At what point does the game start lagging for most?

[Palamedes]

So I have noticed the game is starting to lag on me as I build larger ships in space and fly them off to the planets..

My current space station is made up of 4 of my "Torpedo Tugs", a central core hab and power unit, a communications sat, and a large fueling station and dock setup.

All told, its probably between 250 and 300 parts. (I don't actually know the full count but could probably count he parts if it is needed)

This ship has my frame rate down to around 10fps (with 8x antialiasing heh). Is that reasonable?

Are there any specific modules that for whatever reason cause more video lag? Example; Engines that are running could cause more lag due to being particle emitters..etc.. (thats a guess)

My computer is no slouch.. in fact its rather beefy and never gets above 20% CPU usage. I have 16gigs of memory and it usually just barely gets over 8..

Thoughts?

[DrMonte]

Read this thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/65130-Graphic-setting-and-what-they-means?highlight=graphics+settings

What ever your PC is it is no big deal to overuse it with bad settings. I have average three year old PC and don't have issues with launching 1000 parts ships at FullHD.

[Pecan]

0.22 = over about 300 parts. 0.23 = when it starts :-( If you're using 0.23 the water-texture bug causes tremendous lag below 160km or so.

[TechnicalK3rbal]

I can have ~450 parts without any lag at all, but I can have ships less than 1000 parts with tolerable lag.

Edited February 10, 2014 by TechnicalK3rbal
Clarifying

[DMagic]

Part count based performance is highly dependent on the CPU, and the physics calculations used are limited to a single CPU thread, so high end, multi-core CPUs don't perform as well as you might expect. There are also some graphics issues that can cause slow downs, the terrain thing is one, but you could try lowering the AA settings too.

If you want to get a current part count for your vessel go into map mode and click on the little "i" on the right side of the screen. This will give you some info about your craft, like part count, mass, etc...