Big ship lag

[aluc24]

I know this question is old as the game itself. My fps drop dramatically (down to 2fps) when flying large ships. I am now building a modular Duna mothership (with 6 landers), 180t vessel made of 200 parts. It is unflyable, even in orbit.

I am running KSP on Lenovo Z500 laptop. I know laptops aren't great, and that having multiple cores instead of one powerful core isn't good for KSP too, but still, what can be done about it?

I know, you'd say 1) buy better pc; 2) reduce part count;, but I already made this vessel of as few parts as possible. Better computer is not an option at this time.

I already edited config to do that physics-fps trick, and reduced orbit debris to a minimum.

What else can be done? I know there were mods that "welded" ship into one part, but I can't find any of them updated for 1.0.4.

[JTpopcorn]

I believe the welding mod still works, even though it is several versions old.

[aluc24]

I believe the welding mod still works, even though it is several versions old.

In any case, that mod has a lot of limitations, making it a bit unpractical. Also, I tend to modify ships once in orbit (like, adding a solar panel, removing engine, and so on), and it would be impossible with weldment mod.

[ForScience6686]

I sent multiple crafts instead of one large ship. Better performance and I get plenty of practice with interplanetary travel. My eve explorer was over 300 parts in orbit and a pain to use, especially with long burn times.

[aluc24]

I sent multiple crafts instead of one large ship. Better performance and I get plenty of practice with interplanetary travel. My eve explorer was over 300 parts in orbit and a pain to use, especially with long burn times.

Yes, I know, I used to do the same, but in certain cases, one big mothership makes more sense. Also, it is cool. Anyway, I've seen people making motherships 10 times larger than mine, and still getting decent fps enough to record a video. So it must be possible, right?

[Norpo]

Yes, I know, I used to do the same, but in certain cases, one big mothership makes more sense. Also, it is cool. Anyway, I've seen people making motherships 10 times larger than mine, and still getting decent fps enough to record a video. So it must be possible, right?

There is a solution if FPS is your main concern, in the options there's a "physics delta-time" option. If you slide that to the right, FPS will be increased once the physics gets hard, but the game clock will go slower, so for every 1 second of game time it may take 5 seconds of real time. Still, if the game is super-unplayable, and you're patient enough, changing the delta-time should help with FPS.

The computer used tends to have a dramatic effect on how many parts you can have without the lag becoming unbearable, the range being about (from observation) 100-1000 parts, with performance being better if you have a few good CPU cores as opposed to more, "meh" cores.

This MIGHT be changing, with multi-threaded physics possibly coming in the next major update (1.1, not 1.0.5), so performance for computers with large amounts of cores should be way better, and computers with more than 1 core (really basically all computers nowadays) should go up too.

Or it may not be, we'll just have to see. For now, if the main problem is FPS, then changing the physics delta-time is probably the best option. If that doesn't work, well then you may just want to wait for 1.1 and see if that makes performance on your laptop better.

[aluc24]

There is a solution if FPS is your main concern, in the options there's a "physics delta-time" option. If you slide that to the right, FPS will be increased once the physics gets hard, but the game clock will go slower, so for every 1 second of game time it may take 5 seconds of real time. Still, if the game is super-unplayable, and you're patient enough, changing the delta-time should help with FPS.

The computer used tends to have a dramatic effect on how many parts you can have without the lag becoming unbearable, the range being about (from observation) 100-1000 parts, with performance being better if you have a few good CPU cores as opposed to more, "meh" cores.

This MIGHT be changing, with multi-threaded physics possibly coming in the next major update (1.1, not 1.0.5), so performance for computers with large amounts of cores should be way better, and computers with more than 1 core (really basically all computers nowadays) should go up too.

Or it may not be, we'll just have to see. For now, if the main problem is FPS, then changing the physics delta-time is probably the best option. If that doesn't work, well then you may just want to wait for 1.1 and see if that makes performance on your laptop better.

Thanks, man, but I already have physics delta-time slider all the way to the right...

[ForScience6686]

Time for an upgrade. Or wait until the 1.1 update.

Just saw another post where they disabled ground effect smoke, but that was only for lag issues off the pad. Don't think it would help once reaching orbit.

Edited November 8, 2015 by ForScience6686

[aluc24]

Time for an upgrade. Or wait until the 1.1 update.

Just saw another post where they disabled ground effect smoke, but that was only for lag issues off the pad. Don't think it would help once reaching orbit.

I really hope they do something about the part count. Having to limit ship size because of the performance is no fun. It would be great knowing that no matter if your ship is 1 or 1000 parts, you'll have the same performance. Think of the possibilities... Oh well.