Performance Megathread

[Netzhaut]

Got your point! That's another story. Sure it is not easy to change.

I hope the next big overhaul of the engine will bring some kind of solution. I only tried to add a point to consider. "Megathread" lets a lot of room to interpret... I thought suggestions are welcome.

My perspective is from a gamers point of view and less from Paradox Cost-Point of view. I have a pretty good PC and the game is more or less not playable in the endgame. That's such a shame because I just love the game. To me it is by far the best 4X game. But I always think twice before starting a new game. Because I know it will be a pain in the ass after the mid game...

 

[AlphaAsh]

"Megathread" lets a lot of room to interpret... I thought suggestions are welcome.

Fair point. Apologies if I came off as if they weren't. You're quite right, I'm not the thread boss.

 

[Maethendias]

tfw performance makes you uninstall stellaris again, so you surf around the forums, because honestly the game isnt even worth playing at this stage

 

[Hodge_Hodgson]

Im sad I’ve had to post this, unfortunately at some point you’ve got to realise you’re flogging a dead horse.

Stellaris has the potential to be the greatest space strategy game, well ever, however that potential has yet to be realised and I fear never will be.

I recently purchased a top spec Alienware and reinstalled Stellaris hoping that the game breaking slowdown that caused me to abandon it a year ago had been fixed, alas no.

I would love to know what sort of rig the developers are playing on, the deafening silence on the ignored performance megathread and on reddit leads me to believe they aren’t having these problems, or simply don’t have the time/resources to fix them.

it’s a damn shame as if the speed of the game at the start remained the same throughout its hands down the best X4 strategy game there is.

Instead 5 years on we still have a game that ceases to enjoyable to play by its midpoint if you deign to play above a medium size galaxy or with more than x1 habitable planets.

This, coupled with the regular as clockwork DLC’s that break the game every damn time they’re installed shows the path paradox have decided to take.

I look forward to Stellaris II in five years or so, touchwood it’ll be better second time around.

 

[1Evilgenius]

It sucks that you have this experience.
Luckily I don't share it. And the devs haven't been silence about the preformance issue, they know it is there and have told us they are working on it. It isn't an easy fix and to be honest buying a new rig doesn't help at all to solve it. Might have even made things worse for you. I would advice you to try the game in a few months again after the next update.

 

[Methone]

Oh, stop being so melodramatic.

 

[Mastikator]

Um they've written in several dev diaries that they're working on improving performance. They have a whole team on it even. That's not "deafening silence"

 

[Hodge_Hodgson]

The Dev diaries have been saying they’re working on the performance since the game was launched with little progress.

The silence I’m referring to is the lack of dev response to numerous well written and legitimate complaints both in the various performance threads before they were shunted off to the mega thread and ignored in the same manner as the one on reddit. Check yourself if you like they’ve received little to no input from the developers.

Has anyone here tried to play a game on a large or huge galaxy to completion? If anyone has and not found the mid to late game an incredible slog fest due to the lag please let me know how you’re managing it!

The straw that broke the camels back was attempting to play New Horizons on the standard 1400 star system map. It has the potential to be the best Star Trek game/mod ever, yet after 8 hours of play the game had slowed to a crawl and took 1.4 seconds per day, at point I gave up. While that may be acceptable to some that was huge degradation in performance and it was only going to get worse.

If you’re happy to play with the game in its current state I’m happy for you, unfortunately I and many others aren’t which is why I’m bowing out.

The game needs a dedicated effort to fix this problem that has been present since launch, it doesn’t need new DLC’s that break the game every time they’re launched.

I understand they need revenue coming in to keep the game viable but the balance between DLC’s and fixing this fundamental problem is way off.

I don’t want to cause a long winded argument that ultimately won’t change anything so I’ll leave at that.

 

[Methone]

The Dev diaries have been saying they’re working on the performance since the game was launched with little progress.

Your memory is failing you. There have been patches where the performance was better and worse. It usually gets worse when they add in something gigantic, like 2.2 - honestly, I'm amazed 2.2's performance-on-launch wasn't worse than it was given that they added like 12x the pops.

The straw that broke the camels back was attempting to play New Horizons on the standard 1400 star system map.

?!?!?!?! You do know that the base game doesn't go over 1000 stars, right? If you're modding the game to take extra resources don't be surprised when it plays worse.

, yet after 8 hours of play the game had slowed to a crawl and took 1.4 seconds per day

1.4 seconds per day is not that bad. You just have unreasonably high standards.

 

[1Evilgenius]

The straw that broke the camels back was attempting to play New Horizons on the standard 1400 star system map. It has the potential to be the best Star Trek game/mod ever, yet after 8 hours of play the game had slowed to a crawl and took 1.4 seconds per day, at point I gave up. While that may be acceptable to some that was huge degradation in performance and it was only going to get worse.

