60 hrs in performance issues

[Scoob]

I used google drive as you said save file is here

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11Jsab9 ... sp=sharing

Cool, just taking a look at it now...

Ok, I've loaded your save. I'm getting a solid 60fps while standing on the bridge of your large ship while docked, though it did take a couple of seconds after loading the save for it to stabalise. Giving it move commands and it's staying at a solid 60fps. Going external view and looking around during this manoeuvre, making sure the Shipyard and all the NPC's buzzing around it are in shot ....60fps. I've popped up on the flight deck, wandering around in first person...60fps! Game seems to be running lovely for me.

Not seeing anything untowards re: resource usage. Game is heavier on one thread than others, but that's just how it is. Certainly not heavy enough to upset my almost eight year old CPU! The RAM footprint, for having just been loaded, is similar to what I see too - just under 4gb Working Set (stuff used by the game now) with a Private Bytes (sorta stuff caches by the game but not currently addressed) of a further 2.5gb almost. Everything looks pretty much as I'd expect.

For me, the game appears to be running quite flawlessly. Can you confirm your settings? I'm running at 1920x1200, with Custom settings based off the "Ultra" preset, but with MSAAx2, Adaptive vSync and Glow=Normal. LOD and Effects distance remain at 100.

You probably have about three times the stuff I do flying around, plus I see you've done some work on the HQ - I've only built a dock on mine.

Note: the game does still dip into the high 30's fps when I bring up the Map screen, but it's always done that for me.

Sorry, I was sort of expect the games performance would be bad for me too, suggesting something wrong with your 60hr save, which we could then submit to the devs to examine. However, that's not the case. I'm at a loss what to suggest :/

Scoob.

[Cptkwirk]

I used google drive as you said save file is here

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11Jsab9 ... sp=sharing

Cool, just taking a look at it now...

Ok, I've loaded your save. I'm getting a solid 60fps while standing on the bridge of your large ship while docked, though it did take a couple of seconds after loading the save for it to stabalise. Giving it move commands and it's staying at a solid 60fps. Going external view and looking around during this manoeuvre, making sure the Shipyard and all the NPC's buzzing around it are in shot ....60fps. I've popped up on the flight deck, wandering around in first person...60fps! Game seems to be running lovely for me.

Not seeing anything untowards re: resource usage. Game is heavier on one thread than others, but that's just how it is. Certainly not heavy enough to upset my almost eight year old CPU! The RAM footprint, for having just been loaded, is similar to what I see too - just under 4gb Working Set (stuff used by the game now) with a Private Bytes (sorta stuff caches by the game but not currently addressed) of a further 2.5gb almost. Everything looks pretty much as I'd expect.

For me, the game appears to be running quite flawlessly. Can you confirm your settings? I'm running at 1920x1200, with Custom settings based off the "Ultra" preset, but with MSAAx2, Adaptive vSync and Glow=Normal. LOD and Effects distance remain at 100.

You probably have about three times the stuff I do flying around, plus I see you've done some work on the HQ - I've only built a dock on mine.

Note: the game does still dip into the high 30's fps when I bring up the Map screen, but it's always done that for me.

Sorry, I was sort of expect the games performance would be bad for me too, suggesting something wrong with your 60hr save, which we could then submit to the devs to examine. However, that's not the case. I'm at a loss what to suggest :/

Scoob.

Man appreciate you taking a look. I have an idea what it might be then with the results you provided. I noticed when I put the game on again today it starts perfect but then after a couple of hours and after I have qued up lots of building, orders etc it gets worse then. However the in game is still solid enough to play most of the time but really bad when in map screen. The issue is I spend most of my time there

[Scoob]

Man appreciate you taking a look. I have an idea what it might be then with the results you provided. I noticed when I put the game on again today it starts perfect but then after a couple of hours and after I have qued up lots of building, orders etc it gets worse then. However the in game is still solid enough to play most of the time but really bad when in map screen. The issue is I spend most of my time there

No worries. I do sometimes notice a slight degradation in performance over time. However, as I travel around a lot there are lots of other factors too, such a local traffic density and the like. RAM utilisation does seem to steadily grow over time too and I've not actually seen the game do a tidy up - i.e. purge some stuff - during play. I have a fairly decent amount of RAM though, so that might help alleviate things for me.

