A Dirty 'Fix' for megastation visits with performance issues

[Gavrushka]

I've a very good PC, less than a year old, but it still struggled with framerate issues when I visited my own wharf. - This was nothing to do with graphic limitations, but down to raw processing power from my 10th gen I7 coupled with 32GB very fast RAM and NVME drive. I was down to around 22-23 FPS when on the station itself with my water cooled CPU fans spinning up pretty high. (RTX 3000 series card was not stressed at all.)

What I did was go into 'Plan View' of the station, and set loadout to 'none' having previously had every module on high loadout and the framerate improved by more than 50%. -I've left it switched off for now, but I guess I can just click back on 'max loadout' when I leave the station or when it comes under attack for almost instant rearming.

And it made me wonder if Egosoft couldn't automatically do this on player stations for a very quick (and, yeah, dirty) framerate improvement while the player is there. - It may be that I'm the only eejit who has their default loadout for station modules set to high, but I'm offering this up just in case others are as daft as me.

And I wondered if others had suggestions for performance improvement?

[mr.WHO]

The slow and clean solution to this would be to NOT BUILD mega-monsters, especially for Shipyards.
There is no reason why you could not have several smaller stations, rather that one big one.

I converted my mega complex to smallers stations and I'm more happy with them than one moloch.

[Nanook]

That may work if you've used one of the standard presets, and all your modules are set that way. However, if you have a Custom Loadout, it won't work because the game doesn't seem to keep track of those. And if you don't have every module on the station that can carry turrets/shields set to the same standard preset, the game will make every module have that preset. My stations use custom loadouts for most of my modules and so that doesn't work for me. And to be honest, when I tried it on my PHQ which has a lot of defense modules fully loaded, I didn't see much of an effect.

[Ragnos28]

The slow and clean solution to this would be to NOT BUILD mega-monsters, especially for Shipyards.
There is no reason why you could not have several smaller stations, rather that one big one.

I converted my mega complex to smallers stations and I'm more happy with them than one moloch.

I did exactly that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuw5tv4wdEQ&t=1s

[Bastelfred]

The trick is not to build a defense at the station at all. It's far too expensive and far too useless. It is so much cheaper and so much more effective to buy a few ships that can protect several sectors. If you can teleport, one corvette is enough.

The slow and clean solution to this would be to NOT BUILD mega-monsters, especially for Shipyards.
There is no reason why you could not have several smaller stations, rather that one big one.

What? There is no way to copy orders to distribute your own goods or to give the same order to multiple ships together. This alone is so much pain in the ass that I understand everyone who builds mega complexes. Egosoft has really done everything in X4 to make many single stations as unattractive as possible, and megacomplexes as attractive as possible.

[Ragnos28]

What? There is no way to copy orders to distribute your own goods or to give the same order to multiple ships together. This alone is so much pain in the ass that I understand everyone who builds mega complexes. Egosoft has really done everything in X4 to make many single stations as unattractive as possible, and megacomplexes as attractive as possible.

Hmm...all I do is to order 5 Baldric + 5 Okinawa, select them...trade for station and be done with it. Maybe select for computronic substrate to be sold only to my faction, for my shipyard, but that's about it

[LameFox]

I don't give most stations defences in the first place. Few of them will be attacked but those I have designed to deflect attacks, and they still have a swarm of defence drones. It really surprised me, when I first began to play this game, how cheap a station is when you don't pay for weapons and shields.

That said, I don't build super huge complexes anyway.

[mr.WHO]

What? There is no way to copy orders to distribute your own goods or to give the same order to multiple ships together. This alone is so much pain in the ass that I understand everyone who builds mega complexes. Egosoft has really done everything in X4 to make many single stations as unattractive as possible, and megacomplexes as attractive as possible.

Do you love micromanagement?
All I do is put freighters for my shipyard and freighters for my ship component production stations shipyard supply range.
They are doing fine with supply and disctribution without any supervision from me.
The only short-term problem would be to have 5-star manager on the stations, but for me, station managers seems to level up rather fast.

[Gavrushka]

The slow and clean solution to this would be to NOT BUILD mega-monsters, especially for Shipyards.
There is no reason why you could not have several smaller stations, rather that one big one.

