Bad performance ruins long term experience

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Assailer
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Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by Assailer » Mon, 20. May 19, 06:16

Hi Devs,

As topic suggests this is a serious issue at least for me. There should be some adaptive performance adjustment system to keep my FPS 60 even while docked on large station complexes.

--------- I do not care about the graphical detail ----------

Make them simple boxes if that's what it takes for low-end machines otherwise the whole experience is ruined.

I'm a long time fan of X games, but cannot play 17fps games.

Thanks!

CBJ
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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by CBJ » Mon, 20. May 19, 10:55

I'm afraid this is simply not the sort of game where a steady 60fps can be maintained at all times. Slowdowns in busy areas have little to do with the level of graphical detail, and a lot more to do with the amount of simulation required. In addition to the background universe simulation, for which "level of detail" has no meaning, the game also has to simulate the local environment of busy areas such as docking bays, including all the ships and characters that are nearby, their movements, the sounds they make and so on. It's this combination that makes these areas slower, not (or at least to a lesser extent) the level of graphical detail. Of course we work on improving this, throughout our development process, but we will never be able to guarantee a minimum framerate in all situations.

One thing that is worth mentioning, though, is that if you have particularly poor performance on or near docks compared to the rest of the time, you may be suffering from a known issue with certain sound drivers. Drivers for NVIDIA sound devices, for example, currently struggle particularly badly with the large numbers of sound sources on platforms, and you may be able to reduce the performance effect of being in these places by uninstalling these drivers and making sure your system is using your on-board (usually Realtek) sound device.

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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by Kadatherion » Mon, 20. May 19, 12:53

Personally, I found the game "proper" to have relatively good perfomance. With a mediocre 3.40ghz quadcore I5 and a 1060 even very busy platforms remained playable even at 1440p and pretty much max settings (not always fluidly, with the odd dip under 30fps from the otherwise stable 60fps when flying around), so I could hardly complain. Even when building a megacomplex with dozens of station modules, while there was a fps hit - couldn't be otherwise - it was pretty reasonable in my case. Now that I've upgraded my CPU the game runs mighty fine in most common situations.

The real problem imo is the map. A map has no reason, no justification for tanking your fps so much when you begin having a tad too many assets around, and it's even less justified these dramatic fps losses can often be tied to just having more or less filters active, or tabs open, something that should pretty much be just fancy text and icons.
This is where the long term enjoyment crumbles for me: with my aforementioned previous CPU, as soon as I had a decent number of satellites around and trading ships doing their thing (I'm talking just a couple dozens in total), the map would become totally unplayable, in the single digits for fps with the filters on. With a 9700k it's gotten better, obviously, it stays relatively playable (not that I have played really invested games anymore since then though, I'm waiting for the Split to give it another serious go), but it's still absurd the biggest performance hog of a game that does so many ambitious things quite fine (at the very least performance wise: all those hundreds of ships doing their thing in the background with such little hit deserves some praise) seems to be a "stupid" map and its UI.

CBJ
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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by CBJ » Mon, 20. May 19, 13:15

Kadatherion wrote:
Mon, 20. May 19, 12:53
The real problem imo is the map. A map has no reason, no justification for tanking your fps so much when you begin having a tad too many assets around, and it's even less justified these dramatic fps losses can often be tied to just having more or less filters active, or tabs open, something that should pretty much be just fancy text and icons.
But it isn't just "fancy text and icons". It includes 3D representations of the actual station layouts, pathing information for ships, fog-of-war display, and so on, not to mention that some of the calculations required to display the "fancy text" are distinctly non-trivial. This is also why some of the filters have a performance impact. Again, we are always looking for performance improvements for the map, but just dismissing it by saying there is "no justification" isn't very constructive.

