Sloooooooowing down and speedingup

[Theodidactus (OP)]

I got a game here which is almost 100 years old. I like it a lot.


Recently, it has gotten unplayably slow. it was a sudden onset slowness beginning about 6 months ago. Just prior to that, I had made the decision to forcefully upgrade my shipping by tractoring in ships, then destroying them. The shipping lines have been slow to adopt the newer, faster, larger commercial shipping craft, but they're making progress. I figured this would speed up the game, but it seems to have the opposite effect...things are crawling along now, perhaps 45 seconds to a minute for a 5 day increment...almost double what it was before.

I doubt this was due to an alien race, as I've only discovered one, it was a decade ago, and they seem to keep to themselves. They have never hurt performance. I suppose it could be the Ha! There's no spoiler here! or perhaps the Twelve Monkeys is an Amazing movie. I experimented with deleting the alien race, and the problem still persisted.

My questions are:

- what can I do to stop the lag. I really like this game. Is there a way to temporarily disable sensor checks or some other quick fix?
- how much do shipping lines contribute to lag? Would gutting my shipping industry cause the game to mysteriously slow down?
- is it realistic to play aurora for 100+ years with manageable lag. I realize a little is inevitable, but I would like to try a very long game with 2+ NPR races that goes on for at least a century.
- how much does computer performance affect the speed of the game? I'm not on the fanciest machine, but it's never been a problem with other games.

[Person012345]

People consider 1 minute slow for 5 days? Damn. My 5 days usually take between 5 and 10 minutes. >.> Though this computer isn't very good.

[Theodidactus (OP)]

Well, I'm not an active member of the community, maybe that's normal.
My concern is that it kicked in rather suddenly, and it's ultra laggy even for 30 second increments. Battle will not be engrossing.

[Nathan_]

If your shipping is all in one system, space time bubble that system then advance time a few increments. that will let you see if the problem is there physically in that system, or somewhere else.

[Theodidactus (OP)]

I've been meaning to figure out how to do that. How do I throw a space time buble up?


Also, I have another possibility for the problem: During my reshuffling of my space fleets, I accidentally gave a large space construction scow to the other race. It's got no sensors except the tiny close-range thermal sensors, but is sitting right on top of the highest traffic area in known space. Is this maybe part of the problem. Is there a way to delete this ship without hitting it with an alpha strike? I don't want to piss off the gliesens...they're cute and very nice.

[Nathan_]

Turn SM on, then bring up the system map, or refresh the system map if it is up. switch to the contacts tab and at the bottom is a checkbox for SM: Spacetime Bubble in this system. This is mainly for battles, but should also help you determine if your shipping is responsible for the slowdown.

[Theodidactus (OP)]

in an empty system: No problems
in a system with my ships: no problems
in any system with civilian shipping lines: sloooooooooow.

I tried two different systems, both of which had civilian traffic. I want to emphasize that there is not an awful lot of civilian traffic here...definitely less than I had before.


Okay, so someone tell me: why the heck would deleting large quantities of ships, then subsidizing the shipping companies in order to get them to buy bigger, faster, more efficient ships, make the game go slower? More importantly, will this ever get better?

[Nathan_]

ok here is test two, retire all the civ ships and see if things get better, obsolete any designs that they can build so they don't build new ones.

"why the heck would deleting large quantities of ships, then subsidizing the shipping companies in order to get them to buy bigger, faster, more efficient ships, make the game go slower?" - The smaller/slower ships spend more time travelling(not so CPU intensive) and less time deciding what commodity they want to ship around(potentially an expensive calculation). Or there could be a bug, what time intervals are you using?

[Theodidactus (OP)]

how do I "retire all the civ ships"

[Nathan_]

By tractoring them one by one and scrapping them like you did the first time

[Theodidactus (OP)]

I'm pretty sure I am never doing that again, I'm sorry, it took an entire game year.


There really should just be a "Destroy every civilian ship, skin their crew alive, and feed them to the star swarm" button. They are really frustrating me.

[Nathan_]

Another thing to consider is that longer ranged ships have more potential colonies that have to be checked as trade targets, there are all kinds of things that could radically increase the cpu load inherent in the trade model without some kind of limitation.

[Nathan_]

Alright here is option 2 for testing, SM unlock your civilian ship designs and replace their current fuel capacity with a much more modest one(say 10-20B KM range), and see how that changes things. If that works I have 3 suggestions for the trade model in 5.7:

1)Option to Forbid civilian ship construction entirely.

2)Player imposable fuel range mandate that no civilian ship may exceed.

3)Game play change? Civ ships refuel at any colony that has a spaceport.

These would effectively transform the go anywhere trade model to a more hub based system that should be easier to handle cpuwise.

[Person012345]

Do the civs even consider fuel range at all?

[Nathan_]

Yes, they periodically have to refuel.