I converted my mega complex to smallers stations and I'm more happy with them than one moloch.

With hindsight, I'd agree with that. - The game is one I started under 1.0, but if I ever restart, I see how smaller stations are not only easier on the processor, but more effective and much, much quicker to get operational. - A megastation can take me several game months to have working at full capacity.

What I have done in this game is create mining resource stations with large amounts of storage, and set additional mining ships on repeat orders to keep my factories stocked. - That works far better than expected, and simplifies the construction of other stations.

[Gavrushka]

...My stations use custom loadouts for most of my modules and so that doesn't work for me. And to be honest, when I tried it on my PHQ which has a lot of defense modules fully loaded, I didn't see much of an effect.

I can only go by personal experience, but I imagine it may be because I had around 250 production modules and loads of defence modules on high loadout. It was quite a firework show if an enemy came in range, but definitely overkill.

[Bastelfred]

Do you love micromanagement?
All I do is put freighters for my shipyard and freighters for my ship component production stations shipyard supply range.
They are doing fine with supply and disctribution without any supervision from me.
The only short-term problem would be to have 5-star manager on the stations, but for me, station managers seems to level up rather fast.

I build from scratch all by myself. I don't start with a shipyard, I start with ore. A shipyard is the very last thing I build.
If you play like this and build individual stations for everything, then you will only be permanently punished in X4.

And if you then ask for a function in the game, that would make the game at least a little easier... the answer is: "nope, it's too complicated".

[Ragnos28]

In terran economy, I only need 3 factories to keep a shipyard going:

1. computronic substrate factory
2. metallic microlattice + silicon carbide factory
3. agricultural goods factory

I can even combine the agricultural goods with the computronic substrate and have only 2 factories. Damn you Egosoft, why you must make things so complicated?

[mr.WHO]

I build from scratch all by myself. I don't start with a shipyard, I start with ore. A shipyard is the very last thing I build.
If you play like this and build individual stations for everything, then you will only be permanently punished in X4.

And if you then ask for a function in the game, that would make the game at least a little easier... the answer is: "nope, it's too complicated".

Not for everything, I build stations that produce grouped products:
- Gas refinery
- Ore processor
- Food farm
- Drug, pharma, spacefuel
- Station construction materials (most important for me)
- Ship components (other than combat ones)
- Electronic fab (microchips, smartchips etc.)
- weapon factory (drone, missile, weapon ,turrets)
- Shipyard

If you're using Terran only, this can be simplified even more.

[Bastelfred]

I know all the possibilities that X4 offers...
I don't want it like this! I would like to have a single station for each product, and for mining I have many stations. Then you have to move a lot of goods between the stations. That's where X4 doesn't work well. That there are also still nasty bugs in the area that are still not fixed... that is another topic.

Because I know all these problems very well, I understand everyone who doesn't want to do it and prefers to build large stations. Therefore, the tip to not build large stations is simply not a good tip.

[Matthew94]

The slow and clean solution to this would be to NOT BUILD mega-monsters, especially for Shipyards.
There is no reason why you could not have several smaller stations, rather that one big one.

I converted my mega complex to smallers stations and I'm more happy with them than one moloch.

N stations = N stations to manage = N budgets = N fleets

A single station is better in every way except for

1. Build time which is due to Egosoft refusing to allow multiple modules to be be built concurrently. An arbitrary limitation.
2. The cap on station fleets which is also arbitrary.

If those two points were fixed there'd be little-to-no reason to have individual stations. At present, the agonisingly slow module build times means single stations are a complete waste of time as it's better to spam a ton of individual single-ware stations that can all be built in parallel.

[Dani_Gecko]

The trick is not to build a defense at the station at all. It's far too expensive and far too useless. It is so much cheaper and so much more effective to buy a few ships that can protect several sectors. If you can teleport, one corvette is enough.

I would like to second this observation. Even if you don't want to teleport to save the day, a Syn - or any other good M2 (where good is 2+ shields and 4+ L turrets - so Syn or Odysseus) set to protect the station gets rid of most problems. If the Syn can't solve the problem, your are in bigger trouble then not having a bazilion useless M turrets spread all over your modules - experience tells.

