Lag, and structures. A question for the Devs.

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

OK, so I started on Official, went to unofficial PvP, came back a couple of times to Official, and yesterday returned again.  Huge difference between the two.  Even around very large bases on the most recent unofficial, I did not experience any significant lag, or stutters.  However, every time I return to official, I get huge lag and stutters, even around smaller bases than those on the last unofficial.  However, there just a whole lot more bases, equaling more total structures on the island.  In ARK, I noticed that the combination of very large bases, and a lot of tames, would cause similar stutters.  So this is my question.  Would larger structure pieces help reduce this stuttering/lag?

 In ark we had large walls, and XL walls.  4 walls, and 12 walls high respectively.  This was good, but should have been taken further.  Where were the 2x2 walls?  The 3x3 walls.  The 4x4 and 5x5 walls?  And what about similar sizes of foundations, ceilings, and roofs?  What about stairs that are like the inside corner, and outside corner roofs, which I love BTW...thanks for those.  How about small (1), medium (3), large (5) and XL (12) pillars?  Why not allow similar sizes for elevator tracks?  For PvE, how about some larger, and more varied window sizes, and designs?

 

People build ports, so why not give us various sizes of  piers, and when we place them, they place at just the right height for the ships you want to put against them.  So you could have large main pier sections, and then smaller piers that come off that, with heights for the different ships.  Allow ships to tie up to the pier, instead of anchoring.  Same game mechanics, just different art and animations.  In the future, if a great animator is hired, the crew onboard could be used to tie the ship to the docks.  I would think  this would be tail end of the Dev cycle, as this kind of animation is not easy, or cheap, I would assume.

 

On the subject of gates, why not some Portcullis gates, like in the Castles, Keeps and Fortifications mod for ARK? 

 

Allow curved walls for private servers, but not official.  They cause lag.  Not bad on a private server, but official has more than enough structure lag as it is.

 

I would hope that in the future, we also get new textures for wood, and stone structures. 

 

Bridge structures would be great also.

[SIEGEGUN 57]

If I could give more likes I would. Especially for bringing up the piers. No matter what larger structures would reduce lag. There is a big difference between a stone gate "wall" made of 8-10 pieces vs one the same size made of foundations equaling maybe thousands. It is not just the rendering on our clients part, there is also the fact the server must keep track of all that. Then when you get in range, you get bombarded with info about thousands of pieces and their location as opposed to 8-10. 

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

I think all of these will do a lot to reduce lag.  Have you seen how many structures a moderate sized port takes to construct?  You and I know that these piers that people create, take a lot of structures.  But they could make piers that are the perfect size for a ship, and allow them to snap to other piers, so that we can get the same results with far far fewer structures.  Even just a 3x3 wall would go a long way towards reducing lag.

[Sleepinator2000 87]

Love the idea, and would love some larger pieces, but without looking at the game with diagnostic tools, it is pretty hard to tell whether it would make any difference since we don't know the source of the the 'lag'. For a 9x or 16x ceiling piece to remain at the same resolution, it would require a 9x or 16x texture, even if the 3d model has less surfaces overall.

Some of the things that could be contributing could be related to the density of attach points or 'bones' within the models. A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you are talking about some serious numbers. I wouldn't be as excited about having larger pieces if I couldn't attach another piece in the middle of them.

The biggest hitches I see are while streaming things in. I don't know how good their instancing is, but creative players and psychopaths seriously stress their system out. If they can't solve it in the software, they need to seriously consider limiting the density of objects buildable within a rendering distance, much like they have a limit on ships. I would hate that, but I hate the slideshow coming into some bases worse, especially when I have a tornado at my back, and I am just trying to get an anchor down without plowing into a turbolaser on some player's Death Star.

The bottleneck always comes down to how much is loading and unloading in 1/30th of a second. Thank God I have a high end video card and decent motherboard. I can't imagine what this game would look like on a typical laptop.

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

6 hours ago, Sleepinator2000 said:

Some of the things that could be contributing could be related to the density of attach points or 'bones' within the models. A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you are talking about some serious numbers. I wouldn't be as excited about having larger pieces if I couldn't attach another piece in the middle of them. 

