X3AP: Lasertowers and performance impact

[Quinch]

Lately, my game has been taking a massive framerate hit, even in fairly clear sectors {quick note, I'm also running XRM if that's relevant}. I'm wondering if it has to do with the hundreds of lasertowers I've dumped at gates to contested sectors - does anyone know?

[StarSword]

Dunno about XRM, but having lots of stuff in-sector is a well known framerate hog, yes. Complexes are the most common culprit.

[Quinch]

Maybe I should have clarified - the framerate drop happens regardless of where I am - I'd understand if it were only if I was in-sector with a lot of objects.

[StarSword]

Ok, you got me there. You noticing any increase in the amount of auto-pillock? Like ships' turrets failing to shoot?

[Quinch]

Hmm, not on my ship but there were a couple of mission-spawned pirate capships that just... stood there.

[StarSword]

Hmm, not on my ship but there were a couple of mission-spawned pirate capships that just... stood there.

I thought as much.

Basically, there's so much crap going on in the universe that your computer is having to perform triage with AI scripts and how well the graphics work (lots and lots of OOS calculations and the like). I don't remember seeing a framerate drop when my last game reached that point (at least, not when I stayed away from sectors with complexes), but it could've happened gradually enough not to notice.

[werewolves?]

I generally play on a laptop and have never noticed it from laser towers (have 200 at each gate blockade), for me it's always been a massive complex or otherwise lots of debris from MM that have stuffed the frame rate.

Did have bad drops that ended once steam reacquired some files.

[Alan Phipps]

Things to look for somewhere in the Galaxy map as possible fps-killers:

1. The Billion Barracuda Bug if your mods have overwritten the fix update.
2. An unkillable hostile ship or station that has attracted all the military and RRF ships from the surrounding sectors into ganging up and endlessly trying to kill it.
3. A station that has loads and loads of NPC traders waiting around it to try to trade and instead in an endless dock/no wares/undock/redock cycle.

There may be more but they would all involve far more ships in a sector than you would expect to see.

[Quinch]

Any way I can check for any of those?

Also, Billion Barracuda Bug?

[StarSword]

Also, Billion Barracuda Bug?

It was a glitch that popped up after one of the patches for AP that intermittently caused craploads of RRF fighters to spawn for no reason and just hang out sucking up CPU cycles. They fixed it in v2.5.3.

[DrBullwinkle]

my game has been taking a massive framerate hit, ... {quick note, I'm also running XRM if that's relevant}.

XRM is well-known to be more cpu-intensive than the vanilla game. There is a link in the first post of the XRM thread about performance tips.

Also, here are some of my tips on XRM performance, which adds some information:

XRM Performance Tips

[Quinch]

Anyway, to check if there's any mass activities stuck in perpetuity - is there a script out there that will count the number of NPC ships in all sectors and sort them by amount?

[Alan Phipps]

You need to ask that question on the S&M forum where I am sure someone with the knowledge or tools can help you. There are vanilla ways too - fast M5s and/or lots of satellites while you sit in a quiet empty sector.