Satelites and Space Debris - Do they consume Memory

[Sublight]

The more I play, the more my game crashes.  Is this from me staging my rockets and them lurking in the solar system taking up memory?  If so, how can I get rid of this space junk? 

If I have to start another game, then I can do it.  If I have to do this then how do I prevent this junk from building up.  My game crashes so bad now that its almost unplayable.

Im on Xbox One by the way.  Ill be transitioning to Linux within a month or so.

Edited August 7, 2016 by Sublight

[dafidge9898]

2 hours ago, Sublight said:

The more I play, the more my game crashes.  Is this from me staging my rockets and them lurking in the solar system taking up memory?  If so, how can I get rid of this space junk? 

If I have to start another game, then I can do it.  If I have to do this then how do I prevent this junk from building up.  My game crashes so bad now that its almost unplayable.

Im on Xbox One by the way.  Ill be transitioning to Linux within a month or so.

You can get rid of space junk by opening the setting menu at the main menu, find the slider that says max persistent debris, and lower it to whatever you like. I think the default is 250. Are you sure it's not because you're getting more comfortable with the game, therefore making bigger and more complex rockets? 

[StrandedonEarth]

You can also go into the tracking station, make sure the filter at the top of the screen is set to show debris, then select the debris and terminate them one-by-one

Edited August 7, 2016 by StrandedonEarth

[LN400]

A quick way to get rid of space junk is to go to the tracking station, select the scrap you want to throw away and click the discard button. Click yes to confirm and the junk is gone.

 

For that tank/engine that got you into orbit, there is a more stylish way to get rid of it.

Use those small solid fuel sepatrons and the like. Attach them pointing towards the ship, on the tank/engine you want to drop and stage them together with the separator. The kick they provide is all you need to deorbit that piece of space junk. Remember though that the heavier the junk is, the more sepatrons are needed and they do add some mass for the initial stages but it's a nice way of getting those spent rockets out of the way.

Edited August 7, 2016 by LN400

[Spricigo]

A trick to prevent used stages to stay around as debris it's to let then in collision course with a celestial body.  As examples staging lifters just before reaching orbit and completing the orbit with upper stage, or de orbiting the lifter after reaching orbit (it can be done if you include a probe core and a bit extra fuel in the kifter it or using  separatrons like @LN400 said.) 

 

Notice that console's performance issues it's something we,  pc gamers,  don't have much awareness and knowledge of,  for obvious reasons.  Take a look at Technical support (consoles) for more accurate/detailed information. 

[Sublight]

Thanks guys.  Everyone has good suggestions!  Im not using more complicated rockets.  The one that works best is my original design, so that's what I use.  Its old, and could be built better, but it gets me to the moon and back every time.  Thanks for the suggestions you guys.  I appreciate it.

[Magzimum]

23 hours ago, Sublight said:

The more I play, the more my game crashes. 

Maybe not related, and maybe not even a fix... I used to keep my Chrome open in the background, to alt-tab to the forums and other online help while playing. I noticed that I get less (or none at all) crashes if I close the browser. I keep some very light program open to still be able to alt-tab out of the game, and open a browser if I need one. But that is for the PC game (on Linux Mint 17.1).

But I tested this not enough to claim that this is a fix for all crashes. It just appears to help me.

[edit] I just had a crash without the browser open, so forget about this bit... sorry for confusion. 

23 hours ago, Sublight said:

Im on Xbox One by the way.  Ill be transitioning to Linux within a month or so.

As I said above, you can still get crashes with Linux. But I do recommend Linux - it's a great operating system, and there are days where I get no crashes at all... so the problem is small for me.

Edited August 8, 2016 by Magzimum
1st part of my post may have been wrong

[Sublight]

4 minutes ago, Magzimum said:

Maybe not related, and maybe not even a fix... I used to keep my Chrome open in the background, to alt-tab to the forums and other online help while playing. I noticed that I get less (or none at all) crashes if I close the browser. I keep some very light program open to still be able to alt-tab out of the game, and open a browser if I need one. But that is for the PC game (on Linux Mint 17.1).

But I tested this not enough to claim that this is a fix for all crashes. It just appears to help me.

