Big space station = lag. Solution available ?

[ManuxKerb]

Hi

I'm in the process of bulding my first space station and its not really big in real terms but has a high small parts count. As I understand there is a problem that occours with "high" part counts (around 500) that the physics who need to be calculated for every single part slow down the game. I expirience this problem and was just wondering if there is a solution.

Like a mod that reduces physics calculations or some other trick to get my for my understanding small space station not laggy again ?

Thanks

[DavidBowman]

How about UbioZur Welding? They have helped me a lot! But if you're using that make sure to read the known limitations.

[helaeon]

I'm finding lights are the biggest problem. More parts means more light cascades, lights on lights and it gets worse.

My Munbase, probably 100-ish parts but +100 for each lander that is there (currently I have 2). Timer is green when all the lights are off, if I turn even one light on it goes yellow. At night it is green sunrise, timer blinks yellow.

So yeah, lights off.

BTW, I used to think all of those things should be calculated on the GPU... they're not. They're on the CPU and then passed to the GPU for final rendering. We know KSP is CPU limited so this makes it even worse.

[Merinsan]

What I used to do was make sure not to use lots of parts.

For example, when I made a fuel depot, each fuel module was 1 orange tank and 2 snr docking ports. I used docking "robots" to help dock it. This took a lot of practice because it the RCS was always at one end, so unbalanced. I also went to great extremes to even avoid struts. So if I needed struts for launch, I would put another module on top of the payload, and strut that to the launcher.

The end result was a cleaner station and less parts, but a lot of (satisfying) work achieving it.

[Linear]

-Don't use many struts

-You don't need anything too big

-Buy a better CPU

-Wait for Unity 5

[Varsi]

You can also use Kerbal Inventory System mod to remove parts that are not necessary for the station anymore (struts and such too).

[worir4]

I find if you make your station in a higher orbit (I think 200km +) the ground doesn't render in as much detail and that increases frame rate. Also clearing debris in the surrounding area is also good as that means less part count. Dispose of your launch stages by trying to de-orbit them during the launch. It saves the trouble later.

[eddiew]

Outside of the welding that's already been suggested, I'd say there's two keys to a low-lag station:

1) Minimise

How many solar panels do you really need? How much living space is required (if any)? What's the purpose of the station? Is it a fuel depot, or maybe a Karbonite orbital refinery? How many antennae do you need? How many craft do you intend to dock at once (bearing in mind that more craft = more parts = more lag)? TLDR: add nothing that you don't have an immediate use for. Don't add things speculatively.

2) Modularise

One of the problems of an early-game station is you don't have access to things like gigantor solar arrays, or big batteries, so you can end up with dozens of small parts being used to take their place. If you've got this problem, consider a power module, a detachable section that you can later swap out for something with less, more powerful, parts. If you use mods, have a separate section for each task, e.g. crew quarters, power, life support storage and recycling. This approach gives the added benefit that you can later split the station into two, if it's becoming unwieldy.

With this sort of design ethos, you can have a functional, modded station (e.g. Station Science, TAC-LS, Karbonite) that performs useful functions, and has only 50-100 parts. You may get a little lag if you move a big ship (e.g. SSTO) into docking range, but it won't be horrific

[kerbiloid]

Hide your auxilliary and small guest vessels inside hangars.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/88933-0-90-0-Hangar-v2-3-1

[Warzouz]

I had a 900 parts space station around Laythe. It as assemble with 13 different flight from Kerbin to Laythe. The 900 parts inludes the 6 landers and tugs, fuel tanks and return ship for 11 kerbals. Well that was really laggy. Especially the context menus which refused to open.

I partially solved that by removing 250 parts (redundant batteries, small engines, rcs packs, solar panels, ladders, science...). I uses Kerbal Attachement System which allow you to EVA and detach small parts. Then I deleted the debris from the space center.

Further more, I reduced the game window resolution and some video settings. Now it's playable, even if fuel transfert is still very slow.