If you want station defense: For me, the split triangle platforms with a ratio for L turrets plasma:beam of 3:2 works wonders - I am ignoring the M turret spots. Put a few on your station and together with the M2 it handles the occasional K plus escort very well OOS.

I can't tell how this holds up performance-wise since I am running a 5900X with 64GB of 3600MHz 14-14-14 RAM. Graphics card is a EVGA RTX 3080 FTW ULTRA. The OS and the game run on a Samsung PRO M.2 each. I would guess it's not comparable to what most people have. But I am certainly not modest with my graphics settings, just so that it's around 60-100 FPS in 2k - this might make it a little bit more comparable again. Not having any issues around my stations really. The only time I notice a slight stutter is at ~10000 m/s with a Moreya in Nopileos 2 - the asteroid density is doing a number. To put it in a different perspective: Having Firefox open with 20-ish tabs on the second screen with twitch playing in the main tab lags the game more than coming close to the biggest station of mine.

[Panos]

I've a very good PC, less than a year old, but it still struggled with framerate issues when I visited my own wharf. - This was nothing to do with graphic limitations, but down to raw processing power from my 10th gen I7 coupled with 32GB very fast RAM and NVME drive. I was down to around 22-23 FPS when on the station itself with my water cooled CPU fans spinning up pretty high. (RTX 3000 series card was not stressed at all.)

What I did was go into 'Plan View' of the station, and set loadout to 'none' having previously had every module on high loadout and the framerate improved by more than 50%. -I've left it switched off for now, but I guess I can just click back on 'max loadout' when I leave the station or when it comes under attack for almost instant rearming.

And it made me wonder if Egosoft couldn't automatically do this on player stations for a very quick (and, yeah, dirty) framerate improvement while the player is there. - It may be that I'm the only eejit who has their default loadout for station modules set to high, but I'm offering this up just in case others are as daft as me.

And I wondered if others had suggestions for performance improvement?

Considering how X4 background simulator works, multi station single product station cluster is the way to go.
You can expand-build them all together at same time, very easy to manage and only need to assign traders to do their jobs.

10km distance is more than enough not to affect perf even if you have 10 station in the sector within distance and over 40 traders.

The slow and clean solution to this would be to NOT BUILD mega-monsters, especially for Shipyards.
There is no reason why you could not have several smaller stations, rather that one big one.

I converted my mega complex to smallers stations and I'm more happy with them than one moloch.

N stations = N stations to manage = N budgets = N fleets

A single station is better in every way except for

1. Build time which is due to Egosoft refusing to allow multiple modules to be be built concurrently. An arbitrary limitation.
2. The cap on station fleets which is also arbitrary.

If those two points were fixed there'd be little-to-no reason to have individual stations. At present, the agonisingly slow module build times means single stations are a complete waste of time as it's better to spam a ton of individual single-ware stations that can all be built in parallel.

Actually is much better perf wise to have multi station cluster. All calculations are happening on the background and doesn't affect perf.

[Gavrushka]

I've a very good PC, less than a year old, but it still struggled with framerate issues when I visited my own wharf. - This was nothing to do with graphic limitations, but down to raw processing power from my 10th gen I7 coupled with 32GB very fast RAM and NVME drive. I was down to around 22-23 FPS when on the station itself with my water cooled CPU fans spinning up pretty high. (RTX 3000 series card was not stressed at all.)

What I did was go into 'Plan View' of the station, and set loadout to 'none' having previously had every module on high loadout and the framerate improved by more than 50%. -I've left it switched off for now, but I guess I can just click back on 'max loadout' when I leave the station or when it comes under attack for almost instant rearming.

And it made me wonder if Egosoft couldn't automatically do this on player stations for a very quick (and, yeah, dirty) framerate improvement while the player is there. - It may be that I'm the only eejit who has their default loadout for station modules set to high, but I'm offering this up just in case others are as daft as me.

And I wondered if others had suggestions for performance improvement?

Considering how X4 background simulator works, multi station single product station cluster is the way to go.
You can expand-build them all together at same time, very easy to manage and only need to assign traders to do their jobs.

10km distance is more than enough not to affect perf even if you have 10 station in the sector within distance and over 40 traders.

