when have you over done it with the part count?

[Cydonian Monk]

I have no idea what the framerate drops to, but around 1200 parts is when things start to be unbearable. I've overdone it twice - once in an older version when building Kelgee Station (which melted down at 256 parts), and more recently when I built the Pioneer Münbase. Pioneer is kinda ok at 650, but as I was building it (with skycranes, et al still attached) I was pushing 1200 at one point. That was misery.

I think the worst performance I've seen was when I launched a 3000 part Trashcan/MacPro into orbit. That was mostly welded down into 5 parts, though.

[Superfluous J]

I've had over 700 parts loaded at the same time and my machine isn't very happy, but the absolute worst I ever had was my Joolpollo (AKA Jool 5) mission which was less than 500 parts but had a lot of docking ports. I never tested it in other situations, but I think having so many docking ports (Something in the range of 50 docking ports I think) caused it to take somewhere between 5-10 minutes to load in the VAB and whenever it entered the physics window (at launch).

Once I got it into LKO and dropped all the launch stuff, it was a little better and only took 1-2 minutes to load each time, and as I completed parts of the Jool mission and shed more parts it got better, but even when it was under 200 parts it still lagged a bit.

[r4pt0r]

If im not mistaken whackjobs launches take (sometimes) up to an hour. will need his confirmation on this of course.

[Liowen]

My current Eve lander is in the ballpark of 300 parts, and while it does not lag me out yet it does have an interesting side effect when I leave the VAB. Upon going to the KCS screen with the lander still loaded I am zoomed all the way in between the VAB and research building, however if I hit new and then exit it is fine. I have yet to build the launcher for this or add in heat shields so the part count is only going to go up, and then add in the tug/return craft to the mix I have a feeling my PC will not be kind to me.

[Moar Boosters]

I think I slightly over-did this rocket.

[Eric S]

Before I upgraded my computer, I decided to do a Jool mission that suffered from mission creep. It started as a single unmanned craft that dropped 6 probes, one for Jool and one for each moon. It reached a 600 part monstrosity of a mothership that had to be assembled in orbit via docking, with four main sections, two two-man landers, 8 probes, and a max crew capacity of 20 kerbals. After attempting to dock the parts in slideshow mode, I reengineered it down to about 400 parts, which made it playable for my rather lax definition of playable (probably under 10 FPS and the clock running at half speed at best, and that only after I dropped all the probes). I've got an album on Imgur somewhere of that mission.

Oddly enough, I haven't tried any missions that aggressive since, even though my current computer is probably at least twice the speed when running KSP.

[Franklin]

Before I upgraded my computer, I decided to do a Jool mission that suffered from mission creep. It started as a single unmanned craft that dropped 6 probes, one for Jool and one for each moon. It reached a 600 part monstrosity of a mothership that had to be assembled in orbit via docking, with four main sections, two two-man landers, 8 probes, and a max crew capacity of 20 kerbals. After attempting to dock the parts in slideshow mode, I reengineered it down to about 400 parts, which made it playable for my rather lax definition of playable (probably under 10 FPS and the clock running at half speed at best, and that only after I dropped all the probes). I've got an album on Imgur somewhere of that mission.

Oddly enough, I haven't tried any missions that aggressive since, even though my current computer is probably at least twice the speed when running KSP.

I hate that, part count aside, that's how all my missions end up as well. Over-engineered. It starts out as a dead simple probe to Pol and turns into a multi-stage habitat & rover and I just lean back and ask myself how the hell I got to this point.

[MarvinKitFox]

I start straining the local space-time interface when I launch stuff such as this:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/69816-A-preliminary-study-into-the-Migratory-Habits-of-the-common-Octo-2

Only 721 probe cores on that baby, for simultaneous release.

launch takes place at about 4 SPF. (SPF = like Frames per second, but the other way round. We are talking seconds per frame)

But when I go *really* nuts is when I launch my Refuelling spacebase.

75 half-orange-tanks of mixed fuel, Monoprop, etc.. about 7200t in orbit. 2400 parts on the ground

But my best/worst is likely when I started flying a whole city around. With Futbol field and all!

like this thing from an earlier challenge:http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/64380-10-Km-race-to-space!?p=883507&viewfull=1#post883507

I don't remember the part count offhand, but the PASSENGER count is 1841 Kerbals !!!

Edited September 5, 2014 by MarvinKitFox

[merendel]

I normaly start geting minor slowdowns (ticks into the yellow) at 350-400 ish parts. Things are normaly tolerable up to about 800-1000 parts or so(depends on the ship). Beyond that framerate and physics rate are just too slow to be bothered with.

[Franklin]

I start straining the local space-time interface when I launch stuff such as this:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/69816-A-preliminary-study-into-the-Migratory-Habits-of-the-common-Octo-2

Only 721 probe cores on that baby, for simultaneous release.

http://i.imgur.com/x1Tf307.png

Oh my god, how have I never considered releasing swarms before. Gotta jot this down.