 

The CKF Mod in ARK does have a 3x3 wall.  You cannot snap anything to the interior of the wall.  But that does not stop you from using them.  You just have to think about where you use them.  I used them extensively.  It never stopped me from building what I wanted to build, but I did have to think about what I was doing.  If they do this, I am sure they could add a couple of snap points in the middle, to help, but honestly, it's not necessary.  Even if these are only used on things like walls that surround the ports and bases, it would save on the structure count, and hopefully the frame lag.

 

[ButtPirate 50]

gates should not be allowed to be used as big ass walls all around an island.

[George Catcher 367]

Have you seen how many structures a moderate sized port takes to construct?

In Tundra we have 24 x 2 of ceilings and there are 8 double pillars (3, 5, 7, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18 pillars deep) so without railings and stairs there will be 194 structures (with railings and stairs there will be around 250 - it's just one pier for 2 vessels Schooner and Brig).

so why not give us various sizes of  piers, and when we place them, they place at just the right height for the ships you want to put against them.

The only problem there is sea bottom. Sometimes it's just gently sloping so you need a long pier so brig or schooner be able to get there. In Tundra - it steep descent and you need short pier so you can lower your anchor. And there is height problem. While you ship is anchored, it might change it's height. Sometimes it goes down even underwater:

Sometimes - rises up and even float above the water:

I don't know why this is happening, but I often cannot get to the ship from pier (or back to the pier) because ship get way to high. 

[Bullet Force 151]

The lag factor is dependent on how long it takes to load in the entities. A 10x10 wall that contains a 100 pieces will naturally load slower then if that was just one piece. It is also dependent on what your in game bandwidth setting is set to. The higher it is the more data the server will send to you at once which means you will load bases faster.

[SIEGEGUN 57]

2 hours ago, George Catcher said:

 

 

In Tundra we have 24 x 2 of ceilings and there are 8 double pillars (3, 5, 7, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18 pillars deep) so without railings and stairs there will be 194 structures (with railings and stairs there will be around 250 - it's just one pier for 2 vessels Schooner and Brig).

 

 

The only problem there is sea bottom. Sometimes it's just gently sloping so you need a long pier so brig or schooner be able to get there. In Tundra - it steep descent and you need short pier so you can lower your anchor. And there is height problem. While you ship is anchored, it might change it's height. Sometimes it goes down even underwater:

Sometimes - rises up and even float above the water:

I don't know why this is happening, but I often cannot get to the ship from pier (or back to the pier) because ship get way to high. 

This NEVER happens anywhere on my client. I have had some wonky things happen but the ships never go above or underwater like that on my computer. And yes the amount of things it takes to make a pier is crazy. 

[Kappinski 58]

I like the idea of bigger structure pieces.
If we take a 3x3 piece for example and just add their hitpoints there is still the incentive to build them because it would take 9 times longer to pierce a hole into your base. It would be a bigger hole of course. But time might be more valuable than the size of a hole.

So i guess it would work perfectly well in the current context of the game.
Your base doesn't get "stronger" by hitpoints but it gets harder to raid.

[Ravenx 5]

This was the biggest issue when it came to latency issues in the game.  We definitely need larger walls, gates and foundation pieces.  We built a fort with about 5k+ foundation pieces and it would literally kill a servers performance,  If we could use less pieces to achieve whats going to be needed its only going to help the complaints when it comes to servers lagging.

[Sleepinator2000 87]

While I agree that bigger pieces (at least 3x3) would be greatly appreciated by everyone here, myself included, and most of us will use them tastefully, you have to admit that it would remove a significant difficulty barrier to psychopath builders who will just be making their Death Star bases 3x as big. There needs to be some kind of limit based on vertices, texture memory, attach points, or all 3.

I have been to bases that simple math says are using more than a million pieces. If they could blot out the sun, they would. That is mental illness-level of dedication. We need to help ourselves with logical limits.

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

I agree, there do need to be limits on structures.  Frame lag is not fun.  It turning into a slide show during a raid is a non-starter.

[Mike L 71]

Yeah I think introducing options like this tied to a structure limit for companies would be great! I hate running into gates trying to render in or invisible cannons taking shots at your ship. 

Also would go further in making the game a competitive atmosphere and give reason to craft blueprint base peices!

Good suggestion.