If I should rebuid the station, I would minimizse the number of parts. As my second stage is able to do the trip up to Layte Orbit, I don't need additional engines, battery packs or RCS on fuel tanks. But as I wanted to have 5 SSTO landers (+ a regular staged one) and some tugs, the part count rises fast. Maybe I wouldn't use as many docking rings and structural adpaters (even if they look great)

[ManuxKerb]

I had a 900 parts space station around Laythe. It as assemble with 13 different flight from Kerbin to Laythe. The 900 parts inludes the 6 landers and tugs, fuel tanks and return ship for 11 kerbals. Well that was really laggy. Especially the context menus which refused to open.

I partially solved that by removing 250 parts (redundant batteries, small engines, rcs packs, solar panels, ladders, science...). I uses Kerbal Attachement System which allow you to EVA and detach small parts. Then I deleted the debris from the space center.

Further more, I reduced the game window resolution and some video settings. Now it's playable, even if fuel transfert is still very slow.

If I should rebuid the station, I would minimizse the number of parts. As my second stage is able to do the trip up to Layte Orbit, I don't need additional engines, battery packs or RCS on fuel tanks. But as I wanted to have 5 SSTO landers (+ a regular staged one) and some tugs, the part count rises fast. Maybe I wouldn't use as many docking rings and structural adpaters (even if they look great)

Well i don't like to bootsptrap my stations too much after all they sould look nice as well and not just function.

I found this hack and it tweaks the rendering of planets when your are not near them,

still try to find out if it works/makes a difference tho.... Feedback would be nice about this

I will try welding soon, but i doubt it will work with uks parts wich makes it far less useful as i only could merge batteries and stuff...

[hugix]

Something cool I did on a station I had about a year ago I had a special RCS module that I used to place all the modules. The modules would rendezvous with the ship. The upper stage would decouple and deorbit. The RCS tug would dock with the module and place it on the right docking node of the station. That way I had no need for RCS modules on each module.

On my next big station I'm going to ad a Canadarm style arm on the station with help from the Infernal robotics mod.

[Greenfire32]

A good way to keep lag down is by keeping part count down, and there's actually a really easy way to do that.

How expensive is your craft? Do you really need 4 gigantor solar panels, or will 1 suffice?

Cut costs, cut parts, cut lag.

[Bev7787]

It happens to me but I just look away from planets into space or the sky and frame rates improve for me.

[RobotsAndSpaceships]

No. This game is horribly optimized, and Squad continues to ignore that.

[Norcalplanner]

This comes up quite a bit over in my Grand Orbital Space Station Challenge. One solution is the cheap and cheerful LPC (Low Part Count) Station. An example of how not to do it is my Mega(useless) Station, with room for over a thousand Kerbals - and absolutely no chance of ever being used, since it's down at 1-2 fps just by itself, to say nothing of trying to dock a ship to it. :-\

[Alshain]

Tweakscale helps reduce the structural parts as well. Rather than a dozen small pieces, just make one big one.

[Sampa]

long story short, eliminate everything you do not absolutely need to function. You can eliminate massive amounts of lights, but you will need some to make nighttime docking easier. Get KIS so you can eliminate parts that no longer have a necessary function to the station's ability (RCS thrusters at central hub for example). Just some ways I deal with lag. Also, consider getting Active Texture Management.

[The Griffin]

I had a mission that said 'build your space station into a class C asteroid'. I interpreted that as build a space station as big as a class C asteroid. So when that past of the contract wasn't filled I added another part, and then another. Then I realised what it actually meant. So I found an asteroid and added that too. With great difficulty due to the lag. Now my whole game is messed up. I can't even fly near the thing without my space station exploding into a million pieces. Now I'm attempting to manually rewrite the same game to reduce it's parts. It's either that or start all over. But steam helpfully reminds me that I will have wasted 173 hours of my life if I do.

[mikegarrison]

There basically is no purpose for any space stations (other than to fulfill contracts or possibly if you have mods that use them). But people like building them because, guess what, it's a space program game!