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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by Kadatherion » Mon, 20. May 19, 13:37

CBJ wrote:
Mon, 20. May 19, 13:15
Kadatherion wrote:
Mon, 20. May 19, 12:53
The real problem imo is the map. A map has no reason, no justification for tanking your fps so much when you begin having a tad too many assets around, and it's even less justified these dramatic fps losses can often be tied to just having more or less filters active, or tabs open, something that should pretty much be just fancy text and icons.
But it isn't just "fancy text and icons". It includes 3D representations of the actual station layouts, pathing information for ships, fog-of-war display, and so on, not to mention that some of the calculations required to display the "fancy text" are distinctly non-trivial. This is also why some of the filters have a performance impact. Again, we are always looking for performance improvements for the map, but just dismissing it by saying there is "no justification" isn't very constructive.
But that's the whole point: is there any need - a need so vital for its functionality as a map that we couldn't do without or do differently - for it to be so demanding? It being a 3d "wireframe" representation, for instance, is cool, sure, but how often do we really need - in average gameplay - for it to be 3d, and how often the players use it as a "traditional" top down 2D map? If the 3D representations of the station layouts were to be one of the major perfomance hitters, for example, while still being regarded as a needed feature (which, in this case, I can agree upon), then for instance it would be wise to make it so those are processed only as the player actually zooms in enough for them to come into play and really be visible, which is going to happen only seldomly and obviously only in a very limited area to represent (actually, for all I know this could even be what already happens in this instance, I'm just making an example).

It's all about compromise: you can't avoid a very traffic heavy station complex to have a significant fps hit, for the very reasons you mentioned earlier, and those reasons are integral to the gameplay and experience of being able to fly or walk inside complexes and actually have something interesting and detailed to see. But the same doesn't apply to the map and its current issues. Also, some of the "fancy text" that tanks perfomance so much... well, if its calculations are not so "trivial", then they should be made to be: how is it justified for a filter that puts a label close to the ship icon with a name and a couple details about the crew etc, and/or a line highlighting its destination and planned course to *HALVE YOUR FPS*? We are not talking a couple fps hit, we are talking going sometimes from perfectly playable to single digits virtually unplayable.

It's like if we were playing Civilization and checking the box to see a little extra information about the cities in their labels without having to zoom into them, or switching to the religion influence overlay, would halve our fps: it would be madness. Obviously it's not the same thing *technically*, X's map is about extrapolating and representing real time data while Civ is a turn based game that doesn't have to worry about real time calculations, but the "world map" still has basically the same role, relevance and is used by the player for comparable reasons and with comparable expectations. If a few extra text info labels on a map cause such a big perfomance impact, then something ain't right with it: of course there are going to be reasons why it happens, the point is it shouldn't for a map interface. It means it either needs a rethinking of how the calculations to obtain such info are done to save cycles, or even, if there's no other choice, scrapping or simplifying some of the less essential features. Which is what most players already do themselves, as they are "forced" to live without filters - among other things - to actually be able to play.

X3's map, for instance, had a relatively low "refresh" rate that I guess was meant to do just that, cut down on the performance hit of the map that had to keep track of hundreds of ships flying around in real time. So you'd see them "blink" every second or so as their position updated. That of course isn't as nice to look at as fluid real time representation but, while I'd agree this also wouldn't feel right with how X4 is designed, it's another good example of the kind of compromise I'm talking about.

CBJ
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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by CBJ » Mon, 20. May 19, 13:54

Of course we could improve map performance by taking away functionality, but I'm not sure people would be as happy with that as you seem to imply. Being able to make that choice, as a player, is exactly why there are filters, and exactly why some of those filters have a significant effect on performance.

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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by Kadatherion » Mon, 20. May 19, 14:11

CBJ wrote:
Mon, 20. May 19, 13:54
Of course we could improve map performance by taking away functionality, but I'm not sure people would be as happy with that as you seem to imply. Being able to make that choice, as a player, is exactly why there are filters, and exactly why some of those filters have a significant effect on performance.
That's for sure, it's no coincidence I mentioned it as an example of "if there's no other choice" situations, while the meat of the argument was about finding ways to optimize or simplify - but hopefully with comparable end results for what concerns usability and features - how it gets to those end results, those outputs.

