Lag Friendly Building Practices?

[GunGryphon]

I've only put about 50 hours into the game so far and the game is still running fine (Usually 80 FPS at 1080p). That said, I can't help but worry that the system will eventually grind itself into a metaphorical lag "heat death" as some areas (ex. my main hub) get too complicated. The game is very good about culling distant items/entities, props to the devs for that. It's areas of dense factory that I'm worried about. Is it worth skipping the walls, windows, and guard rails on buildings in my main base for the sake of FPS?

For example, a solid foundation appears to have much less geometry than a frame foundation, would building a whole factory with these to running belts/lifts inside be a terrible idea? I'm on this topic because I found significant frame stutters as I was going up a glass wallled spiral staircase on a tall and heavily walled factory building. (I assume turning around quickly was forcing assets to load quickly, but I didn't make the game to be sure.) Which are more resource demanding: fences, walls, or windows?

TLDR: Is there any confirmed best practices for making a lag-friendly mega-base?

Specs for the curious: I5-6600,16GB, GTX 1060

[Sono]

Encase your base in walls so conveyor belts can't be viewed from any angle out side of it. This works for remote processing plants and other factories as well. Use glass foundations sparingly. Process ore and minerals on site, and send higher tier products back to base via a train. Limit your use of conveyor belts where possible, be conservative with their use where not.

Turn down your graphics settings. Most notably shadows and render distance.

[GunGryphon]

Originally posted by Ysonoko:

Encase your base in walls so conveyor belts can't be viewed from any angle out side of it.

So walls are sufficient to occlude conveyors from render processing? Would this mean that all windows are a bad idea in general?

[Sono]

Originally posted by GunGryphon:

Originally posted by Ysonoko:

Encase your base in walls so conveyor belts can't be viewed from any angle out side of it.

So walls are sufficient to occlude conveyors from render processing? Would this mean that all windows are a bad idea in general?

Inside the base for passing belts around windows don't matter. You're going to be getting some massive frame loss in the late game just about no matter what if you build a mega factory. The idea is to limit or rid that when you are outside, away, or at an outpost.

But yeah. From what I understand, walls help immensely when trying to save frames. I haven't tried this personally, or needed to, but it's what many of the youtubers who build mega bases did.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by GunGryphon:

Originally posted by Ysonoko:

Encase your base in walls so conveyor belts can't be viewed from any angle out side of it.

So walls are sufficient to occlude conveyors from render processing? Would this mean that all windows are a bad idea in general?

Yes but with a few notes I have found. If you use conveyor walls, It gives a "peek hole" to see inside the walls and that screws with performance sometimes. So I place conveyor walls then run the belts about 2-3 tiles sideways inside then out again so I can't see out either conveyor wall holes from inside and can't see in from the outside. I also do the same thing with "people passages".

Another thing I am theory testing right now is belt performance and how it relates to system performance. I have a suspicion that if we have everything racing around our factory on MK.5 belts that it may cause significant CPU usage in our computers once we get to end-game. I have theorized that we may have better system performance if we use "speed appropriate belts". Like for example: If Machine A is outputting materials at only 8 items/minute, use a MK.1 belt instead of an MK.5 belt.

I won't know if this effects performance until I scale it out and get up to nearly another 500 hours of play time to automate everything solo though. So I'll bookmark this page and let you know in a few months :>

[Lil Puppy]

The problem with 'speed appropriate belts' in late game is the items are being rendered/processed for a longer period of time than if you just shove it into another machine/storage as quickly as possible.

Encasing as much animated stuff as you can in walls occludes them completely from the rendering process, the numerical processing still occurs for all things, but you can limit the frame hit by hiding things like the smoke stacks, belts, machine movement parts, etc.

You can also just stay away from those locations unless necessary.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by Lil Puppy:

The problem with 'speed appropriate belts' in late game is the items are being rendered/processed for a longer period of time than if you just shove it into another machine/storage as quickly as possible.

I don't know if it effects anything or not. As far as I'm aware I may be the only person to ever even consider this with Satisfactory in relation to performance.

[Blastroid]

Occlusion has not been coded yet for optimization currently. This is supposed to be coming soon. So the walls do nothing to help reduce lag.

[Bobucles]

Some people have mentioned that a COMPLETELY walled in base with 0 openings has magic FPS properties. I haven't tested it myself and have doubts on how useful it really is.

Belts are a core part of the game, but a more efficient factory can use far less belts. Smelting on site, moving mid tier products and trains help cut down on belt space.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by Blastroid:

Occlusion has not been coded yet for optimization currently. This is supposed to be coming soon. So the walls do nothing to help reduce lag.

Actually walled in bases -DO- help. Here's the statement from Bendh (A Coffee Stain Studios Employee): https://questions.satisfactorygame.com/post/5eca358d6f3c82fe950b1e07 Scroll down to see where Bendh wrote their message about the render thread.