Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: Theodidactus on July 15, 2012, 11:03:24 AM
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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?
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how do I "retire all the civ ships"
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By tractoring them one by one and scrapping them like you did the first time :)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Do the civs even consider fuel range at all?
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Yes, they periodically have to refuel.
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I'm fairly certain that civ's and NPR's don't have to refuel, in fact they pretty much ignore fuel entirely. As far as I know the only limitation on range for civ ships looking for a trade target is that it has to be within 4 jumps of their current location, and the route has to be linked with jumpgates.
My preferred solution to civ shipping going everywhere, would be for each civilian company to be founded on a random world that has a commercial spaceport constructed and it's ships will only look for jobs within a certain distance/number of jumps of that world, with default orders to return to the company base if there are no available jobs.
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NPRs have zero fuel usage engines, and those do spill over occasionally thanks to ruins or salvage, but civs don't, they do refuel, or atleast they say that they refuel:
http://imageshack.us/f/826/refuel.jpg/
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I popped into this thread simply to say twelve monkeys is my favorite movie of all time.
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NPRs have zero fuel usage engines, and those do spill over occasionally thanks to ruins or salvage, but civs don't, they do refuel, or atleast they say that they refuel:
http://imageshack.us/f/826/refuel.jpg/
Well here's the thing, my civs I know don't, or at very least don't have the standard. How do I know this? I had a massive system, that I did not realise was massive. I set up a civilian contract and also had some of my freighters, of the same class as the civilians, begin hauling stuff. A few years later I get the message that freighter group had run out of fuel. I check it, and indeed they were stranded in this huge system. The civs however were still happily (if slowly) chugging along. They managed to deliver their cargo and return home, whilst my freighters of the exact same class were either... unable to even reach the target planet (which had no fuel stocks), or barely got there and definitely couldn't make it very far home. I've also never seen that refueling thing on a civ ship personally.
Edit: Checking, the designs they were using had a range of 45 billion km and the planets orbits the star at 72 billion km, which is approximately the same distance as the jump point from the planet (even if we give or take a generous 10 billion it still wouldn't reach).
Double edit: Actually, I also distinctly remember an older class with a range of 24.7 billion taking part on behalf of the civs too
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Most of my games start slowing after the first NPR combat increment reduction occurs. I believe it has something to do with the 5 sec sensor check for systems with more than one race.
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a related question to the fuel issue: I have all these mighty space-freighters, and I want to trade with the aliens I discovered.
But my civilian freighters aren't going there. I have trade access, they have trade access, is it because my freighters are out of range, cause I don't think that's true.
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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.
I do believe we have a winner! Small sensors in a busy area, populated primarily by a different empire's shipping, will require frequent checks for sensor contacts. I do not know how to delete an NPR's vessels. However, if the ship in question can not be removed from play, you may be able to minimize the impact it's sensors have on sensor checks. Build a PDC with maximum size and sensitivity thermal sensors on the planet the S.S. Myopic is orbiting, and give it to the locals. Sensor checks will still occur, but should progress much more quickly than before, as things are simply considered to be in range, and are not running into and out of sensor range at 5 second intervals.
Be careful though, when designing your thermal sensor. Make sure that the range it covers for small strength signals does not exceed the integer buffer. Or, simply design a thermal sensor which can detect a strength 5 thermal signature at a range slightly larger than the radius of the entire system, and can always cover the jump points.
Finding a way to simply delete the ship from space and time may be a better option, though.
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well, I might blow it up too.
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RE removing pesky ship without incurring diplomatic penalties:
Use SM mode to create a new empire of the same race as you (pick a place you have sensor cover to, make a homeworld, advance time, SM establish contact, abandon colony). Give one of your ships to them. The new empire shoots the target ship out of the sky, new empire goes to war with your allies. New empire gives the ship back to you.
SM repair/rearm your ship.
Cost: your empire selection boxes will permanently have this second empire. But it's useful for this sort of thing.
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Yep...I bet one of my space captains is gonna have a Dr. Strangelove style freakout moment and blast the heck outta that ship.
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RE removing pesky ship without incurring diplomatic penalties:
Use SM mode to create a new empire of the same race as you (pick a place you have sensor cover to, make a homeworld, advance time, SM establish contact, abandon colony). Give one of your ships to them. The new empire shoots the target ship out of the sky, new empire goes to war with your allies. New empire gives the ship back to you.
SM repair/rearm your ship.
Cost: your empire selection boxes will permanently have this second empire. But it's useful for this sort of thing.
You can delete it from the view race screen, that should get rid of it as a selection.
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You can delete it from the view race screen, that should get rid of it as a selection.
I think this is wrong, there is a "delete class" funciton, but the ship remains, now it's just called "ID 1198774545q4" or whatever, instead of "Theta"
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I think this is wrong, there is a "delete class" funciton, but the ship remains, now it's just called "ID 1198774545q4" or whatever, instead of "Theta"
He was saying that by creating a new race to transfer your ship to for proxy-OPs (transferring a warship to a third party to take a swipe at the NPR problem ship without incurring diplomatic penalties), you will forever have the proxy race cluttering up your race selector. Or that's how I took it. But you can actually remove the race you created by going Empires > View Race Details > Delete
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Note that this might leave a ghost contact in your system map that shows up as hostile or neutral. Has happened to me. It's only effect is that it scares civilian shipping but if you clear out their orders, they ignore the ghost and operate normally in the future.