lag on complex designs

I'm certain one of the great attractions of GC2 is the player's ability to build their own ships and then play with them in-game. Unfortunately some of the more elaborate designs tax the engine so much that it becomes difficult to play in anything other than tactical view, which eventually defeats the purpose of those cools designs. (BTW I'm running a GeForce 8600 on a Dual Core 3.0 with 2GB RAM -- not exactly a setup with weak wrists).

I'm definitely looking forward to TA's improved hull memory usage (I'm getting TA on the official release date), but it would have been cool if the engine was limber enough to deal with all those complex designs without lag, or if there was a "re-rendering" option in ship creation that optimised the design (i.e. removing bits hidden inside or behind others, clearing obscured textures, or even fusing the entire design together into a single chunk).

Or, alternatively, designers will just have to use some design economy, forego bristling 200-part ships, and make creative designs with less than twenty components ;)

J.
3,120 views 2 replies
Reply #1 Top
From what I understand, the guy who built the 3D engine has long since left Stardock (or was fired), so chances are nobody will be able to decipher what he did and refine it to the degree you want.

And with "20 components" I wouldn't be able to design my colony ships of glorious excess! :(

Reply #2 Top
I'm having a similar problem with the game, and want to know if anything can be done about it, aside from the rather drastic suggestions made in the OP. My more complicated ship designs seem to soak up a lot of memory - battles look like stop action animation, and I more or less have to spend the whole game in tactical mode.

Here's the thing: I know this is a fixable problem because many of these complex ship models worked just fine when I made them! Something has happened over time to cause this problem. Thing is, being a not very tech savvy user, I really have no idea what that something is. I've tried clearing space on my machine, and while that helped out some, it didn't solve the problem. I deleted a lot of my older ship designs and variants to try to clear that space, with the same disappointing result. I've taken as much stuff out of my startup that I can, basically done anything and everything to make more memory available without noticeable success. Anyone literate in these matters who can offer some advice? Right now, it's difficult for me to tell if the problem is something to do with the game itself, or a general lack of system resources; my machine is running more slowly in general than it used to, but this is really the only application that I have serious problems with.

Any help would be appreciated!