This will never work, mods that extend the scope of the game like New Horizon, or if you also play CK2 geheimnisnacht, will always have an inevitable slowdown. They are simply to big. I can still play them when a month takes around 30 sec. That really isn't to bad. But you do need a decent amount of freetime

 

[Janx14]

The Dev diaries have been saying they’re working on the performance since the game was launched with little progress.

The silence I’m referring to is the lack of dev response to numerous well written and legitimate complaints both in the various performance threads before they were shunted off to the mega thread and ignored in the same manner as the one on reddit. Check yourself if you like they’ve received little to no input from the developers.

And posting in the megathread/reddit would somehow make a difference? They dedicated a whole dev diary to the steps they're taking the work on this, and pushing back a DLC for it. They posted this dev diary in the megathread would it somehow make it better?

Has anyone here tried to play a game on a large or huge galaxy to completion? If anyone has and not found the mid to late game an incredible slog fest due to the lag please let me know how you’re managing it!

Use Stellaris Immortal, makes so many game improvements. No, this doesn't mean I'm letting the dev's off the hook, but it means I can play the game instead of being a massochist.

The straw that broke the camels back was attempting to play New Horizons on the standard 1400 star system map. It has the potential to be the best Star Trek game/mod ever, yet after 8 hours of play the game had slowed to a crawl and took 1.4 seconds per day, at point I gave up. While that may be acceptable to some that was huge degradation in performance and it was only going to get worse.

Dev's aren't responsible for the game being pushed outside its setting. You're literally playing on galaxy 40% larger than the game's meant to handle. Its like claiming an ENB making Skyrim perform badly is Besthesda's fault.

If you’re happy to play with the game in its current state I’m happy for you, unfortunately I and many others aren’t which is why I’m bowing out.

I'm not happy with the game in its current state, and I'm only playing it on occasion to see how the Stellais Immortal mod is doing.

The game needs a dedicated effort to fix this problem that has been present since launch, it doesn’t need new DLC’s that break the game every time they’re launched.

So the mentioned dev diary is right up your alley then!

I understand they need revenue coming in to keep the game viable but the balance between DLC’s and fixing this fundamental problem is way off.

They admitted this in their last dev diary of the year, as well as in the other dev diary.

Look. I'm not happy with the game's state either, but claiming silence just because they aren't talking in specific places is disingenuous. Company's dont usually go around talking about specifics of code.

Personally I doubt their big effort for Federations will result in much. But I don't think them posting where you specifically want them to post is going to magically make things better either.

 

[OnyxAbussos]

TIMING DUDE.

The upcoming thing that they're working on, that they chose not to release in time for Christmas because they want to get it RIGHT, is largely about fixing the very thing you're whining about.

The last 3 dev diaries included "Weve heard your feedback, here's the issue, yes we agree, here's where we blew it, here's how we will fix it, and here's how we'll make sure it doesn't happen again."

They just did and are in the process of doing the absolute most responsible thing possible given the present situation.

So you're gonna post this NOW??

With them doing what they're doing right now, saying "you never do the thing" is at best factually incorrect, and icky-bad at not-best. Perhaps just bad strategy. We'll chalk it up to an ineffective strategy.

 

[OfficerBrennan]

Remember the good ol' days before the new economy was released, the hype train was at full momentum, Wiz told us that we'd all love the new economic system and that better performance was one of the stated ambitions of the economic rework? Good times.

Almost a year with a lot of steps forwards and backwards and some generic posts of 'some improvements have been implemented this patch'. It took until Dev Diary #161 (21st November) to receive confirmation that Paradox 'have assigned some of our team members to focus solely on trying to improve performance and AI'. I'd like to think they'd made this step a long time prior, but I can't be too sure!

One thing that alarms me greatly is the following:
'Our communication hasn’t been the best during the year either, and a lot comes down to us not having a lot to communicate (as we were busy working on things)...'
I can only guess, but I suppose the boss from above has told the team to not reveal any performance work unless it is a completed product (unless it involves DLC shiny baubles, they've clearly got the go ahead to flash that around, product fidelity be damned). Contrast this with Wube Software, a small independent studio who do the opposite of Paradox; they show the fine details of their performance related work, with examples, backed up with empirical data. Even if the work doesn't go into the final product, they show it, usually on a weekly basis.

Like what my school teacher always told me: Show your workings.
An excel table showing the results of some tweaks, followed with three sentences explaining what aspect of the game they're tweaking would be a good starting point.

Currently all we've got (and all we've had) are words of good intentions and faith. I don't practice religion.

