Wouldn't stacking ships help with game performance?

from Sins Forums

I'm no programmer, but after reading Frogboy's article on RTS's and talking about the difficulty being in unit rendering, it made me wonder if stacking units in SoaSE would help a lot.  For example, instead of showing 100 corvettes, show 10 packs/squadrons of 10, just with visual indicators.  When one of the units die, it becomes 9 packs of 10 and 9 units.  I know it wouldn't be graphically as impressive, but if it helped with the lag in big battles and general game performance it would be worth it to me.

technical
7,936 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Good idea but I think devs would have to change so many things for this.. so it is not likely to happen before Sins 2.. Think about this, adding new planets is impossible in a new patch (Yarlen told me in another thread), so would THIS be possible? I think not :/ It would need another expansion, not a patch I guess.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Turchany, reply 1
Good idea but I think devs would have to change so many things for this.. so it is not likely to happen before Sins 2.. Think about this, adding new planets is impossible in a new patch (Yarlen told me in another thread), so would THIS be possible? I think not :/ It would need another expansion, not a patch I guess.

Well, if it's waiting until Sins 2 then it's probably not worth it.  I'd prefer it not to happen, but it's a trade off for performance.  My understanding is that Sins 2 will support multi-core processors, more than 2GB mem, etc., so I'd be less worried about it then.

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting slowreflex, reply 2
My understanding is that Sins 2 will support multi-core processors, more than 2GB mem, etc., so I'd be less worried about it then.

We hope anyways.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Do so would help in theory, but would not be practical at this point. The future of RTS lies in the rich goodness of 64-bit and multi-core tech.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

Perhaps, but then again there was that 2gb limit the devs sweared by until the modders smashed it...

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting DunmeriSpellsword, reply 6
Perhaps, but then again there was that 2gb limit the devs sweared by until the modders smashed it...

you mean there's a way to stop the game from playing like a slideshow on big maps?

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

You can, but you'd need a mod that reduces the total number of items that need to be loaded....this isn't just the number of assets (like # of entities, etc.) but how many objects are actually in a game...if you halved the maximum number of ships and SC, late game performance would improve substantially...

Some of the particle effects are also grossly efficient....a mod that dealt with those would help immensely...

There are a few people working on such endeavors...of course, their mods only help those who use mods, not the vanilla game itself...

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

SoaSE Maelstrom has a mod patch for 64bit systems, and it has a 4GB limit  B)

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting DunmeriSpellsword, reply 5
Perhaps, but then again there was that 2gb limit the devs sweared by until the modders smashed it...

Quoting MooMugger, reply 8

SoaSE Maelstrom has a mod patch for 64bit systems, and it has a 4GB limit 

We've never "Smashed" the 2GB limit. Modders have helped optimize it so its less of an issue, and LAA may bring the limit to 4GB for some (though that is hardly a "mod patch"), but that limit will be hit again eventually either way.