How to optimize KSP?

[oleg kerman]

Hello, I am playing ksp on a laptop with intel5 and 24gb of ram, but with very slow gpu, I have 24 fps with 50 parts and lowest graphics  settings (if go above 100 parts it is unplayable ), so does anybody know any technics on how to make your part count go down or any mod to make it more optimized?

 

Edited September 10 by oleg kerman
fixed my laptop specs

[JeDoesStuff]

So first thing first: Fuel crossfeed will generate more lag than just having the parts, so a craft with 500 parts in wings will lag far less than 500 parts in asparagus staging. Additionally, CPU is a lot more important for KSP than you might, so I'm hesitant to think that it really is the GPU causing that big of an issue. But, if you want to reduce part count, the best thing you can do is learn how to get more out of the parts you have. This is best done through reduction in dry mass wherever possible. It is also important that you select the right part for the job at hand. Here's a few suggestions:

• Ion Engine: The Dawn engine can land on most of the bodies in the game, so it works great as a small lander. However, it will only be able to with the use of a command chair, which is not a particularly low lag option. Because it also gets tremendous Delta - V, you only need a few components to make it work. My 1.447 ton Moho mission, despite not being part count optimized, was sill only 19 parts. If you optimized it for part count (and for more reasonable margins, you can very easily get the part count down to 11 parts if you replace the Jet engine and Twitch stages with a single Twin Boar (and removing the fairing optimization part as they aren't necessary. TL;DR, a small ion chair will have stupendous delta v and can land on most bodies with only needing 9-11 parts AND can be put into orbit using only a Twin Boar.
• NERVA: The Nerv can land on basically everything except Laythe and Eve, so you can use it very extensively. Like the Ion engine, it is very efficient, so it can optimize part count the same way. The issue is that you will need more stages to get the most out of it, even if you optimize the dry mass out.
• Twin Boar: As I've mentioned earlier, the Twin Boar can deliver a small payload into LKO all on its own, so it is incredibly useful as an SSTO booster stage. 
• Fairings: Fairings are the quintessential device for optimization in this game. They allow you to have any payload you want for almost no drag, making Kerbin ascent dramatically cheaper
• ISRU: You probably knew this was coming anyway, but ISRU saves tremendous amounts of effort on all sides of optimizing pat count. If you have a craft with ISRU that can land on Minmus, it can make it anywhere in the Kerbol system. The way this saves parts is that you can have high thrust, low ISP engines and not have to worry about the spiders web of asparagus staged fuel tanks. Note that in order to get to somewhere like Tylo, you will need to test more than just reaching Minmus, but I'm assuming you do some testing for any of these anyway. And ISRU setup can be done in just 5 parts, being the Converter, Ore Tank, Drill, Radiator, and Elecrical Production. If you have a Command Pod, you wont need any batteries.

Lastly, I want to point you to Bradley Whistance's 10 part grand tour. This is an extreme example of what can be done for minimum parts, and he proved that the answer as to what you can do is everything. I don't expect anyone to be able to replicate what he has done here, since the difficulty of piloting that mission, as he described it, sounds not worth the effort of saving just a couple parts. 

 

This should solve your FPS problem, and although I doubt that you will be able to achieve much higher than 40-50 FPS based on what you've described, these techniques will absolutely help make your general KSP gaming experience much more enjoyable. Let me know if you have any more questions

[TheFlyingKerman]

On 9/6/2024 at 9:42 PM, oleg kerman said:

Hello, I am playing ksp on a laptop with intel7 and 24gb of ram, but with very slow gpu, I have 24 fps with 50 parts and lowest graphics  settings (if go above 100 parts it is unplayable ), so does anybody know any technics on how to make your part count go down or any mod to make it more optimized?

 

I play the game using a similarly weak laptop, with 10-th gen i5 and Intel integrated graphics. I find that the weak link is mostly with rendering the ground. So if I fly a plane while pointing the camera at the sky, I get much higher FPS, even better when I go to map mode. I have no problem with 100+ parts ships when they are in space.

The optimizations I have done:

1. I run ksp_x64.exe with the switches -force-opengl and -nolog , the first forces the game to use opengl rendering which is marginally faster then directx, the second disables logging.

