Sat Mar 06, 2004 9:17 am
Recurring Overkill
I noticed in earlier versions of FLRebalance this problem, and thought it would be "fixed" by now. It isn't, although I THINK house patrols in the core systems have been reduced. But, if this "Omicron Overkill" is a feature, I find it very strange...
1) OVERKILL
Frequent capital ship encounters of ridiculous proportion, which cause framerate to choke, fighting to become impossible, and, worse, server lag to spike BIG TIME for everyone.
Consider: In Omicron Alpha and Gamma, a single capship patrol consists of six ships on average.
Two Red Hessian RH BS patrols show up --- 12 ships right there --- and 2-3 Outcast or Corsair capship patrols show up, which makes 24 capships onscreen, THEN the GMG come & fight BOTH of them w/ a single patrol, so u have, on avg., 28 very large, high polycount ships onscreen ---- all firing from their many weapon banks.
And that doesn't account for fighters that show up; seems that when they do, the capships don't.
Assuming 10 banks per ship, that's 280 projectiles onscreen, not accounting for refire rates. Accounting for each of the 10 or so imgs/missile turret trail effect, 280*4=1,120 particle trail effects onscreen at once. Video cards, from my experience, HATE particle trails...
When battleship encounters go nuts, framerate drops to about 5 even with lowest Freelancer detail and 640x480 resolution (on my GeForce4 Ti4200, an "average" card), and with all the ships firing it is very hard to see.
In Omicron Theta, the battleships often get "clumped" (stuck to each other) around Freeport 9 --- and Theta suffers from too many encounters as well, but thankfully you only see about two faction patrols at once.
I can hear you all now:
"Get a new video card, Gregstar2k!"
I can, yes, but framerate isn't the biggest concern of this problem. The average Rebalance server CANNOT control 34 capships fighting each other in the same region without some lag. And that's just for one region! It gets even worse when multiple players are in different areas I call "insane capship encounter zones"...
FL servers already have problems controlling player missions where the player is facing off against, say, 30 GMG Eagles in Omicron Beta. It tends to cause server lag as the server is controlling all those pilots at once.
When massive quantities of capships show up in an Omicron, the servers lag, or my singleplayer FL can crash.
PLEASE put a smaller limit on the number of capital ships fighting each other in the Omicron Systems and the "Earth Alliance System System". It is really driving me nuts.
Personally, I think the number of capships of the factions that don't own the systems in question should be greatly reduced. It makes more sense if Red Hessians send two patrols totaling two cruisers, four gunboats and six fighters on quick strike missions into the Omicrons, rather than two entire fleets. Battleships are expensive, and the AI ship counts oughta reflect that, right?
Just please, do SOMETHING about this. This is an excellent mod, otherwise.
-- Gregster2K
Edited by - Gregstar2k on 3/6/2004 9:30:26 AM
1) OVERKILL
Frequent capital ship encounters of ridiculous proportion, which cause framerate to choke, fighting to become impossible, and, worse, server lag to spike BIG TIME for everyone.
Consider: In Omicron Alpha and Gamma, a single capship patrol consists of six ships on average.
Two Red Hessian RH BS patrols show up --- 12 ships right there --- and 2-3 Outcast or Corsair capship patrols show up, which makes 24 capships onscreen, THEN the GMG come & fight BOTH of them w/ a single patrol, so u have, on avg., 28 very large, high polycount ships onscreen ---- all firing from their many weapon banks.
And that doesn't account for fighters that show up; seems that when they do, the capships don't.
Assuming 10 banks per ship, that's 280 projectiles onscreen, not accounting for refire rates. Accounting for each of the 10 or so imgs/missile turret trail effect, 280*4=1,120 particle trail effects onscreen at once. Video cards, from my experience, HATE particle trails...
When battleship encounters go nuts, framerate drops to about 5 even with lowest Freelancer detail and 640x480 resolution (on my GeForce4 Ti4200, an "average" card), and with all the ships firing it is very hard to see.
In Omicron Theta, the battleships often get "clumped" (stuck to each other) around Freeport 9 --- and Theta suffers from too many encounters as well, but thankfully you only see about two faction patrols at once.
I can hear you all now:
"Get a new video card, Gregstar2k!"
I can, yes, but framerate isn't the biggest concern of this problem. The average Rebalance server CANNOT control 34 capships fighting each other in the same region without some lag. And that's just for one region! It gets even worse when multiple players are in different areas I call "insane capship encounter zones"...
FL servers already have problems controlling player missions where the player is facing off against, say, 30 GMG Eagles in Omicron Beta. It tends to cause server lag as the server is controlling all those pilots at once.
When massive quantities of capships show up in an Omicron, the servers lag, or my singleplayer FL can crash.
PLEASE put a smaller limit on the number of capital ships fighting each other in the Omicron Systems and the "Earth Alliance System System". It is really driving me nuts.
Personally, I think the number of capships of the factions that don't own the systems in question should be greatly reduced. It makes more sense if Red Hessians send two patrols totaling two cruisers, four gunboats and six fighters on quick strike missions into the Omicrons, rather than two entire fleets. Battleships are expensive, and the AI ship counts oughta reflect that, right?
Just please, do SOMETHING about this. This is an excellent mod, otherwise.
-- Gregster2K
Edited by - Gregstar2k on 3/6/2004 9:30:26 AM