Strange performance dips at specified ingame times

[Fruchtgummi]

So I've recently updated my pc so I'm especially curious as to why the following problem happens. Maybe some of you can help me out:

I prefer to have small colonies. Not in size but in population. My current colony has a worth of around 1.2 million so I'd say it's rather developed. 5 Pawns as well as 6 mechs but a whole load of items, projectors (mod) and so on. I also play highly modded but most of the time the game runs at a smooth 60 fps. Raids aside that is but even then it runs rather well. At least when it comes to me.

PROBLEM is that the game slows down noticeably once every six ingame hours at exactly 04:00h, 10:00h, 16:00h and 22:00h. These slowdowns only persists for a few seconds but they are becoming rather annoying. Especially now that I know it's happening at the exact same times. Other than that I don't have any problems playing the game even with all those mods. I only very very rarely notice something out of the ordinary so it seems my modlist is rather stable.

So are those hours generally cursed? Does the game start some scripts behind the scenes at these times? Is it a known error from the base game or maybe a mod (most likely the latter)?I'm totally dumbfounded but also rather curious. Maybe someone here is as curious as I am. I really want to know why that happens!

For anyone interested, here's my log so the more curious individuals can have a little bit more intel.

https://gist.github.com/HugsLibRecordKeeper/be880e8c198625ac09909d6256ca7feb

--- edit ---

Here is the log I made right after restarting the game and reloading:

https://gist.github.com/HugsLibRecordKeeper/49b72105177f579c26f52edf50dbef85

This is the log after a 24 hours timeframe. I started it at 12pm and stopped at 12pm the following day. I have to clarify two issues that might come up but I'm pretty sure they are unrelated to the problem:

- After loading the save I got red errors based on an ID error with two mystic swords from the 'Obsidia' mod which seem to share the same ID as something else. I don't know when it happened but it's a few irl days and many ingame hours back. The swords are not present on the map. No idea what that's about but it doesn't cause any noticeable problems during gameplay.

- The second problem is purely related to the 'gradient hair' mod in which it sometimes pops out red errors for some reason. Again: This does not seem to have any effect on gameplay or the visuals. At least to my knowledge.

In addition I started a new game and can confirm that the slowdown/stutter that happens every 6 hours is not happening on said new game.

[Astasia]

A log from in game after the issue has happened might help narrow it down if there is an issue happening. Otherwise the specific times of day does sound like some mod is running some update at those times. The actual hours are probably going to vary depending on where in the world your base is, because time zones, but it looks like a 6 hour update cycle. There's nothing significant on a 6 hour cycle unmodded that I am aware, there are two 24 hour cycles for autosaves and a world update, but if those are being problematic it tends to cause a stutter not "slow down."

[Fruchtgummi]

Originally posted by Astasia:

A log from in game after the issue has happened might help narrow it down if there is an issue happening. Otherwise the specific times of day does sound like some mod is running some update at those times. The actual hours are probably going to vary depending on where in the world your base is, because time zones, but it looks like a 6 hour update cycle. There's nothing significant on a 6 hour cycle unmodded that I am aware, there are two 24 hour cycles for autosaves and a world update, but if those are being problematic it tends to cause a stutter not "slow down."

Thank you for your feedback. I edited the main post and added a second log that consists of a 24 hour gameplay time frame. Since I have absolutely NO knowledge on programming languages and can barely understand a single word in the hugs log or the debug log ingame I really hope that someone here with more knowledge (and free time. Not everyone will be willing to help out a stranger on the internet when it takes this much time) might be able to decipher this.

Also can you define stutter? I don't really know the difference between the two. Isn't that more like a different word for the same thing? What happens exactly is that the game runs at 60 fps, then suddenly runs at like 15 fps for a few seconds. Is that considered slowsown or stutter?

[Astasia]

If that second log included time where the slow down happened, then there are no errors related to it so whatever is happening appears to be "intentional." Likely it's some mod interaction that is meant to happen on this cycle and is usually unnoticeable, but there is probably some other mods that it's interacting with during this time which is causing the slowdown.

