DIAL BACK the Spam in Undine Space Battlezone

dsaris

Enjoying the new season so far, having another decent NPC enemy to fight is refreshing, but the fluidic spam in the Undine Space Battlezone needs to be toned down. I can't play the zone b/c my system lags out and framerate drops to ~1fps.

I don't have the mother of all systems or anything, but it's never had a problem running the game on medium settings before. I even upgraded to 8GB of RAM and that hasn't changed anything.

I can't help but think I'm not the only one having this problem... and I don't like the idea of dialing back my graphics just to handle one zone.

adamkafei

Devs: "But... But spam... Spam is fun!"

Onwards to seriousness... Something in the season 9 update or later updates has thrown graphics priorities way off, I don't even have visuals for my shields and weapons half the time.

reginamala78

Yeah the Space Battlezone gets pretty nuts graphically (and I'm running a Radeon 6950, old but not a wimpy card), and I can only tell I'm shooting because I see damage numbers. Honestly I think its the Zone itself, all the particle effects and haze and terrain, and of course 15 player ships all doing their things in close proximity. The rest is manageable (though Viscous Cycle chugs a bit at times), but somethings wrong with the Sphere space environmentals.

stardestroyer001

Agreed. My computer goes into crazy overheating mode when I go there.

dragonsbrethren

I don't have any major framerate issues in the battlezone, I just don't find it compelling gameplay. You can't focus, it's a complete overload visually.

innuwarrior

Did you check your graphic settings after update. I had to lower everything because the game assume, after the upgrade, that I had a top of the line graphic card instead of the puny budget one I use and put everything at maximum. If I didn't check for it I would of hated that zone too or most everything else because of low framerates.

Also, number of ships at any point is proportionnal to the number of player ships in close vicinity. If you're alone or only with 1 or 2 other players you shouldn't have too much problem with too much spam.

sunfrancks

Even my Nvidia Titan has "problems" in the Undine zone. The spam is nuts tbh....

shandypandy

dsaris wrote: »

Enjoying the new season so far, having another decent NPC enemy to fight is refreshing, but the fluidic spam in the Undine Space Battlezone needs to be toned down. I can't play the zone b/c my system lags out and framerate drops to ~1fps.

I don't have the mother of all systems or anything, but it's never had a problem running the game on medium settings before. I even upgraded to 8GB of RAM and that hasn't changed anything.

I can't help but think I'm not the only one having this problem... and I don't like the idea of dialing back my graphics just to handle one zone.

Turn off dynamic lighting. Seems to do the trick for me.

Options, graphics, bottom right.

You might need to turn off cinematic focus too. Top left of same screen.

Edit/ if its still choppy, you can turn off other players heal and damage clusters too. The UI can cause a boatload of slowdown too, particularly when its drawing 19 other players faw damage floaters.

.

fraghul2000

Same here. My machine isn't too old or ****ty, but certain effects in that Space Battle Zone bring it to it's knees.

I usually have rather high frame rates and no problems, except when an Undine places their fludic rift and when the Voth frigates almost simultaneously use their photonic decoy and the beginning of every wave in the end.

artemisa0k

I think they really need to add a option that allows you to adjust ability and npc detail levels.

Something like only render the 8 closest in full detail or something (adjustable number of course) and the rest all get nailed with the lower settings.

That would cut down a bit at least on some of the spam lag, the undine rift blob's tho really need to be cut down to X amount per 20km radius or something tho.

Another option of course would be to just modify them to blob together and combine into larger blobs when they come in contact with one another which would most likely help a fair amount by reducing the trajectory calculation's slightly as you went from having swarms of mini blobs into large ones. It would also make a great deal of sense really.

But yeah something really needs to be done about it will try the dynamic lighting and depth off but even with stuff cranked way down a group with pet's and targetable torp's makes it hit near slideshow levels do to everything else going on with blobs and such and pets combined.

kamiyama317

I don't notice any lag from fluidic rifts, and I play on a dual-core laptop that uses shared VRAM for it's GPU. But I have everything turned down to low.

You guys might want to check your graphics settings, they changed a lot of the settings with S9.

dsaris

kamiyama317 wrote: »

I don't notice any lag from fluidic rifts, and I play on a dual-core laptop that uses shared VRAM for it's GPU. But I have everything turned down to low.

You guys might want to check your graphics settings, they changed a lot of the settings with S9.

Yeah... NOT dialing my graphics down just to play one zone.

orran90

Yeah, I run fairly smoothly most of the game; my graphics card isn't top of the line, but it's not too shabby, but I've been suffering serious frame rate issues in both the Undine Spacebattle zone and in the Starbase 24 assault queued event, something I didn't experience in the past. Hoping my new video card coming soon will help address the issues, though I think it'd be in Cryptics best interests to try and rein things in.

And I'm with dsaris; I really don't want to have to lower my graphics just for one or two zones.

quintaris

The three piece Undine set gives you the ability to destroy the snotbubbles. I assume that will help things.

neos472

season 9 has had the rare thing of overheating my NVidia GTX 460M been trying to find a way that allows extended game time for over 3 hours

starswordc

quintaris wrote: »

The three piece Undine set gives you the ability to destroy the snotbubbles. I assume that will help things.

Right, so I have to level my rep to T4 to be able to play one piece of ****ing content.

Typical Craptic.

dsaris

quintaris wrote: »

The three piece Undine set gives you the ability to destroy the snotbubbles. I assume that will help things.

