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[Blaze]

So I turned off sound, as I wanted to listen to something else while playing.

I was shocked at how much more smoothly the game runs now. Lag and stuttering gameplay is only apparent in the largest fleet battles, and even then it still runs better than anything I had while sounds were active.

Is there some way to optimize sounds? I do like them, and they help in survival (It's how I time my defenses; like with Templar clarents).

[Alex]

Are you seeing this in vanilla, too? According to my testing (a while back) sounds are a consideration, but not *that* big of a deal - not something above 10-15% or thereabouts, say. Either a mod is doing something more intense w/ sound, or it's running differently on your PC than on my dev one, which may mean an issue with your OpenAL installation; going here and running the Windows OpenAL installer may be worth a shot.

[Dark.Revenant]

Try sound on w/o Mayorate.

[Blaze]

Wow, I dunno what was in that 567kb file, but it fixed the issue right up.

[Alex]

Huh, that's really good news. Probably worth a shot for anyone whose game doesn't run as well as it theoretically should, then.

[The Ender]

I have pretty severe performance problems as well (Windows 10, 7970M AMD card (latest version of Catalyst & accompanying drivers are installed), 64 bit Java (JRE-8) & about 4~ gigs of memory allocated to Starsector.

Running on the GPU, SS gets about 20~ ish FPS on the map screen and 30~ ish FPS at best in combat. Idling on the main screen, FPS is very inconsistent, jumping from 40 to 50 to 60 FPS regardless of what is being drawn on the screen (Idle hovers around 60-70%).


Oddly, running on the dedicated 'Intel HD' mobo graphics (no idea what actual processor Alienware put on the mobo), which is more or less pure garbage & only used as a controller for the display, causes Starsector to run significantly better (consistent 60 FPS idling at 80-90% on the main screen, 60 FPS in small fleet actions (but dipping back to barely-playable 20-30~ FPS when battles become large enough to actually be fun, because - as I said - the 'Intel HD' processor is pure garbage), 40~ FPS on the map screen.

I have ShaderLib installed, but have turned off all of it's graphical effects.

[Alex]

Hmm. That sounds like it's most likely a case of "latest drivers for your main card still have a ways to go to work well on Windows 10". What happens on the Intel card is what you'd expect - good framerate when there's not that much to do, tanks when there is. That it's just universally bad on the (ostensibly superior) AMD card points to the drivers as the cause of the issue, because it's likely to be struggling with something basic that's just needed by the game across the board.

Have you tried running w/o sound, btw? Might be worth a shot anyway, even though it doesn't look like the cause of the problem in this case.

Also, it might be worth it checking/adjusting various 3D settings in the CCC; could be a case of some settings causing a problem rather than the drivers specifically.

[The Ender]

I did try to sound fix suggested earlier; unfortunately, this did not address the problem for me. :|

I'll keep messing with the 3D settings and see if there's something that works; if I find a magic setting I'll post it for the benefit of anyone else having the same problem.

[TJJ]

Is there an archive of previous SS versions?

It'd be helpful in isolating whether the performance regression I've experienced is the game, drivers, or something else.

[Alex]

Is there an archive of previous SS versions?

The main download links from the old release blog posts *should* work.

It'd be helpful in isolating whether the performance regression I've experienced is the game, drivers, or something else.

It can get a bit muddy if, say, the game starts using a specific feature of OpenGL in a given release, which a given version of the driver struggles with, but is otherwise a "normal" thing to do, i.e. nothing fancy. Still good information, though.

[Euphytose]

Windows 10 is a beta OS. People should really stop acting surprised that various things aren't working correctly. There is currently not a single valid reason to upgrade from 7 to 10. DX 12 is currently used by exactly 0 games on the market, so it's a moot point.

Go back to 7 and I can assure you, you will have much less problems across the board.

[SierraTangoDelta]

I've got an R9 270 and an AMD-FX6300 and my game takes a huge hit to fps whenever I am in a big scale battle as well, it dips down to 20 and stays around the 20-30 area until the fight is over. This is when I am zoomed all the way out, if that makes a difference.
I've got a bunch of mods installed but plenty of RAM to handle it, could the CPU be bottlenecking the game? I have noticed that it stays at Idle:0% for the majority of the combat in a fight, but is usually 30-60% before the ships actually start firing volleys at one another. Any advice for how to fix this? Do I need to just upgrade to a better single-core CPU, since Starsector runes on one thread/core?

[Euphytose]

Overclocking is very useful for single threaded games. But there's only so much you can do. If the game is CPU heavy on a single thread it's bound to have performances issues at some point, unless you have an abnormally powerful CPU.

[SierraTangoDelta]

Alright, I plan on replacing this FX6300 with an Intel processor at some point in the future anyway, so I guess I'll overclock it until then.
Do you happen to know of a good processor with more power and less cores? I like to get recommendations before I start shopping for one.

[Euphytose]

I'm not an expert on hardware. For Intel you want the i5 branch, and of course 4 cores. They're easy to overclock. But you should ask on a hardware forum for which specific one to get. Also buy an aftermarket cooler, stock coolers on Intel CPUs are "ok" but not good enough for overclocking.