Terrible Lag and FPS Drops.

Yeah I have no idea how anyone is playing this game smoothly right now. When I hit CTRL+P, my framerate is a solid 60, but the server simulation is constantly below 5 since the update. Even if I'm just playing a game against AI and just starting, if it's a bad time It can be at 2fps. But yeah, since the update the game has been acting like it's been playing 2 hours with everyone spamming avengers on planet patrol, only after about 5 minutes (or sometimes right away)

I can only assume it's either a bug/leak, or more likely, the servers are just getting a bit slammed from people playing. However, it's worth noting that it's so bad, a lot of people are going to get a bad impression. Of course it's early access but these are things to consider - if a players first experience with a game is trying to play against AI and the game is running at 2fps (server sim, not your computers fps), that is unplayable and frustrating. IMO Uber should be heavily focusing on optimization. I know that generally comes later in development but theres 2 things to consider in that regard:

1. The type of game Planetary Annihilation is. With a first person shooter, optimizations add only slight improvements (usually) that eventually add up. With PA, the cause its generally just the fact that there is so much going on, so many units and so much to keep track of. In my opinion that means that optimizations should be done as the game progresses to keep it workly smoothly. Why create the entire game based on a foundation, only to realize that foundation isn't very stable?

2. That the game is early access. It's true, adding polish to the game now it can be argued is "wasted", as it is more efficient to get everything in, then deal with all the issues. However, because of the way this game was funded, and just that state of gaming now, I think it's worth considering delivering a more polished experience than you typically would have with an in-studio beta where big issues can be ignored.

That just isn't the case with early access. Like it or not, tons of people see the game on sale on steam, buy it to see what it's like, and see it's a mess and never load it again. This is a reality, and it does matter because first impressions are important: It's worth considering that every person who plays a laggy frustrating game now is someone who was interested in the game, and may never load it again - at the very least he won't be inclined to tell others to buy it right now. Not everyone, but the average person with a passing interest in the game. Those are the people you need to impress to create good word of mouth that spreads the game. It's worth delaying the game a few months, to make it more fun for the months until it releases.

The alternative is making the game perfect, but then when it releases and the media campaign starts, every single comment is along the lines of "DO NOT BUY, I bought this game and it was so bad I couldn't even play against the AI without their server lagging and running at 1fps! Oh yeah, and you have to play on their terrible server!!"

It doesn't matter if this is ignorant, wrong, been fixed, whatever. I agree, but you're preaching to the choir. As Dr.Phil would say, you choose the behaviour, you choose the consequences

Food for thought!

Pinworm I agree with your point that it's giving the wrong impression to new players! This would explain why we as a community fail to retain a large number of players after every sale. The lobby is full for a week and then it's back to 3-4 games at any time and I'm sure I remember the game being very slow last time it went on sale on steam.

I too experience a lot of lag now. Since downloading the game I now have the worst fps and selecting units (especially fabricators) is so slow I can't even play anymore my drivers are up to date and I haven't ever used any mods. I know it is a process so I have hope that this will improve!

Yea I've been getting massive net lag with the US servers is unplayable. I even disconnect from the server in the middle of the match and this only started a few days after the galaxy war update. Never been this bad before.

How do you change servers? I want to try the European one to see how I perform compared to the US.

I get huge network lag (up to 10 seconds between game updates) on the US server now. I know that 8 games are run on each server, so maybe I keep getting servers where the other 7 games are massive interplanetary galactic war tank spam games.

My bigger issue is actually the UI lag that I get later on in the game. The UI is so unresponsive now that I sometimes need to sit and wait while dragging a select box or giving an order.

You don't actually "change servers", in the lobby it should show all of the games in each region and say which they are in. You can select from an option on the left too to choose specific regions.

Now that I think about it, when I've played in EU games because there was no NA ones, I don't think i've had many issues.. I'm going to try both today and see if there's a noticable difference

there's too many people playing since galactic war update. I just finished playing a game that was laggier (if possible) than Vanilla FA with stock AI on my old pentium 4.

I think that's what it is.

