Game is slowing down, and slowing, and s...

[orfeusz (OP)]

So, basically the game become unplayable now. My first 'true' game was/is great. I'm like 40-50 years into it, I have 15-20 full colonies, much more mining colonies, bases and so on. I have decent but still growing fleet that easily destroy everything. I surveyed like 100+ star systems and have working economy.


The problem is that game become extremely slow. It take 6-12 minutes to advance time, often by 1 or 2 days. It's not bug (i think?) because as I was playing it was becoming slower and slower. I have old, but decent CPU, 2-cores 2,4GHz. As i was playing, in 20' and 30' there were no aliens so i was playing like 15-20 years with 100% generation chances. I also spawned 3-4 strong empires. Now, i think it was wrong thing to do


As far as i understand this game, it cannot be fixed. There is no magic way to make it calculate so complex game in less time.


The things i want to ask You are:

1. Does anyone have this problem? Have anyone played to the moment it become too slow because of too big empire and too many alien empires?

2. Is there anything i should do/don't do to delay this moment? I can start with only 2 enemy civilizations, and use 5% generation chance but it may become too boring   I don't know ...

Thanks for reading. Thanks for Game Steve.

Sorry for my simple English.

[Hawkeye]

The game seriously slows down after some 50 to 100 years. That´s pretty normal in my experience.

What to do to delay it:
The main reason for the slow down is not your empire, but the NPRs. So starting with no pre-generated NPR will keep the game going much longer, as there will be no-one but you yourself spawning new NPRs (at least until you run into your first NPR).
Of course, it will also remove large alien empires from your game.
On the other hand, the NPRs will not kill each other off either. Your choice.

Other than that, you could reduce the max. number of system from 1000 to something around 200 or so.

Oh, and if you have asteroids orbiting, switching that off should also help.

[Person012345]

My game has been getting slower although it's not that bad yet. I just do something else whilst it's taking it's turns and check back every so often. I'm taking a turn as I type this.

[ZimRathbone]

Over time it will get slower due to the number of additional races & systems that it needs to process, as the database gets steadily bigger.

You can slow this down a little as described in previous posts, and also by adopting more of a GFFP* strategy, as  this will cut down on the number od ships/populations that the program has to process.

Also, since the back end is an Access database there is a memory leak issue (when records are deleted the tables are not reindexed & resized so the database can be much larger than it needs to be due to "ghost" records - the data is gone but the space in the table is retained).  If you recompress the database this will resize the tables and will give an inprovement in processing speed for a while.  You can either use Access directly (if you have the Db password) or use the Compact Database item from the Miscellaneous selection on the main screen (the small one that has only drop down menu items on it).


*GFFP: Genocide For Fun & Profit  - a Starfire strategy based on delousing usefull real estate once a certain minimum number of races (2-3) had been amalgamated. Basically, kill everyone and then sell the wreckage .  Matt Wadwells story archive used to have a fine example (Orcs!) but the site seems to have gone .

[Thiosk]

Yes, I do not coexist with aliens for this reason.  But there is a fundamental problem: you blast a species from the surface of the pathetic rock to which they cling-- but their geosurvey vessels have infinite fuel and maitenence, and continue to explore new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations.  The first race I found spawned at least 2 additional races, so my efforts to limit existing NPRs failed.  On capturing the homeworld of a second race, I discovered their starmap-- and obtained data on at least four times the number of stars that I had explored myself. 

I made a suggestion some time ago about preventing wanton NPR exploration.

[Steve Walmsley]

Yes, I do not coexist with aliens for this reason.  But there is a fundamental problem: you blast a species from the surface of the pathetic rock to which they cling-- but their geosurvey vessels have infinite fuel and maitenence, and continue to explore new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations.  The first race I found spawned at least 2 additional races, so my efforts to limit existing NPRs failed.  On capturing the homeworld of a second race, I discovered their starmap-- and obtained data on at least four times the number of stars that I had explored myself. 

I made a suggestion some time ago about preventing wanton NPR exploration.

I have added some code in a recent version to restrict the number of construction ships and survey ships built by NPR, or rather the maximum number they have in service. I'll restrict the survey ships a little more.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

I have added some code in a recent version to restrict the number of construction ships and survey ships built by NPR, or rather the maximum number they have in service. I'll restrict the survey ships a little more.

Steve

I have also changed the surrender code so that Grav survey ships will surrender. My original intention was that they would continue to explore and trigger additional NPRs but I think the performance downside outweighs the game play upside. This change and the above one will be in v5.56

Steve

[Jacob/Lee]

Is it possible to locate an alien race's homeworld without finding it yourself or stalking one of their ships until they return to their home? Can interrogations give any useful information like this?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Those will both be pretty helpful. I was going to suggest something like, optional 2-3 transit hard limit from colonized system for NPR surveys, but that seems drastic.

@Jacob - Well espionage can give survey data for a system.  Habitable worlds arnt too common, and if you do an Autopsy project you can determine their environmental tolerances.  So theres a pretty short process of elimination after that.

[Steve Walmsley]

Is it possible to locate an alien race's homeworld without finding it yourself or stalking one of their ships until they return to their home? Can interrogations give any useful information like this?

It is possible to gain knowledge of a new system through interrogation, although unless it is adjacent to one of yours, it is unlikely you would know where it was.

Steve