You'll have to agree though, at least, it's very odd for a "world map" to behave like X4's one does. I can't think of any RTS game where switching to a zoomed out and simplified strategic view of the world would lower your performance this much (usually it's the opposite, as the units themselves and having to render them is the bottleneck, so going to the zoomed out strategic view - when there's one - actually increases perfomance in most games).

Naturally, X4 is in a genre of its own, so a 1:1 comparison would pretty much always be, if not unfair, at least inaccurate, but it does share some resemblance with RTS games in this department, and it's no wonder the end user kind of expects certain "standards".

BTW, the more I think about it, the more I begin to believe it could be not totally absurd to throw on the table: let's say the real time update is the main cause of the perfomance hit (or at least it's inherently tied to it), that grows exponentially the more data (such as the filters) has to update in real time. If it were possible to introduce the option to select that update rate - IE, switching to an X3 like lower "refresh" rate - that could be a pretty good addition if there's no reasonable way to cut down on how the calculations are made. One would then only lose a bit on the visual, the fluidity of the "looks", while gaining back the freedom to use without worry those filters. They could be "just fancy text", but they are indeed useful and meant to be a feature about playability, easiness of management, so arguably more important than the ship icons flying around buttery smooth. It'd pretty much like lowering a couple graphics settings to have better framerates in the rest of the game. X4's map doesn't look really meant for such a system, I can already see it becoming hard to follow a ship on the highway if it were to "blink" on the map as they did in X3, but it could be food for thought.

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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by graphicboy » Mon, 20. May 19, 15:14

CBJ wrote:
Mon, 20. May 19, 13:15
But it isn't just "fancy text and icons". It includes 3D representations of the actual station layouts, pathing information for ships, fog-of-war display, and so on, not to mention that some of the calculations required to display the "fancy text" are distinctly non-trivial. This is also why some of the filters have a performance impact. Again, we are always looking for performance improvements for the map, but just dismissing it by saying there is "no justification" isn't very constructive.
I obviously don't know the internal metrics on the map. Has anyone considered saying "to hell with a 3d map", and reverting to 2d, like X3? Or is that actually a small portion of the problem?

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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by CBJ » Mon, 20. May 19, 15:47

We already do an number of optimisations to reduce the impact of the map, such as reducing the frequency of update of certain information, but there are limits to how much this can be done without impacting on its usefulness or usability. Also, a point to remember when comparing this with other games: the reason opening the map improves performance in most games is that it suspends pretty much everything else that is happening. That is not, and cannot be, the case in this game. The map being 3D doesn't, in and of itself, make much difference.

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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by SPiDER » Mon, 20. May 19, 16:51

as your game gets older and larger and more complicated performance degrades horribly...early in the game when assigning a new manager you could do it from anywhere via the map...later its nearly impossible..the only way to do it is teleport to the station so when the map opens it is centered on yourself you can then zoom in and do the clickfest trying to select the station then anoother clickfest when giving the job..My properties or property owned is completely unusable..trying to click drag the map normally results in loss of selected object.

I can understand the Dev's need to keep the map as usable as possible....but late game experiance is painful to say the least...in argon prime there is so much of PLAYER objects and NPC activity that map artifacts occur all the time with colour outs,zoomed in flashing map names etc etc...either zooming in or extending out gets rid of them...but in all honesty I think I have nearly broken your game as a user experiance..certainly in Map view....FPS is so bad now in AP that trying to join the Superhighway is almost impossible..( constantly joining then getting ejected ) and if travelling through it I can do the whole length in about 16 frames. the constant waving about of weapons is also annoying which also occurs in a low FPS enviroment.

the one thing that has always puzzled me is the frame rate loss around admin modules.enemeies dont target them above nearby factories ,,they have no weapons they are passive structures ( meaning the correct title for them should be Self Defense Station not Defense Station..the later implying that they can actually make a difference to defending an area or object when in fact that is not true ) so why the huge framerate loss ?