2. I lower resolution to 1280x720.

3. I disable anti-aliasing in game but forces CMAA in Intel Command Center beta.

4. In setting.cfg I change

        PLANET
        {
            name = KerbinOcean
            minDistance = 3
            minSubdivision = 1
            maxSubdivision = 6
        }

and similar for EveOcean and LaytheOcean, which further lowers the quality of the ocean (it is possible to go lower but there are artifacts).

 

[oleg kerman]

On 9/6/2024 at 1:21 PM, JeDoesStuff said:

So first thing first: Fuel crossfeed will generate more lag than just having the parts, so a craft with 500 parts in wings will lag far less than 500 parts in asparagus staging. Additionally, CPU is a lot more important for KSP than you might, so I'm hesitant to think that it really is the GPU causing that big of an issue. But, if you want to reduce part count, the best thing you can do is learn how to get more out of the parts you have. This is best done through reduction in dry mass wherever possible. It is also important that you select the right part for the job at hand. Here's a few suggestions:

• Ion Engine: The Dawn engine can land on most of the bodies in the game, so it works great as a small lander. However, it will only be able to with the use of a command chair, which is not a particularly low lag option. Because it also gets tremendous Delta - V, you only need a few components to make it work. My 1.447 ton Moho mission, despite not being part count optimized, was sill only 19 parts. If you optimized it for part count (and for more reasonable margins, you can very easily get the part count down to 11 parts if you replace the Jet engine and Twitch stages with a single Twin Boar (and removing the fairing optimization part as they aren't necessary. TL;DR, a small ion chair will have stupendous delta v and can land on most bodies with only needing 9-11 parts AND can be put into orbit using only a Twin Boar.
• NERVA: The Nerv can land on basically everything except Laythe and Eve, so you can use it very extensively. Like the Ion engine, it is very efficient, so it can optimize part count the same way. The issue is that you will need more stages to get the most out of it, even if you optimize the dry mass out.
• Twin Boar: As I've mentioned earlier, the Twin Boar can deliver a small payload into LKO all on its own, so it is incredibly useful as an SSTO booster stage. 
• Fairings: Fairings are the quintessential device for optimization in this game. They allow you to have any payload you want for almost no drag, making Kerbin ascent dramatically cheaper
• ISRU: You probably knew this was coming anyway, but ISRU saves tremendous amounts of effort on all sides of optimizing pat count. If you have a craft with ISRU that can land on Minmus, it can make it anywhere in the Kerbol system. The way this saves parts is that you can have high thrust, low ISP engines and not have to worry about the spiders web of asparagus staged fuel tanks. Note that in order to get to somewhere like Tylo, you will need to test more than just reaching Minmus, but I'm assuming you do some testing for any of these anyway. And ISRU setup can be done in just 5 parts, being the Converter, Ore Tank, Drill, Radiator, and Elecrical Production. If you have a Command Pod, you wont need any batteries.

Lastly, I want to point you to Bradley Whistance's 10 part grand tour. This is an extreme example of what can be done for minimum parts, and he proved that the answer as to what you can do is everything. I don't expect anyone to be able to replicate what he has done here, since the difficulty of piloting that mission, as he described it, sounds not worth the effort of saving just a couple parts. 

 

This should solve your FPS problem, and although I doubt that you will be able to achieve much higher than 40-50 FPS based on what you've described, these techniques will absolutely help make your general KSP gaming experience much more enjoyable. Let me know if you have any more questions

Thank you for your comment! I will take a look at that video too.  

Edited September 10 by oleg kerman

[Vanamonde]

Thread moved to the Support sub. 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Terrain rendering is a big one for eating frames. When I played KSP without a GPU a few years ago (because the GPU broke) the performance hit was worst when looking at terrain, so turn the graphics and detail settings for terrain as low as they can go and try to avoid looking at the ground unless necessary.

Enable advanced tweakables in the main menu settings and then use autostruts between parts rather than the strut part- I tend to autostrut engines to root and boosters to grandparent for maximum rigidity. Fuel crossfeed can also hurt the physics calculations so try to avoid using lots of fuel tanks feeding lots of engines.