As I said above, you can still get crashes with Linux. But I do recommend Linux - it's a great operating system, and there are days where I get no crashes at all... so the problem is small for me.

Thank you.  That is very helpful.

[klesh]

Another tip to keep LKO clear of debris is build your lifters so they run out of fuel just before you're able to orbit.  Upper stage kicks in and gives the little boost you need for orbit, and your lifter stage falls back to Kerbin on its sub-orbital trajectory.  You can slap on some retrograde facing sepratrons too, to ensure the lift stage loses a bunch of m/sec, guarenteeing a reentry.  

[Diche Bach]

Problem is I _like_ debris! Gives me stuff to go on future salvage missions to recover once I get that grappling arm thingy! I wish there was a mod to remove that "delete debris" button from map view and also to add "salvage missions."

LOL, I've got a couple pieces of debris from rather early in my career play (one is a parachute strangely) that have somehow been catapulted several million kilometers away from Kerbol system. One of them seems to be heading to Valentine system!

I didn't see anyone really answer his question: "does more debris impact game performance?"

At least on my PC build (ridiculous number of mods that obviously dramatically impact performance . . . as in 95% of 8GB of RAM [plus whatever the VGA has . . . 4GB I think . . . even WITH 16GB of hard-drive space allocated to virtual memory!) I don't notice any signs of performance issues that I'd link to more debris or more objects in map view.

Going into SPH or VAB, places where the enormous number of mods I have installed impact asset acquisition . . . now THAT obviously impacts performance! Build a ginormous 300 part space station launcher: game practically goes into a coma and barely retains enough responsiveness to complete the design.

One of these days I've got to try to sort out why my mod build is such a RAM-pig and try to do what I can to optimize it . . .

So: can anyone answer DOES more debris/objects have any inherent impact on game performance?

[Magzimum]

Regarding the crashes, I just had a crash (while constructing my newest lander), with no programs open other than Caja (that's Linux' file explorer). Soooo... sorry for causing confusion, but my previous comment that the browser may have something to do with it seems to be complete ****. I've also edited in a comment in my previous post. 

[Ineedaweapon]

On 8 August 2016 at 7:16 PM, Diche Bach said:

Problem is I _like_ debris! Gives me stuff to go on future salvage missions to recover once I get that grappling arm thingy! I wish there was a mod to remove that "delete debris" button from map view and also to add "salvage missions."

LOL, I've got a couple pieces of debris from rather early in my career play (one is a parachute strangely) that have somehow been catapulted several million kilometers away from Kerbol system. One of them seems to be heading to Valentine system!

I didn't see anyone really answer his question: "does more debris impact game performance?"

At least on my PC build (ridiculous number of mods that obviously dramatically impact performance . . . as in 95% of 8GB of RAM [plus whatever the VGA has . . . 4GB I think . . . even WITH 16GB of hard-drive space allocated to virtual memory!) I don't notice any signs of performance issues that I'd link to more debris or more objects in map view.

Going into SPH or VAB, places where the enormous number of mods I have installed impact asset acquisition . . . now THAT obviously impacts performance! Build a ginormous 300 part space station launcher: game practically goes into a coma and barely retains enough responsiveness to complete the design.

One of these days I've got to try to sort out why my mod build is such a RAM-pig and try to do what I can to optimize it . . .

So: can anyone answer DOES more debris/objects have any inherent impact on game performance?

I dont know about on pc, but on xbox it seems to cause all manner of performance drops, glitches and crashes.  The most annoying one is where you discover halfway through a mission that you can no longer save, load or return to space centre and have to close the game and reopen to fix.  Its basically the same as if the game had crashed, except the game doesnt tell you about it, and you continue playing for ages before realising you have to restart and load the last save.  Evil.

[Corona688]

As I understand it, debris can impact performance, but not consistently.

When debris is far away from anything else, it's just an orbit on rails.  Not so bad.

When it approaches something else, physics kick on and the game has to decide whether it hits anything or not.

Plus, there's also the unavoidable losses of having to check n x n objects for proximity to each other.

So a single piece of debris isn't so bad.  It's when it's nearby, or there's a lot of them, that they're trouble.