That's great and all... but I don't really grind rep. Guess I'll just avoid most of the new content. Kinda sucks.

damienvryce2

adamkafei wrote: »

Devs: "But... But spam... Spam is fun!"

Onwards to seriousness... Something in the season 9 update or later updates has thrown graphics priorities way off, I don't even have visuals for my shields and weapons half the time.

Ok so it's not just me with this problem. It happens in starbase defense too.

ghyudt

We'll come to my world. Ever since the sphere battlezone was first introduced, I had fps and lag problems. Now, I don't have a great gaming laptop, just an HP g62 with some half decent hardware, but it runs perfectly fine (on minimum graphics) everywhere but the sphere. I think the problem is that there's just too much pointless TRIBBLE going on for anything but the highest end computers to handle well. And the more they bring in, the worse it gets.

coolheadal

Not so everyone has the lag issue and could be ISP there is a lot of factors at play. So many packets (data) being transfer over from game server to your system. So many ships in play. I am using 16 GB of DDR 3 1600 RAM 32 GB is available to use but it's waste here, but still most of the time no lag but when heavy battles comes a lot. I have all non-impact services disabled to use the full RAM

coolheadal

Check to see GPU is off instead ON under options, Graphics. This is only for Dual core, Quad Core Next Gen or higher from 2 GHz and up. Lower you would leave it alone. My system is 3.7 GHz it came to life in this game now. I have to see how BattleZone is..

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coolheadal

On your device manager under virtual memory do you have two partitions listed?
If you have two partitions listed you can use part of the second drive partition as extra VRAM
Set to that to the max space left on it. This will help a bit more for those who need the extra.

If your on laptop only have 4GB of RAM you could use the SDHC Class 4 or higher with 4GB max setting for Readyboost. That will give you burst of RAM.

Free application for Windows from Lespeed Tech called Wise Game Booster with optimize your system for the game play only but really all it does it take the Windows out of Server mode so you system will run smoother. Also turns off services that you don't need in the game like Windows Update. One thing it doesn't turn off is System Restore uses a lot of resources but if your system fails you won't be able to recover from a crash. So that's the only issue turning off SR.

Keep your HDD defrag on regular basis does help.
Scan for errors on the system too. Clean-up the junk files from internet and apps that leave them on the system. Defrag the registry once a month.

If you can buy more RAM or better HDD. These are options if you can make it so..

quistra

To date my graphics card has been able to handle everything STO has thrown at it.

Until the Undine space battlezone, which absolutely massacres my frame rate with insane amounts of spam and particle bloom. Turning off post-processing helped. Truth is, though, I shouldn't have to turn it off; to date I've never had to.

centersolace

It gets so bad sometimes I can't even see if my guns are firing.

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quintaris

unikon wrote: »

I doubt that very much. People are less likely to change their gear just to kill snot bubbles.

It's the new shiny, so I figured everyone would use it until they go back to their 2pc Borg/MACO shield cookie cutter set ups.

kimmym

I've actually finally broke myself of my 2pc borg/MACO set addiction outside of PvP.

With the revamped Nukara set, I may never use the MACO shield ever again...

But more on topic, my framerates are up all over this season, and my graphics are set higher. I can even run the Undine zone full tilt (I do lag a bit in there, but not cripplingly so)

Just showing some counterpoint. They obviously made some sort of change to the graphics that is hurting some people... but the change is not universally negative... they helped some of us a lot.

I'm not a kid who knows all the latest and greatest technobable anymore. That used to be my gig but I got old. I can't tell you what is happening anymore, but hopefully when they get it right the rest of you will get the speed boosts that I did.

jimtkirk

starswordc wrote: »

Right, so I have to level my rep to T4 to be able to play one piece of ****ing content.

Typical Craptic.

Yes. And by then you'll be so sick of grinding the content the equipment will be useless. This whole thing is too funny!

asovanra

I personally am very pleased with the Undine Space Battlezone. Graphically speaking, I feel that the yellow blobs need to be cut way down. There are times when I cannot see my ship, all I see is a 22in LED yellow screen and its an eye soar.

starswordc

jimtkirk wrote: »

Yes. And by then you'll be so sick of grinding the content the equipment will be useless. This whole thing is too funny!

Yeah, I just ran "Viscous Cycle" for the first time? I'm already ****ing sick of it, and that was a run on normal.

• Can't maneuver half the time because of fluidic space and GW and snotball spam and ****ing bioships punting me every which way. Fortunately my Avenger uses beam arrays. I can't even imagine what that would've been like in my Tor'Kaht gunship.
• Takes ten tries to get the stupid commando to beam down because of GW and snotball spam interrupting the action. Whereas I can beam over repair crews to ships or close doors in "The Breach" without getting interrupted half a second later by enemy fire (not because they're not shooting, but because it doesn't interrupt you).
• Can't skip past the stupid "planet killer launching" cutscene with the just-as-annoying-as-Koren b*tch that could've just been a sidebar pop-up like every other damn line she's got in the mission.

As annoying as the spam in the battlezone is? "Viscous Cycle" is amazingly even worse. Craptic needs to get over their love affair with ****ing chain holds and try something else to make the game challenging. And I agree with jimtkirk: Cryptic, quit making gear that's only useful for single pieces of content that are so ****ing annoying you'll be sick of them before you've even hit T2 of the associated rep.