Ways to get more performance out of KSP?

[Tripod27]

I've recently started working on a reasonably sized space station in KSP (most of the ones I've had before were just basically fuel tanks floating in space with docking ports, a cockpit and some RCS strapped on). At first it was going alright, but after I got the fourth section nearby, I started having FPS problems. I still managed to dock it and then launched a fuel ship up to allow the station to load a decent amount of fuel to to other ships.

When the ship got a few hundred meters away from the station, my entire game went down to about one frame every 5 seconds, RCS jets looked huge and covered almost half the screen when fired, and the ship was basically uncontrollable. I already moved the physics down to one calculation every second last time I had this issue, and the other settings didn't affect my FPS at all no matter what they were set at

Here's images of the overall station, and the fuel ship attached to a previous much smaller station

The ships aren't that big and the overall part count is about 290 for the station and like 25 for the fuel ship, so I don't understand why the game is having such a hard time.

My graphics card is a 460GTX1gb

Processor is a Phenom II 6 core 1100T 3.3GHz

Game gets pretty boring when you can't make anything bigger than a few sections combined and I've seen people on youtube make much bigger stations:huh:

[_Aramchek_]

Overclock your cpu, your 1100t should go to close to 4ghz, maybe a little more maybe a little less. Otherwise, there really isn't much you can do.

[Tripod27]

Alright, I'll try it

Does this game support multiple core CPUs at all or does it only use 1 or 2?

[Crown]

The game engine works only on one Processor, afaik.

[Whackjob]

Alright, I'll try it

Does this game support multiple core CPUs at all or does it only use 1 or 2?

Just the one. Just for now. Hopefully just for now.

[soranno]

You have a large number of unnecessary parts that could easily be removed/replaced.

Sure enough, limiting design due to framerate issues isn`t something anyone wants to do, but at this stage in development of the game it is a reality.

For example, you have those 4 large solar panel arrays, and rack upon rack of batteries, and a total power consumtion on the station of essentially zero.

Additionally, you have rcs thrusters every few meters along the structure of all elements of the station.. while a few well placed thrusters will not only do the job, but will do it far better in fact.

You could probably quite easily drop the part count of your station there by 40 or more, without any effect to its operation (except its rcs maneuvering being better)

[Tripod27]

Well, not sure if overclocking the CPU by about 10% or just restarting the computer for the first time in about a month fixed the problem, but one of them made my performance be just about perfect again and I had no issue docking a fuel ship at all

[_Aramchek_]

A 10% overclock wouldn't make much of a difference, I'm going to say you should probably restart your pc more often.

[The Destroyer]

You have a large number of unnecessary parts that could easily be removed/replaced.

Sure enough, limiting design due to framerate issues isn`t something anyone wants to do, but at this stage in development of the game it is a reality.

For example, you have those 4 large solar panel arrays, and rack upon rack of batteries, and a total power consumtion on the station of essentially zero.

Additionally, you have rcs thrusters every few meters along the structure of all elements of the station.. while a few well placed thrusters will not only do the job, but will do it far better in fact.

You could probably quite easily drop the part count of your station there by 40 or more, without any effect to its operation (except its rcs maneuvering being better)

But, they look cool D:

Like, the ISS looks like just a big thing in space without those huge solar panels

[Tripod27]

yeah, was thinking the same thing, aram

noticed this game had memory issues when I installed FAR mod, which seemed to bring up the memory use a lot, and Id still get horrible FPS after I uninstalled the mod and launched a ship with only one part until I restarted the computer

[soranno]

Actually yes, that solar panel array does look cool, and I would work very hard to find other parts to remove in order to keep them as they are. However, with zero power consumtion there is no need for any of the batteries, as the command pods etc already on the station have electric charge storage of their own anyway ~

[CCKinnison]

No one else mentioned - rendering the planet is a pain for the CPU right now. try to do things when facing AWAY from the planet, that should help a surprising amount.

[leax256]

I can say with my phenom II 965 an overclock of 15% makes a noticable difference in performance. for now remove uneeded parts and OC. I say within 3 months after ps4 & xbox 1 unity will get proper multicore support so more of those 6 cores are used.

also form my knowledge the 1100t can fairly easily get to 4.5 ghz if you know what you are doing.