Crazy ram usage!

[Link]

Hello! I've recently started playing PA, I decided to make a system of 10 planets, 3 moons, 4 gas giants 2 deserts and an earth-like planet, when loading the planets (which takes forever) The game is extremely unresponsive and when I look at task manager 31.5Gb of my 32Gb ram is being used.

Is this normal? are there ways to reduce the ram useage so I can play on larger systems?

Also would using 64Gb of an SSD as virtual memory help?

Thanks!

[shatteredfriend7]

this game is pretty ram heavy so bare that in mind

[Link]

Originally posted by General Mega:

Well, no wonder. You had 10 planets, 3 moons, gas giants don't take up that much, 2 desert planets an 1 earth like planet.

And you expect the game run with 100+ FPS with all those planets?

I don't remember asking for 100+FPS? 20 would be nice instead of 0.5

I understand the game is RAM heavy, but if you read the rest of my post I'm not complaining that this is a terrible thing, I'm asking if anyone knows a way to circumvent this for larger systems?

Also, why allow people to make game breaking systems, surely it should have a limit on mass in one system so you don't keep crashing out or having to force quit an unresponsive game...?

Just an idea, perhaps something for the devs to consider implementing in future updates?

[Link]

Furthermore, KSP has a fully functional to scale solar system, I don't have any ram munching issues there, even with HD res packs installed and a ruck load of mods, curious as to exactly why this requires so much ram when a game with planets that have detail down to the rocks on the ground dont require even close to 8GB of ram... is it a game engine thing? I know Uber are kinda new to the industry as a company so if this is an in house engine (really not read up on it much tbh) then maybe it's just a teething problem.

[Kamin]

comparing with KSP makes not much sense, as you usually don't seemany planets at the same time, nor do you have to change in a fast way between planets and most important there is no pathfinding on planets at all.

On the other hand PA has to do pathfinding on spherical 3d object with several thousand units at the same time if you play with many players. Also there is the need to switch constantly between planets (a lot of data in ram to be avaiable). Also in case of superweapon there are dynamic changes of the geometry of planets.

[Link]

A fair point, so.. any advice? Part make a small system? Not really galactic scale destruction with a couple of planets D:

Also KSP does pathfinding as soon as you hit escape velocity but I guess that point is mute anyway.

[Link]

Think I've found out why, I edited all the planet sizes from their default, I wanted them a bit bigger than 500 so typed 750 and for some reason it changes it to 1000 instead, so all my planets were far bigger than they should be!

Anyone know if thats normal?

[CoonFatGravy]

You don't need that many planets to play a game anyway... 8 - 6 decent sized planets are good enough, most players die within 8 - 12 minutes in the game anyway.

[Link]

Hence why I want to make a larger system, it puts more distance and time between players, I dislike the 10 minute rush ranked games, they're too repetative, short lived and quite frankly boring :/

It's fixed now, though I still think it's OTT on the ram hogging but I guess everyone puts that down to "big planets n stuff" instead of lack of optimisation.

[PlutonArioch]

Originally posted by Link Aylomen:

I still think it's OTT on the ram hogging but I guess everyone puts that down to "big planets n stuff" instead of lack of optimisation.

Not everyone, but mentions of optimization in regards to the RAM usage result mostly in teachings from others about how that much RAM is needed because planets, big, pathfinding, chronocam, ammounts of units, complex game etc... I agree this ammount of RAM can still be dramatically optimized, but it is probably not priority for the devs right now, due to most of the vocal playerbase having north of 8Gb RAM and mostly play the short competitive matches anyways.

[koimeiji]

May I just say;

PA has all the planets loaded at once. With thousands of units pathfinding on at least half of them at any given time.

KSP has 3 stages of how much is "loaded" based on distance. The planet you are on is loaded completely, the nearby planets that you can actually see are loaded in textures, and the rest are super compressed. I think.


That, and KSP places you in the center of the universe at all times, so the map isn't actually very big.

[Link]

Originally posted by Arioch:

Originally posted by Link Aylomen:

I still think it's OTT on the ram hogging but I guess everyone puts that down to "big planets n stuff" instead of lack of optimisation.

Not everyone, but mentions of optimization in regards to the RAM usage result mostly in teachings from others about how that much RAM is needed because planets, big, pathfinding, chronocam, ammounts of units, complex game etc... I agree this ammount of RAM can still be dramatically optimized, but it is probably not priority for the devs right now, due to most of the vocal playerbase having north of 8Gb RAM and mostly play the short competitive matches anyways.

Agreed, though I kinda dislike the short rush matches, I like anihilation on a large scale xD

But perhaps in the future they'll optimise it a little :) It's otherwise not a bad game, could do with some variation between commanders other than skins... but not a terrible game :D

[NETSCAPE]

I'm freezing up just clicking around the menus setting up a game. 16 gigs of ram here lol.

[Chevrolet]

I love the game but.... that ram usage :P

[kiwi jooce]

Originally posted by Honda Tadakatsu:

I'm freezing up just clicking around the menus setting up a game. 16 gigs of ram here lol.

That's normal when loading the system. It's kinda dumb how there isn't an alert for new players when they join a lobby with a large system because they'll think their PC is on fire.

Also pretty much the only thing that eats up RAM is the surface area of planets. The more surface you have, the more RAM you're going to lose. And remeber, a radius 1000 planet actually has 4 times the amount of surface area as a radius 500 planet.

[FairFaith]

I learned something with my 15-hours played on this :
- Dont make planets with more than 500 on radius, because even the animation of planets smashing isn't scale with 1000-radius planets. Moreover, Moon dont need to exceed 300.
- If u have enough RAM, u can add gas planet, be carefull, gas planet cant have a radius less than 1000.
- Try to not exceed 50 metal density on planets, thus can crash the game too.
And yeah off course this game EATs your RAM, but dont forget this game isnt release yet, so there can be an optimized update on it

Tell me if my comment is useless