So unfortunately, telling people to reduce the number of parts on their space station isn't really terribly helpful advice. I put those parts on my station for the same reasons I have a station at all -- because I wanted to, because it looked nice, because it was fun, because I'm role-playing, etc. All which means that if I want my station to have a bunch of observation pods and a truss structure and radiators and solar panels and a science lab and whatever else, then telling me to cut my number of parts down is kind of useless advice. Might as well just cut the parts down to zero, and then the lag is really small!

[cantab]

I had a mission that said 'build your space station into a class C asteroid'. I interpreted that as build a space station as big as a class C asteroid. So when that past of the contract wasn't filled I added another part, and then another. Then I realised what it actually meant. So I found an asteroid and added that too. With great difficulty due to the lag. Now my whole game is messed up. I can't even fly near the thing without my space station exploding into a million pieces. Now I'm attempting to manually rewrite the same game to reduce it's parts. It's either that or start all over. But steam helpfully reminds me that I will have wasted 173 hours of my life if I do.

For what it's worth, it's likely to be the claw used to attach the asteroid that got you, that claw is infamously buggy. If you don't have a backup save before disaster struck there's probably not much you can do. One day I'm sure you'll make an even better station.

There basically is no purpose for any space stations (other than to fulfill contracts or possibly if you have mods that use them).

On the contrary, 1.0's new Science Lab mechanic gives stations and bases new use. I have a station in Mun orbit, and stocked the Science Lab with data from Mun orbit and two Mun landings. It took a bit of work to get everything set up, but I'm now expecting something like 1500 extra Science out of it compared to if I'd just run simple landing-and-return missions. That said I will admit said station is pretty utilitarian and functional, it's not built to look fancy.

[mikegarrison]

For what it's worth, it's likely to be the claw used to attach the asteroid that got you, that claw is infamously buggy. If you don't have a backup save before disaster struck there's probably not much you can do. One day I'm sure you'll make an even better station.

On the contrary, 1.0's new Science Lab mechanic gives stations and bases new use. I have a station in Mun orbit, and stocked the Science Lab with data from Mun orbit and two Mun landings. It took a bit of work to get everything set up, but I'm now expecting something like 1500 extra Science out of it compared to if I'd just run simple landing-and-return missions. That said I will admit said station is pretty utilitarian and functional, it's not built to look fancy.

You don't need a whole station just to have a science lab. All you really need is a science lab, some power, an antenna, and the science experiments. You don't really even need a way to return the science lab or dock it, because you could always just eva your scientists to a return capsule -- just like you do a rescue.

I'm not saying that's the way I do it. I usually build a little more of a ship around the lab, because you get a lot better science if you fly it to Minmus. But even so, it certainly doesn't need to be a 200-part space station.

Edited September 9, 2015 by mikegarrison

[cantab]

True. I added a few extra bits to mine but it's still pretty simple. Think Skylab, not ISS. I still consider it a space station.

[keeper]

When I first started with my station i did like OP and built massive part count stations, and landers. There is no 500 part limit (there is probably some limit) but as said time and again the more parts on the ship the slower your game will be.

I try to place high part count objects on things that I can stage at some point so as to lower the part count.

Also only adding what I would consider the bare minimum of parts, at the largest scale possible.

Now I am using just one or two lights for most vessels, in my case i have a lander with all the science parts on but only one of each, and i can re-use those parts in space.

I have tried "tricks" like moving the camera around to look at the sky and the ground and that has no effect on my comp.

Also last couple of pages on forums about some time warp trick to use physics warp to mess around with the clock colour, that has no effect on my comp.

My only trick is to add less parts. It sucks I want 500000 part ships to run smooth :/

When you look at things in real life, and wonder "Because of the part count, why is earth not suffering fps lag."

[mikegarrison]

True. I added a few extra bits to mine but it's still pretty simple. Think Skylab, not ISS. I still consider it a space station.

Right. But a lot of people (including me, from time to time) want to build a big ISS-ish space station just because. Because it's a game, so why the hell not? And it would be really nice if that didn't cause the game to lag up so badly.

But my point was that if you do want to build a space station like that, then the advice "don't add so many parts" really just boils down to "don't build a space station like that". So it's kind of useless advice. And sad advice, too, because it reflects a sad situation.