This strategy will only work using a Microsoft system. I have absolutely no knowledge of Macs. After starting Planetary Annihilation and all other Applications you want, open the Task Manager. Go to the Processes tab and look for Explorer*exe where *=. End this process. Note, this will end Windows. Your task bar, including the windows button, and Desktop icons will not work. You won't be able to start new applications, open files, etc until you: Restart your computer, or log out and log back in. Since you have ended Explorer.exe, you will have to press control+alt+delete to log out, restart, or shutdown. Hope this helped, AgZero
I would also suggest upgrading your RAM. RAM is not that expensive and this game is a memory hog. If you have the money, throw a SSD (Solid State Drive) into your computer. I have one and I will never go back to magnetic media for my primary computer again. Well worth the money.
I'm not so sure about the efficacy of killing it in the first place, but you can restart Explorer.exe without a shutdown/logout/etc. Press: "Crtl+Shift+Esc" to bring up Task Manager Select: "File" -> "New Task (Run...)" Type: "Explorer.exe"
The explorer *should* not use that many resources. Like close to none. So if your system is weak enough for it to make a difference you are in pretty big performance troubles anyway.
Having a lot of memory is very important for PA. An ssd is great to have for a lot of reasons and I can never go back, but it doesn't help this game much.
@cptconundrum Having an ssd will drastically improve overall system performance by improving hard drive read/write times which will in turn improve PA load times. All of the resources for the game are stored on the hard drive so loading the resources will take less time. If you have swap space on your ssd, swapping into and out of ram will also be much faster. It is definitely a factor in improving game performance.
cola is correct, even the impressive speeds of an SSD are PATHETIC compared to main memory (RAM) The game loads all required assets from the drive and into RAM when you start a game. If it didn't the game would run VERY slow. If you want to see how slow, go into system editor and and try creating a size 5000+ planet. You may want to have task manager open when you do this so you can watch your RAM levels. once it reaches abut 90% RAM usage, it will start taking stuff out of memory and writing it to disk (swapping). When this just isn't enough, it will start doing what is called thrashing, and your computer will become practically unusable. This state of unusability is what it would be like if it didn't load stuff into RAM. Thrashing on an SSD is less painful, but still sucks. An SSD will improve the load time of the game client itself a bit but not too much. Not that getting an SSD is a bad idea, they are fantastic, just don't expect them to effect this game much thanks to the procedural generating of the systems.