I've not personally been involved in any large fleet movements and battles yet - just my four Corvettes irritating the Xenon - so not sure how my system might cope under those situations...perhaps in another 30hrs I'll find out lol. Just checked, current at the 54hr mark - so more than I realised lol.

Scoob.

[Cptkwirk]

Man appreciate you taking a look. I have an idea what it might be then with the results you provided. I noticed when I put the game on again today it starts perfect but then after a couple of hours and after I have qued up lots of building, orders etc it gets worse then. However the in game is still solid enough to play most of the time but really bad when in map screen. The issue is I spend most of my time there

No worries. I do sometimes notice a slight degradation in performance over time. However, as I travel around a lot there are lots of other factors too, such a local traffic density and the like. RAM utilisation does seem to steadily grow over time too and I've not actually seen the game do a tidy up - i.e. purge some stuff - during play. I have a fairly decent amount of RAM though, so that might help alleviate things for me.

I've not personally been involved in any large fleet movements and battles yet - just my four Corvettes irritating the Xenon - so not sure how my system might cope under those situations...perhaps in another 30hrs I'll find out lol. Just checked, current at the 54hr mark - so more than I realised lol.

Scoob.

You have gone above and beyond checking that out for me. It has highlighted a couple of things I could improve maybe on my system such as an increase in ram.

Im finding the enemies to be a little insignificant at present. It seems unless you go looking for trouble its rare you get involved. I miss the random sector raids or mini skirmished by the pirates/xenon we saw in x3. I enjoyed the idea of
building up my hq defences and a home system fleet and watch them defend against periodic raids but since I settled in the hq I havent seen another enemy in my system.

[Scoob]

You have gone above and beyond checking that out for me. It has highlighted a couple of things I could improve maybe on my system such as an increase in ram.

Im finding the enemies to be a little insignificant at present. It seems unless you go looking for trouble its rare you get involved. I miss the random sector raids or mini skirmished by the pirates/xenon we saw in x3. I enjoyed the idea of
building up my hq defences and a home system fleet and watch them defend against periodic raids but since I settled in the hq I havent seen another enemy in my system.

Lol, no problem, it only took me a few minutes to download and test your save.

I agree regarding the enemies. At the start of the game, when I just had the poorly-equipped Elite, I found the "Pirates" troublesome. However, it turns out I just started with a negative rep with one Race faction, whose ships would sometimes try to pirate me. Since I've built up a decent rep with them, I simply do not see these "Pirates" any more.

I have ventured into Xenon space and the fun thing about that is that they'll follow you when you leave their system. I've managed to pull various ships - including a could of Xenon K's - back into Race territory, which was entertaining.

Other than that though, all sectors I have a presence in are peaceful, and certain areas of the economy have stalled, so my traders aren't making the money they once were. I might manage one of them manually again for a bit, to see if I can improve on that. My mining income is steady though, however, I captured an M-Class Hydrogen miner and there's ZERO demand for hydrogen in my universe. So, it's just parked up at the mo.

Scoob.

[Cptkwirk]

You have gone above and beyond checking that out for me. It has highlighted a couple of things I could improve maybe on my system such as an increase in ram.

Im finding the enemies to be a little insignificant at present. It seems unless you go looking for trouble its rare you get involved. I miss the random sector raids or mini skirmished by the pirates/xenon we saw in x3. I enjoyed the idea of
building up my hq defences and a home system fleet and watch them defend against periodic raids but since I settled in the hq I havent seen another enemy in my system.

Lol, no problem, it only took me a few minutes to download and test your save.

I agree regarding the enemies. At the start of the game, when I just had the poorly-equipped Elite, I found the "Pirates" troublesome. However, it turns out I just started with a negative rep with one Race faction, whose ships would sometimes try to pirate me. Since I've built up a decent rep with them, I simply do not see these "Pirates" any more.

I have ventured into Xenon space and the fun thing about that is that they'll follow you when you leave their system. I've managed to pull various ships - including a could of Xenon K's - back into Race territory, which was entertaining.

Other than that though, all sectors I have a presence in are peaceful, and certain areas of the economy have stalled, so my traders aren't making the money they once were. I might manage one of them manually again for a bit, to see if I can improve on that. My mining income is steady though, however, I captured an M-Class Hydrogen miner and there's ZERO demand for hydrogen in my universe. So, it's just parked up at the mo.

Scoob.

