Debris and other Objects - Do they effect the game perfomance?

[Melcom]

Hi, usually i try to minimise active missions. But after a while, you have a station there, a base here and so on. Today i clicked on the "debris" tab and wow... that locks messy. How do all this objects effect the game performance? I mean, everything has to be calculated, rigth? Is this hard for the engine? Would "cleaning" the starmap result in a better performance?

Edited January 14, 2015 by Melcom

[DeMatt]

Yes and no. Debris parts within physics range get physics calculations like any part of a spacecraft; debris "ships" outside of physics range get on-rails orbit calculations like any other ship. As on-rails calculations are very cheap, and debris generally gets thrown away (and thus out of physics range) while you're flying, debris does not provide much of a performance hit.

Easy way to remove existing debris is to go into the Settings menu and, under the System tab, reduce "Max Persistent Debris" to zero.

[nekogod]

Easy way to remove existing debris is to go into the Settings menu and, under the System tab, reduce "Max Persistent Debris" to zero.

Yeah but it's way more fun to build a ship to collect and deorbit said debris

[Melcom]

Allright thank you so far.

So as long as i have not a very old CPU i do not have to worry that many objects in the star map could slow me down?

Are there some offical numbers out there?

[KerbMav]

Quick and dirty link for an answer.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/95159-CPU-impact-of-non-active-ships

[Melcom]

Thank you!

[eddiew]

I am pretty darn sure that debris and 'flights in progress' slow down your transition times between buildings and getting stuff onto the launch pad... Considering getting an SSD raid array to make it bearable with 50 things going on!

Debris is probably less of a problem though; active missions will be complicated vessels with many many parts, and bulks up the save file massively. Debris is usually a tank, engine, and decoupler and doesn't add so much bloat.

[THX1138]

Considering getting an SSD raid array to make it bearable with 50 things going on!

Why do you think it's the HDD which is slowing down the game?