Actually is much better perf wise to have multi station cluster. All calculations are happening on the background and doesn't affect perf.

Well, after three years playing the same game on and off, I decided to try a restart (custom) and follow the factory route suggested. - I was shocked how a four production module station with two traders still made around a quarter the money of a one hundred+ production module station. - Less storage space seemed to help trade flow too.

And the performance differential is very, very refreshing. I'd ended up with no go stations due to poor framerates, but it now never flickers from my set max rate at ultra.

Loving the game afresh, thank you.

[Panos]

I've a very good PC, less than a year old, but it still struggled with framerate issues when I visited my own wharf. - This was nothing to do with graphic limitations, but down to raw processing power from my 10th gen I7 coupled with 32GB very fast RAM and NVME drive. I was down to around 22-23 FPS when on the station itself with my water cooled CPU fans spinning up pretty high. (RTX 3000 series card was not stressed at all.)

What I did was go into 'Plan View' of the station, and set loadout to 'none' having previously had every module on high loadout and the framerate improved by more than 50%. -I've left it switched off for now, but I guess I can just click back on 'max loadout' when I leave the station or when it comes under attack for almost instant rearming.

And it made me wonder if Egosoft couldn't automatically do this on player stations for a very quick (and, yeah, dirty) framerate improvement while the player is there. - It may be that I'm the only eejit who has their default loadout for station modules set to high, but I'm offering this up just in case others are as daft as me.

And I wondered if others had suggestions for performance improvement?

Considering how X4 background simulator works, multi station single product station cluster is the way to go.
You can expand-build them all together at same time, very easy to manage and only need to assign traders to do their jobs.

10km distance is more than enough not to affect perf even if you have 10 station in the sector within distance and over 40 traders.

Actually is much better perf wise to have multi station cluster. All calculations are happening on the background and doesn't affect perf.

Well, after three years playing the same game on and off, I decided to try a restart (custom) and follow the factory route suggested. - I was shocked how a four production module station with two traders still made around a quarter the money of a one hundred+ production module station. - Less storage space seemed to help trade flow too.

And the performance differential is very, very refreshing. I'd ended up with no go stations due to poor framerates, but it now never flickers from my set max rate at ultra.

Loving the game afresh, thank you.

You are welcome.

[Jaskan]

Even a powerfull PC thats within reach of most folks cant handle this game regards FPS in high density areas or big battles.
Its a sandbox a simulation, and my solution is to add to the gameplay methods of reducing fps impact.

The biggest of this rules is to use the cheat menu mod to avoid things that will normally require fps impact.

My aim is to be able to affect the factions help etc, so i dont build factories , just wharehouses and shipyards with quite a very large number of storage modules.
So that once in while i use cheatmenu to fill up the wharehouses/shipyards.

In late game where i have more money than can spend, i only send traders/miners to rebuild damaged sector, or sectors that need development, else they are parked as station defence subordinates which saves fps.

And the fps in game is quite satisfactory , no longer down to single digits in most places like i used to when i tried playing the game by the rules.

DynamamicWars mod is essential too for late game, spending huge amount of money to control interfaction relations gives that pile of cash some good use without tanking your fps, unlike terraforming planets you cant interact with and it still tanks fps.

I hardly ever build small ships or sell small ships to factions unless in desperate situations, one massive ship can do what many small ships can do, it saves fps.

But if you decide to play the game by the normal rules, you goan be down to single digit fps in late game.
No factories , just warehouses and shipyards filled up with cheatmenu, and i pay each time i fill them up , by using dynamicwars mod.

No need for mega station shipyards cause shipyard produce only ship and nothing else. And its filled by cheat menu.

Until i have a quantum computer, the fps hit of playing by normal rules without cheat in late game is just too high, and i have pretty descent PC running at 4.4Ghz with top of the range Nvidia graphics card.

The game is not to blame, its a simulation and you can choose what you want to simulate and where you have to cheat to save fps. Playing by my rules fps is mostly good everywhere. And honestly i wouldnt even bother with this game without dynamic wars mod and cheat menu.

And the 10x station module storage mod is also very usefull, so that i only have to fill up warehouses every few days.