Server farm needed. I think it's urgent the server farm be seen as a priority.

Yeah if they want people to stick with the game beefing up the servers so every game doesn't freeze and die is a priority.

It's just as bad, had 2 games today that have completely frozen and kicked me out after a while of freeze.

Generating planets is taking an age and I've tried a skirmish and a galactic war. I've ended up staring at pretty planets without the commander or area selection circle ever appearing.

Doubly annoying because there was an awesome moon planet.

Maybe if we could play the game offline this would work? Is there a way to play offline yet?

not yet. thought modders have got their eye set on it.

Yeah, this is happening to me a lot now. Sometimes it fixes itself after 20 seconds, but usually I get disconnected from the server. It always seems to happen as I'm about to win a galaxy war map, too.. (happens in MP as well)

My second galaxy war literally can't beat the first mission because of freezes :/

I have noticed a ton of lag throughout some PA games I have played. The severity of which depends on if the PA gods are merciful to me or not. In some games I get a massive frames drop in the middle of the match and then gets better. Sometimes the lag is continuous and in some instances everything is completely dandy. The PA servers from what my experience go from good to manageable to O GOD MY EYES!

Just like pinworm said this is early access, so expect this.

We are only Guinea Pigs after all

WI would like to point out that the server sim is set only to run at 10 fps as a max to help reduce load. Some of you said the sim was running at 1-2 fps, that is a problem though, they shouldn't slow down that much with only a few thousand units (and structures). However, If unit movement is choppy, it's likely network lag; The minimum requirements for bandwidth are a bit to low honestly, My 3mb/s barely cuts it late game sine matches. I'd also like to point out that because it's in development, thankfully you guys seem to understand this, they haven't been able to allow the game to fully utilize our hardware yet; they've only recently switched over a lot of the visual rendering to the gpu, before it was all cpu based. Honestly, 5 fps late game is (sadly) fairly normal, but they are making it better. They try to force low ram usage, and the game can't properly utilize more than 4 cpu cores. (Don't quote me, varrak said they can't do all six plus hyperthreading, so I'm assuming 4 (physical?) is the max).

(This smiley won't delete! Ah!)
Also, during this crazy lag, get some uberprobe files to upload, just one each, they'll appreciate it!

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/uberprobe-performance-upload-thread.51144/

Edit: sorry for any phone grammar/autocranberry.

+1 for that


Game is also laggy for me, i cant play. I have 10mbit connection, but my freends says that they can play it without lags. I asked them about connection, and they have 20-50mbit connection, and one of them have 4mbit connection and have less lags than me !
I tested game playing on LTE connection from my phone (about 18mbit in my location) and you know what? I almost have no lags.

I don't really know if your Internet connection has much to do with It. It had to maintain synchronization between players so if It does, then you're limited by the slowest player. Which is p ossible I guess But I don't really feel That's the issue. I have It in single player as Well.

Is there ports to open? I could try that and see. .

But the problem, as has been stated before, is that we're losing new players at an extremely fast rate because they buy the game on sale and then get kicked out of their first few games but not before having the server freeze up the game for a few agonising minutes at a time. Then these people think the game is rubbish and never play it again.

It isn't a good solution to "just wait" until all the new players have given up and then the servers will be able to handle what's left. Also it's infuriating that I cannot play the game I paid for.

The game is asynchronous, in other words, it does not matter how slow it is on any other players pc. All it depends on is your pc and if the server is running at the correct speed.

Are you able to tell us your fps? Could you describe the kind of lag? (How the units move, selection box responsive, etc)

I played three games against AI. First at EU, then US and finally at Australia server. Now it's 12:43UTC and perhaps most crowdy server is EU and also it felt most laggiest. Nevertheless, US and Australia servers were laggy too. Tried also set my settings from low to uber but that didn't affect lag at all (GPU and CPU weren't overloaded - not even close).

From my previous observations I found that even I'm living in Europe, US server is less laggy than EU for me. Not much, but there's noticable difference.

UI lag is for me the worst. When lag hits, camera, keyboard and mouse feels like someone else than me is moving them.