 

[GeorgieBest]

1.4 seconds per day is not that bad. You just have unreasonably high standards.

On the fastest time setting that is absolutely dreadful. At that pace it would take you an hour and a half just to play 10 years in game.

 

[GeorgieBest]

The last 3 dev diaries included "Weve heard your feedback, here's the issue, yes we agree, here's where we blew it, here's how we will fix it, and here's how we'll make sure it doesn't happen again."

I thought only one of the last 3 dev diaries addressed the issues the community has had for the last year. Obviously not counting the diary before christmas which they completely just phoned in with nothing of value to share.

 

[GnoSIS]

Im sad I’ve had to post this, unfortunately at some point you’ve got to realise you’re flogging a dead horse.

Stellaris has the potential to be the greatest space strategy game, well ever, however that potential has yet to be realised and I fear never will be.

I recently purchased a top spec Alienware and reinstalled Stellaris hoping that the game breaking slowdown that caused me to abandon it a year ago had been fixed, alas no.

I would love to know what sort of rig the developers are playing on, the deafening silence on the ignored performance megathread and on reddit leads me to believe they aren’t having these problems, or simply don’t have the time/resources to fix them.

it’s a damn shame as if the speed of the game at the start remained the same throughout its hands down the best X4 strategy game there is.

Instead 5 years on we still have a game that ceases to enjoyable to play by its midpoint if you deign to play above a medium size galaxy or with more than x1 habitable planets.

This, coupled with the regular as clockwork DLC’s that break the game every damn time they’re installed shows the path paradox have decided to take.

I look forward to Stellaris II in five years or so, touchwood it’ll be better second time around.

please provide pc specs, and a rough galaxy wide pop count (or your save)

 

[Ashantai]

Please keep posts on topic and productive. Refrain from useless bickering and name-calling.

 

[KyuuET]

After giving up on Stellaris a few months back due to performance, I decided to read through this thread and I appreciate so many thoughts and opinions here. I decided to do what several people suggested and downgrade to 2.1.3. In all simplicity, that was a game changer (literally) - all of a sudden I was able to start, enjoy and finish a game. Granted, it missed some of the nice updates but again, I had a fully playable, enjoyable strategy game of cosmic measures. This is what we had, this is what we lost, and of course, I am hoping the devs manage to calmly work through the issues and bring it back.

However, I would kindly like to suggest that Paradox has not done too well in the skill of crisis communications. The feedback has been too little, too late, and far too focused on selling further DLC's. I would suggest that an honest "we made a mistake, we'll fix it, give us a bit of time" would have been far better several months ago. Needless arguments and feelings of being ignored could have been avoided. The problem was obvious a long time ago, even with the very highest end gaming systems.

I don't blame Paradox for having a design mistake, and I trust them to fix it. My critique is towards the way it was handled in public. Paradox, if anyone, understands the need for long term relations. They're not EA, they don't just sell a game full of bugs and rush on to make a next one. In this case, the mistake is twice as bad. I don't know how their PR is handled, how much the devs have a right to speak on their own and how many people rewrite these diaries before publishing, so it's quite possible that there's a classic argument going behind closer doors between tech and marketing. Or perhaps it was just the mistake of assuming that it's better to be quiet about problems. There's a good amount of other theories too, not that it matters greatly at this time.

Personally, I will continue to play 2.1.3, thank all the people suggesting it here and I will consider buying DLC's again after I see some bugs squashed and some honest attitudes in customer communications. It really is okay to make mistakes, just be honest about them.

 

[lovenotwar]

They're not EA, they don't just sell a game full of bugs and rush on to make a next one.

I dunno, have you seen their game lineup? PDX releases a new game every 6 months to a year it seems, followed by DLC's, and rarely are any of the bugs fixed in any of those games.

 

[AlphaAsh]

I dunno, have you seen their game lineup? PDX releases a new game every 6 months to a year it seems, followed by DLC's, and rarely are any of the bugs fixed in any of those games.

PDS cannot be compared to EA, or even Ubi or Activision. Yet. Those three want to do regular sequels AND DLCs. PDS doesn't put out sequels nearly as quickly, and their DLCs usually contain a hell of a lot more than the average DLC for RunNGun XIII. Although scanning the back catalogue of some of their games, PDS aren't completely innocent of the 'totally over-priced shiny new skin, how stupid are you?' digital dross. I like their species packs, regardless.

(BattleTech releases don't count. PDX and PDS not the same thing. Still not buying Heavy Metal though. They're avin a laff with that one.)
(Bracketed comment 2 - The Sequel to the Last Edit: I'm pretending Galaxy Command wasn't ever a thing.)