I don't have any good idea on which mod(s) might be causing it, I skimmed through your mod list and didn't recognize anything that looked like might be doing that. You do have jecstools, which is generally pretty unoptimized in my experience, but that usually causes a more constant TPS decrease. Hospitality could be an example of something that might be conflicting though. Hospitality causes world pawn bloat, sometimes severely, normally the game cleans up world pawns regularly but Hospitality does something which prevents this from happening so they can just build up over time, and if you have a mod trying to run a process on world pawns that could be the interaction.

A "stutter" is when the game appears to freeze for a fraction of a second then carries on. It's not slow down, the screen just stops updating for a moment and then picks back up usually at full FPS.

[Fruchtgummi]

Originally posted by Astasia:

If that second log included time where the slow down happened, then there are no errors related to it so whatever is happening appears to be "intentional." Likely it's some mod interaction that is meant to happen on this cycle and is usually unnoticeable, but there is probably some other mods that it's interacting with during this time which is causing the slowdown.

I don't have any good idea on which mod(s) might be causing it, I skimmed through your mod list and didn't recognize anything that looked like might be doing that. You do have jecstools, which is generally pretty unoptimized in my experience, but that usually causes a more constant TPS decrease. Hospitality could be an example of something that might be conflicting though. Hospitality causes world pawn bloat, sometimes severely, normally the game cleans up world pawns regularly but Hospitality does something which prevents this from happening so they can just build up over time, and if you have a mod trying to run a process on world pawns that could be the interaction.

A "stutter" is when the game appears to freeze for a fraction of a second then carries on. It's not slow down, the screen just stops updating for a moment and then picks back up usually at full FPS.

You are a saint! : )

It seems it was indeed either Hospitality or Hospital. I'll check whcih one it was but considering your explanation I'd say it's the former. No more slow downs (at least none that I could make out during my new 24 hour test! I showered you in Steam point thingies as a sign of my appreciation! And it seems all my mods that use jecstolls are disabled so I really have no reason to run it as of now. Didn't notice! Thanks a bunch : )

[Fruchtgummi]

Or let's say that was a false alarm just now. When playing on normal speed those slowdowns don't even occur so that's why I didn't notice any a few minutes ago. I didn't know that :'D

My game runs the exact same. With or without jecstools or Hospitality.

So I'm still open to people who will maybe take a look at my modlist and notice something out of the ordinary!

[Astasia]

Removing Hospitality mid-save likely wouldn't fix anything here if that was the cause as the world pawns remain protected from cleanup. If that was the source you'd likely need to start a new save and see if it happens again. There are mods that attempt to address world pawn bloat caused by mods, like this one:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2982026860

I don't know if it would have any effect in this case, it might force mothball a bunch of world pawns after some period of time running and if the script is only running on "ticking" world pawns that might help.

This still could be entirely unrelated to world pawns or Hospitality, that's just the best guess I have. Somebody else familiar with more of your mod list might find something else.

[Fruchtgummi]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Removing Hospitality mid-save likely wouldn't fix anything here if that was the cause as the world pawns remain protected from cleanup. If that was the source you'd likely need to start a new save and see if it happens again. There are mods that attempt to address world pawn bloat caused by mods, like this one:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2982026860

I don't know if it would have any effect in this case, it might force mothball a bunch of world pawns after some period of time running and if the script is only running on "ticking" world pawns that might help.

This still could be entirely unrelated to world pawns or Hospitality, that's just the best guess I have. Somebody else familiar with more of your mod list might find something else.

so it seems THIS did it. I already had the mothball mod but didn't use it since I think it messes with the great hierarchy of the VFE Empire mod. For ♥♥♥♥♥ and giggles I still tried it out and on load it told me that around 1200 pawns/relations were cleaned. So it was indeed rather bloated. No matter the game speed, I had no slowdowns anymore. I will keep playing for an hour or so (I really don't want another false positive like before) and when everything is well and dandy I will mark your answer here : P

Problem is that I can't say for sure what the exact root of the bloating was but considering your explanation it was most likely hospitality. Sad that I have to say goodbye to such a great mod but if that's what it ends like it's not worth the hassle. I just hope Better GC doesn't mess too much with VFE Empire because that's a mod I can't play the game without anymore ; (