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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by Kadatherion » Mon, 20. May 19, 16:53

Yeah, admittedly while in most RTS games going into the strategical/tactical zoomed out top down map doesn't suspend the most important things happening (the battle and its various calculations keep being made the same for every unit, and as such the underlying formula that stresses the CPU stays the same, but certain things can be skipped, like, for instance, I suppose in Total War like games it suspends calculating things like hit detection on a per unit basis and what limbs to sever, things like that), you often gain performance because the idea is "the more you zoom out, the less I feed the GPU to render, lowering the LOD or even making you switch to a simplified 2D only representation", and even in RTS games with many units doing their things the most common bottleneck is the GPU for most players.

X4 looks like it doesn't - or can't - take enough advantage of that concept of scalable level of complexity depending on the zoom. For instance, one of the issues I've mentioned is the number of assets you have around (them having a radar range seems to be the real underlying culprit). Luckily we already have alternatives to satellites to reveal trade offers, because having 50 satellites around, ~ 1 per sector like we would most often have in X3, is already enough to hit you pretty badly.
And I can see scaling what those radar radii actually reveal not being easy to tie to zoom level, because even if we wouldn't directly distinguish anything at max zoom out, those revealed assets and what they're doing still need to be fed to the UI tabs that summarize such information. X3 didn't have to worry much about that, as you could only really watch the map on a sector by sector basis, with the galaxy map being a much more simplified and stripped down representation, basically static, with little to no information being directly rendered.

Now that I think of it, I suspect this could be part of the reason why X4 has so many fewer sectors compared to X3, as basically they all have to render at the same time. Which, in turn, makes me worry about further expansions: that I feel are very needed, I hope with the Split first and with the second expansion then a significant increase in the number of sectors will come as well. But if that's going to have to be minor because how the map works ties Ego's hands... heh, that would be even more of a shame. So much that I'd argue it would maybe even make it reasonable to think about a complete rework of the whole map system, such as a two layers one like X3's.
'Cause I want to reiterate: I don't mean to dismiss the reasons why X4's map is hard to handle, but how it is a shame that while all those things the AI does in the background all around the universe are undeniably pretty well optimized per se (just as it's very good to be able to fly from a sector to the next seamlessly with virtually zero loading times), the simple act of switching to a map UI that has the only real role of giving you a comprehensive but simplified visual representation of that becomes the biggest bottleneck. I like having a map that's "fluid", where you can seamlessly zoom in and out at leisure without having to switch panels or clic anywhere, it's pretty neat to be able to follow your ships during their entire travels without having to manually switch from one panel to the other, but I'd like much more to have 50 more sectors to play in and with.

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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by Assailer » Mon, 20. May 19, 17:12

CBJ wrote:
Mon, 20. May 19, 10:55
I'm afraid this is simply not the sort of game where a steady 60fps can be maintained at all times. Slowdowns in busy areas have little to do with the level of graphical detail, and a lot more to do with the amount of simulation required. In addition to the background universe simulation, for which "level of detail" has no meaning, the game also has to simulate the local environment of busy areas such as docking bays, including all the ships and characters that are nearby, their movements, the sounds they make and so on. It's this combination that makes these areas slower, not (or at least to a lesser extent) the level of graphical detail. Of course we work on improving this, throughout our development process, but we will never be able to guarantee a minimum framerate in all situations.

One thing that is worth mentioning, though, is that if you have particularly poor performance on or near docks compared to the rest of the time, you may be suffering from a known issue with certain sound drivers. Drivers for NVIDIA sound devices, for example, currently struggle particularly badly with the large numbers of sound sources on platforms, and you may be able to reduce the performance effect of being in these places by uninstalling these drivers and making sure your system is using your on-board (usually Realtek) sound device.
CBJ thanks, I will try the audio tricks and drop an update here if it turns out to be the culprit here. The station i built around the Huge Rock has like 20-25 modules attached to it. There is a 15 fps difference in going with highest vs lowest graphical setting, so it's probably the background simulation what kicks in, or that audio driver.

Looking forward to see what additional optimization you guys manage to add to X4!