That hydrogen miner should be able to mine any gas. Just select in go to behaviours and then go automine and select all 3 gas's then max the jump range now make sure you have drones of all types and it should get you a steady income also it hink if not just give it to the player hq as a miner and when you get some production modules your hq will make work of it

[Scoob]

That hydrogen miner should be able to mine any gas. Just select in go to behaviours and then go automine and select all 3 gas's then max the jump range now make sure you have drones of all types and it should get you a steady income also it hink if not just give it to the player hq as a miner and when you get some production modules your hq will make work of it

Thanks. I was thinking I might have one of each gas, I just started with Hydrogen so had that on my brain when replying lol. I'm actually waaay too sleepy to be playing...but I'm not going to let that stop me...saves backed up just in case!

Scoob.

[Cptkwirk]

That hydrogen miner should be able to mine any gas. Just select in go to behaviours and then go automine and select all 3 gas's then max the jump range now make sure you have drones of all types and it should get you a steady income also it hink if not just give it to the player hq as a miner and when you get some production modules your hq will make work of it

Thanks. I was thinking I might have one of each gas, I just started with Hydrogen so had that on my brain when replying lol. I'm actually waaay too sleepy to be playing...but I'm not going to let that stop me...saves backed up just in case!

Scoob.

Yeah I been bad with sleep with this game. Whats worse is when I finish playing for the night and go to chill with some tv before bed I sit next to my pc and leave the game running to earn credits while I watch tv I occasionally lean over and hit the f5 key hahaha

and if the money is half decent I go buy a load of miners and get more and more credits I have a problem

[Scoob]

Yeah I been bad with sleep with this game. Whats worse is when I finish playing for the night and go to chill with some tv before bed I sit next to my pc and leave the game running to earn credits while I watch tv I occasionally lean over and hit the f5 key hahaha

and if the money is half decent I go buy a load of miners and get more and more credits I have a problem

Heh, I suspect we are rather similar...I'm still playing over two hours after I acknowledged my tiredness - but then the 1.3 Beta came out so I just had to try it

Scoob.

[Cptkwirk]

Yeah I been bad with sleep with this game. Whats worse is when I finish playing for the night and go to chill with some tv before bed I sit next to my pc and leave the game running to earn credits while I watch tv I occasionally lean over and hit the f5 key hahaha

and if the money is half decent I go buy a load of miners and get more and more credits I have a problem

Heh, I suspect we are rather similar...I'm still playing over two hours after I acknowledged my tiredness - but then the 1.3 Beta came out so I just had to try it

Scoob.

Im loving the beta but as I type this im playing drunk :/ just bought a colossus and and a destroyer with 5 med fighters and 11 small fighters but for the life of me they will not undock from the parent ship and attack

[MrMikey]

You guys do realize that an Ramdrive can actually be detrimental to performance over all depending on usage scenario, why? Cpu load when doing i/o from an ramdrive is way higher than utilizing regular dma based i/o from say an fast ssd, sure ram drive benches way quicker but it also requires additional cpu cycles and if your cpu starved... lets just say the faster i/o at the expense of the already starved cycles = less performance over all... and that not even counting the mem bandwidth/latency overhead the ramdrive causes that can starve the game even further. Seen even ramdrives that windows itself cache the files from and it's not uncommon sadly, meaning first windows does a lookup and see if its in the cache, then the ram drive loads it from another place in ram wasting far more cpu cycles than if just windows cached if mem was plenty-full (ie without the ramdrive...)

Been toying around with ram drives for years and their great at times (insane i/o scenarios without too much cpu load) but way overrated in others, haven't tried with this game so can't say but considering its far more cpu bottle necked in the end game than i/o its a fair bet its more detrimental over all.

[burger1]

Yeah I been bad with sleep with this game. Whats worse is when I finish playing for the night and go to chill with some tv before bed I sit next to my pc and leave the game running to earn credits while I watch tv I occasionally lean over and hit the f5 key hahaha

and if the money is half decent I go buy a load of miners and get more and more credits I have a problem

Heh, I suspect we are rather similar...I'm still playing over two hours after I acknowledged my tiredness - but then the 1.3 Beta came out so I just had to try it

Scoob.

Im loving the beta but as I type this im playing drunk :/ just bought a colossus and and a destroyer with 5 med fighters and 11 small fighters but for the life of me they will not undock from the parent ship and attack

Hold control or shift to select multiple ships to command. Control is to select one by one.

