game gets really slow on larger maps ...

any tips on how to optimize?

from Sins Forums
Howdy.

First, here's my rig:

Win XP
Athlon 64 FX-60 2.6Ghz dual core
3GB RAM
Raptor 10k rpm HD
nVidia 7800 GTX

It's a couple of years past it's best, but from what i'd heard on the grapevine, SINS runs on all sorts of old machines, and I figured that my setup was at least ballsy enough to run the game on modest settings.

And it is; if I play small and medium maps, with just one star system, things are fine.  There's a little slowdown when things are getting really mental but all in all it's still very playable.

BUT ... if I step up to larger maps - say with 50 planets across a few star systems - after a few hours of playing, when I've got a few large fleets threatening my borders and a couple of large fleets myself defending them, everything just starts to slow down really quite badly.  Zooming in and out of the map to keep an eye on what's going on becomes a very choppy affair, and once I get into big battles with hundreds of ships fighting it out, well, it gets pretty unplayable.  The interface stops responding instantly and I have to click-wait to select things, and like I say the frame rate gets really choppy.

Is my system just too limited to play the bigger maps?  I've got all the graphics turned down to low.  I figured I had plenty of overhead in my system to play a game like Sins.  My guess is that, with the game engine having to keep track of everything that's going on in the star systems I can't see, my system is just starting to chug.

Does anyone have any idea if I should be able to play the large maps with my system, or if perhaps I could if I optimise the game in some way?

Many thanks!

technical
3,196 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Turn as many of the graphics settings down as low as you can tolerate and make sure you've got a gig or two available for pagefile usage handy (you might need to adjust it's size up). Other than that... I dunno, you can try overclocking your system if you haven't already, but be sure you can keep it cool.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
So i've discovered what I think is part of the problem ...

It appears that the game only uses one of the cores on my processor. One of the cores runs at 98% permanently, while the other sits idle. HMPH!

I'm going to have to take the plunge and upgrade, aren't i.
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Probably, the FX-60 is pretty blech. If you're getting to 98% CPU load, there's not going to be much to fix that other than closing other CPU-intensive apps.

Grab a new mobo and a E8400 :p
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
I actually believe that the slowdown issue is more complicated than that. For me it seems to have little to do with the size of the map and more to do with how long the game has gone (always longer on big maps of course). For instance, the map Systems of War isnt just real big but look at the scenario Im in.

8 player ffa with all unfair ais
4 hours of game time
1 ai has been destroyed

Everything had been running peachy smooth with no noticeable slowdown the entire time. However, literally in the blink of an eye everything became very laggy. No, no other programs were running. I experience this in EVERY sins game that lasts into the later stages of research. Every single one. It is NOT a gradual slow down but rather its like a switch is flipped and everything becomes supers slow and chunky. I used to think it had to do with fleet sizes that result. However, in other games Ive destroyed every other fleet and have been pounding on the last planet and still had it be laggy. I use to think it had to do with the number of trade/refinery ships in the game but Ive had it happen on smaller maps were that wasnt possible.

Right now, my theory is down to this: One of the late game technologies that gets researched forks some AI logic or set of logics that suffer from horrible performance. My best guess is that it has to do with either the techs that spawn pirates all over

I'm at this point because all other options have been ruled out for me. Given that the slow down is not gradual but like flipping a switch.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
That or it's a memory leak.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
This is exactly what happened to my large single star 8 FFA Hard game last night after about 4 hours of play. I was playing along normally with no slow downs at all and then the game grinds down to a halt.
Unfortunately, I never played a large map game before I updated to 1.03 so I can't say for sure it happened only after the update.
I'm going to try to turn down some of the graphics but I really don't see how that would be the problem only because of how the game was fine one second, dead the next, it's not like my frames started dropping during a large battle.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I think it has to deal with
-Ai complications
-Many ships being tracked
-Many planets/upgrades being tracked
-Recording the end-game records