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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by adeine » Mon, 20. May 19, 21:07

CBJ wrote:
Mon, 20. May 19, 13:15
But it isn't just "fancy text and icons". It includes 3D representations of the actual station layouts, pathing information for ships, fog-of-war display, and so on, not to mention that some of the calculations required to display the "fancy text" are distinctly non-trivial. This is also why some of the filters have a performance impact. Again, we are always looking for performance improvements for the map, but just dismissing it by saying there is "no justification" isn't very constructive.
If only the 3D representation was good for anything. Yet in X3 we could place objects and commands in 3D space, albeit in a slightly clunky way, whereas in X4 we're limited to the ecliptic plane.

That's what people mean when they say a lot of the fanciness has no justification/functionality.

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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by mr.WHO » Mon, 20. May 19, 22:49

graphicboy wrote:
Mon, 20. May 19, 15:14
CBJ wrote:
Mon, 20. May 19, 13:15
But it isn't just "fancy text and icons". It includes 3D representations of the actual station layouts, pathing information for ships, fog-of-war display, and so on, not to mention that some of the calculations required to display the "fancy text" are distinctly non-trivial. This is also why some of the filters have a performance impact. Again, we are always looking for performance improvements for the map, but just dismissing it by saying there is "no justification" isn't very constructive.
I obviously don't know the internal metrics on the map. Has anyone considered saying "to hell with a 3d map", and reverting to 2d, like X3? Or is that actually a small portion of the problem?
That is actually good question - why do we need 3D map if 99,9% of the objects are more or less operating on 2D plane - I know soem ships could go up or down during the combat, but do I really need this in 3D?
I love X4 map over X3 map, but it 3D feature seems like a gimmick. Even if I move map camera by accident, I always reset it back to default top view.

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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by graphicboy » Tue, 21. May 19, 03:23

adeine wrote:
Mon, 20. May 19, 21:07
If only the 3D representation was good for anything. Yet in X3 we could place objects and commands in 3D space, albeit in a slightly clunky way, whereas in X4 we're limited to the ecliptic plane.

That's what people mean when they say a lot of the fanciness has no justification/functionality.
mr.WHO wrote:
Mon, 20. May 19, 22:49
That is actually good question - why do we need 3D map if 99,9% of the objects are more or less operating on 2D plane - I know soem ships could go up or down during the combat, but do I really need this in 3D?
I love X4 map over X3 map, but it 3D feature seems like a gimmick. Even if I move map camera by accident, I always reset it back to default top view.
If being in the betas has taught me anything, it's that there's a good chance they aren't done yet.

3d map might make perfect sense with the rest of the planned functionality, like (I'm sure) being able to place/fly-to in 3 dimensions.
CBJ wrote:
Mon, 20. May 19, 15:47
The map being 3D doesn't, in and of itself, make much difference.
Thanks.

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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by Falcrack » Tue, 21. May 19, 04:54

graphicboy wrote:
Tue, 21. May 19, 03:23
adeine wrote:
Mon, 20. May 19, 21:07
If only the 3D representation was good for anything. Yet in X3 we could place objects and commands in 3D space, albeit in a slightly clunky way, whereas in X4 we're limited to the ecliptic plane.

That's what people mean when they say a lot of the fanciness has no justification/functionality.
mr.WHO wrote:
Mon, 20. May 19, 22:49
That is actually good question - why do we need 3D map if 99,9% of the objects are more or less operating on 2D plane - I know soem ships could go up or down during the combat, but do I really need this in 3D?
I love X4 map over X3 map, but it 3D feature seems like a gimmick. Even if I move map camera by accident, I always reset it back to default top view.
If being in the betas has taught me anything, it's that there's a good chance they aren't done yet.

3d map might make perfect sense with the rest of the planned functionality, like (I'm sure) being able to place/fly-to in 3 dimensions.
CBJ wrote:
Mon, 20. May 19, 15:47
The map being 3D doesn't, in and of itself, make much difference.
Thanks.
I really hope that they at some point allow us to move command points up or down in 3D space. As it is, you can move a station plot up or down. All you need to do is move the camera angle so you are looking from a side angle rather than up or down. Then drag the plot up or down. That's it. Just enable that for moving waypoints, and you are done. Easy fix, players are happy now that they have more freedom to move waypoints up or down, no need for any extra keybindings. Please Egosoft/CBJ, there are so many who would be super happy to get this sort of improvement!

