What ship design elements contribute the most to lag?

[Panpiper]

I want to build a big, powerful ship that fears no pirate regardless of how beefed up they are, and that gives serious pause to any griefer thinking of raining on my day. I want to put a thousand seekers into the sky and have a hundred docked modules pouring power and shield reinforcement into my ship. I want to have a hundred turrets rapid firing waffleboard AMCs for anti-missile. I want many millions of blocks in my ship.

But then I give pause... What will I be doing to the server if that ship happens to get engaged with some pirates. Will I lag the server? What ship design elements are the most egregious for others when it comes to causing server lag?

 

[AtraUnam]

Sunken turrets... turrets in general but the more box dimensions it overlaps the worse.

 

[StormWing0]

lol thinking of tempting fate with many docked entities again too but the one that gets me is the more changes there are to render the worse it gets. Say we have a single sheet of armor the is completely smooth, than just off to the side we have a sheet of spaced armor that is made with single bars of armor with space between them. The bared armor design causes more lag than the single sheet for me, now try making random lines of any block all over the place, the more surfaces and changes the game has to render the worse it gets. So the idea is to make it so no one has to see those changes trying to render.

 

[Panpiper]

... the idea is to make it so no one has to see those changes trying to render.

Hmm... Does this mean that if no other player is anywhere near by, so that only I am ever seeing my ship do it's thing, that lag on the server by what I do is negligible?

 

[StormWing0]

I'd say it is more of graphics lag than server lag in that case as for the one AtraUnam mentioned I've been near ships with large numbers of overlapping collision boxes and that murders the server and client in one go. XD

 

[Edymnion]

Biggest server lag is probably going to be shear block count.

Following that, probably lighting, followed by AI's and logic.

So if you really want to lag out the server, make a freaking huge kilometer long ship that has a massive light up billboard on the side made with tons of logic to animate a stick man playing basketball, then cover the whole thing in turrets.

 

[Panpiper]

So if you really want to lag out the server, make a freaking huge kilometer long ship that has a massive light up billboard on the side made with tons of logic to animate a stick man playing basketball, then cover the whole thing in turrets.

Heh. Of course my intent is to do the opposite, to create a ship that causes the least amount of lag and still does the job of giving pause to griefers and death to pirates. Sadly, high block count is largely unavoidable, but would not contribute more lag to the server than anyone else's large ship. Turrets too are pretty much unavoidable, though the advice to build them in such a way as to share as few bounding boxes possible is extremely helpful. Graphical variation by differing blocks is a conundrum.

I have in the past built featureless cubes (few people ever had to actually 'see' anything I built), except for the one time I built a rather good looking borg (for a cube). With the recent changes, some of the motive for building cubes has been addressed (sadly there is 'still' call for cubes). I've been hoping to get out of my cubism and build more interesting ships. It does seem though then, that at least the server would prefer yet another featureless cube.

 

[Edymnion]

Yeah, but knowing what to do in order to intentionally cause lag can help you avoid it.

Lots of logic and especially logic'ed lights can lag pretty bad as the server is trying to run them all. As of the last I heard, the engine tries to render *ALL* light sources, regardless of if there is a player there to see them or not. So if you're doing a big RP ship with tons of lighting inside, you might want to put some area sensors in there to turn the lights off when there is no one in the area (like if you have a trek ship with an RP engine room with a pulsing warp core, turn the logic chaselights off when you leave the room).

I'd also say try to keep logic in general to a minimum on a ship. Now things like area sensors aren't going to be a problem, but big complicated things running off of clock pulses, that can cause issues (I one had a ship with red alert chase lights down all the corridors that I could turn on with a button press, it was neat, but people could tell when I hit it that weren't even inside my ship).

Much as it sucks, it seems internal docked power generators are a great way to cause lag. Not only are they bound inside your main build box, but you've got a clock pulse controlling a computer to fire a beam, all of which the engine apparently renders at all times.

 

[StormWing0]

Things shouldn't render if you can't directly see them. >_>

 

[Keptick]

Power supply beams are horrible since the last update, they drop my fps from around 100 to 20 (while looking at nothing). That's with 40 beams firing at once for my reactors.

On the other hand, 274 damage beams fired at once only drop it to around 40 (and that's understandable).

 

[Panpiper]

I suspect one could save a lot of the FPS drop, if one has a great many docked reactors, but not having logic on each reactor to control the power beams. Rather have a single clock on the mothership that sends beam activation signals to the firing computers of each of the docked power reactors using a wireless logic module.

 

[Lord Daro]

I suspect one could save a lot of the FPS drop, if one has a great many docked reactors, but not having logic on each reactor to control the power beams. Rather have a single clock on the mothership that sends beam activation signals to the firing computers of each of the docked power reactors using a wireless logic module.

That schould reduce lag a bit, though i think the main issue lies somewhere in supply beams themselfs.

Also with turrets: Other then box dim. you should also try to get mostly ones with 360° rotation axes. Last time i checked turrets were increasing server load by having to check for collisions.

 

[Panpiper]

That schould reduce lag a bit, though i think the main issue lies somewhere in supply beams themselfs.

Are people merging their power supply beams so they have just a single output beam? I do that myself and have not noticed any issues with power beams.

 

[Lord Daro]

Are people merging their power supply beams so they have just a single output beam? I do that myself and have not noticed any issues with power beams.

I guess thats pretty common.
The last time i had more than two reactors online i got quite the fps drop. Though it has been a while (and i had weaker hardware back then).

 

[Mortiferum]

Animated blocks in large quantities.

 

[Panpiper]

I'd like to differentiate between lagging people's graphics cards when in close proximity, and lagging the server even when no one is around. I seriously doubt that animated graphics will slow down someone else on the other side of the galaxy. Absolutely if there are a lot of animated blocks it can pose problems for some people's graphics cards, but that is an issue separate from server lag.

 

[Mortiferum]

I'd like to differentiate between lagging people's graphics cards when in close proximity, and lagging the server even when no one is around. I seriously doubt that animated graphics will slow down someone else on the other side of the galaxy. Absolutely if there are a lot of animated blocks it can pose problems for some people's graphics cards, but that is an issue separate from server lag.

Server lag is usually when people is mining a planet from what I know.

 

[Rokiyo]

Sunken turrets... turrets in general but the more box dimensions it overlaps the worse.

You mean the outer box dimensions right? So even if it is floating completely outside of your hull, if the mothership has a mast that extends past it then it is still considered overlapping yeah?

Seems pretty hard to avoid if so... Oh geeze so basically any internal system like doors and elevators are out too?

 

[Phocian]

I have found trying to undock and fly a 500m x 130m x150m ship which has 20 x turrets (but the AI turned off) causes massive server PING for everyone on the server.
It has logic systems but they are not active all the time as they are doors and lifts.
So now it stays docked.
Anyone else have this happening on their server?
Also anyone have tips to improve PING and FPS with admin commands?

Cheers,

Pho