[Scoob]

You guys do realize that an Ramdrive can actually be detrimental to performance over all depending on usage scenario, why? Cpu load when doing i/o from an ramdrive is way higher than utilizing regular dma based i/o from say an fast ssd, sure ram drive benches way quicker but it also requires additional cpu cycles and if your cpu starved... lets just say the faster i/o at the expense of the already starved cycles = less performance over all... and that not even counting the mem bandwidth/latency overhead the ramdrive causes that can starve the game even further. Seen even ramdrives that windows itself cache the files from and it's not uncommon sadly, meaning first windows does a lookup and see if its in the cache, then the ram drive loads it from another place in ram wasting far more cpu cycles than if just windows cached if mem was plenty-full (ie without the ramdrive...)

Been toying around with ram drives for years and their great at times (insane i/o scenarios without too much cpu load) but way overrated in others, haven't tried with this game so can't say but considering its far more cpu bottle necked in the end game than i/o its a fair bet its more detrimental over all.

Yep, I have observed that. Plus you can run into other issues as often data that's read might need to be processed / decompressed. I can't remember which game it was, but I had one where loading from RAMDrive was no faster than normal SSD. When loading from SSD, the CPU was able to process / decompress the data on the fly pretty much. From RAMDrive however it got the data almost instantly, then there was a huge CPU spike as it processed it all at once.

While I do see a marked increase in IO CPU load when I'm copying the game folder to the RAMDrive, it's not particularly significant during actual play. I think X4's "no load screens" streaming method works really well with RAMDrives. That said, the game isn't terrible or anything when running just off the SSD array.

As an aside, I did tinker with thread affinity, allowing X4 to have six threads while reserving two for system stuff. I've no solid metrics, but things did feel somewhat more responsive. I might look into that further if I have time.

Scoob.

[MrMikey]

As an aside, I did tinker with thread affinity, allowing X4 to have six threads while reserving two for system stuff. I've no solid metrics, but things did feel somewhat more responsive. I might look into that further if I have time.

Scoob.

Please share what you find, haven't got to the point where the game starts to saturate my hardware enough to cause any annoyances like stutters/low fps ect, its surprisingly smooth considering all the background activity that happens in a game of the depth and type

[Scoob]

Please share what you find, haven't got to the point where the game starts to saturate my hardware enough to cause any annoyances like stutters/low fps ect, its surprisingly smooth considering all the background activity that happens in a game of the depth and type

Sure, I'll share what I discover. My system is a little pushed at times, though Process Explorer would suggest that I have CPU cycles to spare, but I know that's not quite accurate. First step is to repeat my earlier test in a more controlled way - i.e. load a save, check fps, tweak affinity & load save again. Not sure I'll get the chance this weekend, but shall see how the week goes.

Scoob.

[rada660]

Im also getting a serious performance hit. But only because of one reason. It's whenever I try to check the information of the literal monstrously large station I'm currently building. The game lags so hard that the frame gets stuck for a solid 6 or 7 second. Gets unstuck for a fraction of a second, then repeat. Kinda hard to check things up on my station.

[Bellatormonk]

So I am 60hrs into a game and the framerate is a constant low 10's.

My cpu is at 39% usage and GPU isnt even warm. I have 40ish ships and not overly comlex PHQ but now the game is becoming unplayable I am really enjoying myself and was starting to get somewhere but now through no obvious reason my framerate is majorly bottlenecking.

Any ideas?

Same thing started happening to me. I had been routinely running 60FPS when standing on station docks/areas/space and 30-35FPS when viewing the map. My specs are just fine i7 quad, 1080gtx 6gb, 32gb ram although I run my games off a raid 1 SATA drive set. I also play in Windowsless Border Mode instead of Fullscreen because if I alt-tab out in Fullscreen the game pauses.

Anyways the first time this happened 10-20 hours before my current save I fixed by dissolving a Wing of ships I had created because I had noticed the problem started at that point and it actually fixed it. Now I have narrowed it down to being on Stations overall. My PHQ is massive at this point and I have 40-50 ships under my control. I am down into the teens and single digits for FPS when I stand on my PHQ docks or any other Station and or the map.

I moved into a ship's bridge in space and my FPS in view mode went back to 60 FPS and map view to 30-40FPS. So....I am not sure what changed in the last 10 hours of game play (I left the game last night running fine and came back this morning and noticed the FPS drop. I have saved, restarted, tried to clean/recreate wings, etc.

So overall I guess I need to command the game from the bridge of a ship now instead of sitting at my PHQ.