[GreeningGalaxy]

I start straining the local space-time interface when I launch stuff such as this:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/69816-A-preliminary-study-into-the-Migratory-Habits-of-the-common-Octo-2

Only 721 probe cores on that baby, for simultaneous release.

http://i.imgur.com/x1Tf307.png

launch takes place at about 4 SPF. (SPF = like Frames per second, but the other way round. We are talking seconds per frame)

Someone needs to make a mod that can make probe cores duplicate themselves at a variable rate. Then we can have a KSP Gray Goo scenario, except with macrobots instead of nanobots.

[Thomas988]

Oooooh boy. That's a story and a half.

In the early months of my KSP experience, I was eager to go interplanetary. So excited, in fact, that I decided to make a massive, over-engineered spacecraft that bears nothing but low framerate. When I built this thing, I had no idea about delta-v, engine ISP or any of the complicated stuff. To me, going somewhere was just a matter of putting big engines on things and giving them a lot of fuel. Just to make you all cringe even more, it has four nuclear engines. Whether it can actually make it to Duna and back I don't exactly know, but I'm thinking it won't.

That thing is still in low orbit around Kerbin, and I have no idea what to do with it.

[Franklin]

I don't think your problem was having 4 LV-Ns, but that you brought an ocean's worth of fuel.

edit: Like, my boilerplate fly-by design has 5 LV-Ns under 5 FL-T800s in asp staging and that thing will get you anywhere in the system and back.

Edited September 5, 2014 by Franklin

[problemecium]

Four? FOUR?

What's wrong with four? The one I'm working on now is designed to hold between 16 and 32 LV-Ns. If I took off the rear cargo bay it could hold 40.

[cantab]

Four LV-N's is often pretty sensible. You don't want too few or your TWR will be poor making ejection burns difficult. Equally you don't want too high or you'd actually be better off with a chemical engine. I don't know how much delta-V it's got but that ship looks OK.

My LV-N count record is 14, which for its payload probably was overkill, but then I was making a ship for someone else to fly in a collab and wanted to keep the burn time down for them. (Said payload could actually have made Jool all by itself on its mod ion engines, but that would be cruel.)

[O-Doc]

Any kind of benchmarker for this?

I made Kerbdometer when doing a modded installation to sort out the efficient mods from the resource hoggers.

Here's a recent challenge album which took about ten hours to fly.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

I can't wait for Unity 5...

[Scotius]

So say we all

[Linear]

Hit the limit for playable framerates :-)

EDIT: Full graphics but i don't think lowering it will change anything.

[SkyRender]

I've been surprised at how many parts it takes now for KSP to start chugging on me.

This monstrosity makes the FPS dip to around 30 or so, and that's with a number of enhancement mods installed to boot. It's "merely" 188 parts, but seeing as a 188-part ship turned KSP into a slideshow on a stock install for me not too many versions ago, I'm okay with that. (I really hate NVIDIA, incidentally, for making their PhysX engine perform so badly on AMD hardware. Bad NVIDIA!)

[Linear]

I've been surprised at how many parts it takes now for KSP to start chugging on me.

http://www.skyrender.net/lp2/ksp/spp_ssto4.jpg

This monstrosity makes the FPS dip to around 30 or so, and that's with a number of enhancement mods installed to boot. It's "merely" 188 parts, but seeing as a 188-part ship turned KSP into a slideshow on a stock install for me not too many versions ago, I'm okay with that. (I really hate NVIDIA, incidentally, for making their PhysX engine perform so badly on AMD hardware. Bad NVIDIA!)

PhysX performs better on intel (marginally) because of better single thread performance.

[RocketPilot573]

Once I get over 600 parts I start seeing lag.

[Rithsom]

I got a new graphics card a few weeks ago, hoping that it's PhysX would allow for higher part counts. However, KSP still makes the processor deal with all the physics calculations, and I still get major lag with ships that have 300+ parts. However, Unity 5 looks very promising, so I'm probably going to wait until then before I make any more changes to my computer.

[cantab]

The snag with GPU-accelerated physics is that being at the moment specific to certain GPU makes and lines means games can't use it for core functionality, and it gets relegated to showy but non-essential stuff like making glass break more realistically.

[Linear]

I got a new graphics card a few weeks ago, hoping that it's PhysX would allow for higher part counts. However, KSP still makes the processor deal with all the physics calculations, and I still get major lag with ships that have 300+ parts. However, Unity 5 looks very promising, so I'm probably going to wait until then before I make any more changes to my computer.

A simple forum search would have helped you there, many knowledgeable people on the forum! :-)

A CPU upgrade can be not too expensive depending on the motherboard you have, also.

[Levelord]

This was my old Dune Station.