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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by MakerLinux » Tue, 21. May 19, 08:30

Falcrack wrote:
Tue, 21. May 19, 04:54
I really hope that they at some point allow us to move command points up or down in 3D space. As it is, you can move a station plot up or down. All you need to do is move the camera angle so you are looking from a side angle rather than up or down. Then drag the plot up or down. That's it. Just enable that for moving waypoints, and you are done. Easy fix, players are happy now that they have more freedom to move waypoints up or down, no need for any extra keybindings. Please Egosoft/CBJ, there are so many who would be super happy to get this sort of improvement!
I didn't know that. Amazing tip!!! This should be added to the manual.
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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by Lazerius » Tue, 21. May 19, 19:11

Falcrack wrote:
Tue, 21. May 19, 04:54

I really hope that they at some point allow us to move command points up or down in 3D space. As it is, you can move a station plot up or down. All you need to do is move the camera angle so you are looking from a side angle rather than up or down. Then drag the plot up or down. That's it. Just enable that for moving waypoints, and you are done. Easy fix, players are happy now that they have more freedom to move waypoints up or down, no need for any extra keybindings. Please Egosoft/CBJ, there are so many who would be super happy to get this sort of improvement!
It'd be nice if when giving an order to move to X position, they just added the ability to hold Shift and it locks in your horrizontal axis position, and any mouse movement would take you up/down on the vertical axis. Seems like that would be the easiest way to accomplish this, but I'm not sure if there are technical limitations (doubtful) or if it just wasn't added in because they intended for 90% of the action to be centered around the elliptical.

It certainly hasn't stopped me from building above/below the elliptical, but in order to give patrol/defend points for defense fleets for areas that aren't your station, you have to drop an object where you want it then tell your fleet to guard a 40k sphere around that object.
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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by Imperial Good » Tue, 21. May 19, 19:33

I suspect a lot of the performance issues around large complexes is due to the issue documented in this report...
viewtopic.php?f=192&t=416776

By moving my destroyer inside a station module there is a massive reduction in frame rate despite nothing actually happening. There is no collision damage, no bouncing out of it, literally nothing. This issue is fairly common and can be observed with NPC ships as well. Due to how busy large complexes are, there will always be many ships in such a state, hence the poor performance.

Now performance may never be a smooth 60fps at such complexes, but fixing this could at least see some significant improvement I hope.

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Re: Bad performance ruins long term experience

Post by Rei Ayanami » Tue, 21. May 19, 19:50

Lazerius wrote:
Tue, 21. May 19, 19:11
Falcrack wrote:
Tue, 21. May 19, 04:54

I really hope that they at some point allow us to move command points up or down in 3D space. As it is, you can move a station plot up or down. All you need to do is move the camera angle so you are looking from a side angle rather than up or down. Then drag the plot up or down. That's it. Just enable that for moving waypoints, and you are done. Easy fix, players are happy now that they have more freedom to move waypoints up or down, no need for any extra keybindings. Please Egosoft/CBJ, there are so many who would be super happy to get this sort of improvement!
It'd be nice if when giving an order to move to X position, they just added the ability to hold Shift and it locks in your horrizontal axis position, and any mouse movement would take you up/down on the vertical axis. Seems like that would be the easiest way to accomplish this, but I'm not sure if there are technical limitations (doubtful) or if it just wasn't added in because they intended for 90% of the action to be centered around the elliptical.

It certainly hasn't stopped me from building above/below the elliptical, but in order to give patrol/defend points for defense fleets for areas that aren't your station, you have to drop an object where you want it then tell your fleet to guard a 40k sphere around that object.
In the Homeworld games (space RTS) you could do that : click on a ship, select move command, move your mouse around to select a (x,y)-point on the flat horizontal plane, then hold shift to lock the (x,y) values and move the mouse up or down to modify the vertical z value. Left click to confirm these (x,y,z)-coordinates as a move command.

I'd love to have exactly that in X4.

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