Hard to have an epic battle when the game freezes

from Sins Forums

edited 4/14 to include save game link 

I'm playing on a medium random map, things come down to me and one AI, both of us Advent.  The AI sends in what I have to assume is his entire force at one of my planets where I have nice fleet to defend.  I get ready for an epic 300 some ship battle, then gameplay starts to slow right as the fleets engage, and eventually the game just stops functioning.  No mini-dump, or any error I can determine.  No mods are active and for good measure I cleaned out the mod directory.  I've had unexplained slowdowns in the past but this is an outright freeze. - edit as seen it is really a crippling slowdown, not a freeze

Steps that have not solved the problem (XP pro btw) - Turning all gfx to lowest possible settings

reinstalling CPU, GPU, and DirectX drivers

redownloading/installing SINS

increasing the size of the page file

Yes all backround progs are off... yes I'm quite sure of this... for real no AV prog or even a virtual drive is open

 My rig

AMD 5600+ X2 OCed to 3.1 Ghz

ATI Radeon 2900 Pro 512 bit interface 512 meg DDR3

2GB DDR/2 666 RAM

save game file - (renamed, same as in thread)http://files.filefront.com/104+advent+vs+adventsave/;10009732;/fileinfo.html

http://files.filefront.com/104+advent+vs+adventsave/;10009732;/fileinfo.html

KP

 

technical
21,716 views 50 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
maybe try not to OC your CPU and see what happens.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
well the only reason I OC the CPU is for Sins, most of the modern FPS games I oc the GPU. The reason being that since Sins has limited dual core support, you tend to be better off with more juice to the processor.

In the interest of trying all possibilities, I reset everything to stock and the issue remains. When both fleets are in the well together everything seems fine, its when they start shooting that things just fall apart.

drives me nuts, I can run Crysis on all high at 35 FPS and Sins gives me fits, sigh


KP
DeskScapes - Bring your desktop background to life.
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Your machine locks up playing Sins after you overlock your CPU and you expect a software solution? Am I getting this right?
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
The game freezes, not my comp. I can alt-tab out and make a post while the game sits frozen.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Your machine locks up playing Sins after you overlock your CPU and you expect a software solution? Am I getting this right?
End of quote


He made it clear that it wasn't the overclocking...
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
and no i didn't hit the pause button, or any other stupid random thing like that.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
so you can still enter the menus, move your mouse, look around?
or is it a full freeze where everything stands still?
does the music keep playing?
is your cpu / gpu still under load?
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Here are the fleets facing off, like i said its gonna be a big un.

AI Advent

22 Diciple
2 Defense
60 Illum
26 Subjugator
37 Guardian
55 Drone Host
5 Purge
36 Crusader

3 Carrier
3 Mothership
3 Radiance
3 Rapture
1 Revelation

40 Fighter
40 Bomber

Me Advent

10 Diciple
36 Crusader
27 Defense
7 Subjugator
26 Illum
20 Guardian

2 Radiance
2 Rapture
Mothership
Carrier

10 fighter
10 bomber

8 repair bays, 1 anti matter recharge at my asteroid. Definatly gonna be a hard fight, but all my Caps are above lvl 6 with full anti matter and i think i could micro out a win, if it would let me.

KP



Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

I can look around BEFORE the fleets engage using the pause/break button. Once the fleets engage it sits frozen, but no mini-dump, error message or even task manager saying Not Responding... just sits as if it wants to run it but can't.

KP
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
and yes it does remain under load....

an update, after letting it sit for about 20 min it has jumped around a bit in the battle. Still quite unplayable
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
well after however long of letting it sit in the background the battle played out to a point where things started somewhat moving again... with me getting my arse handed to me with no micro, resupply and whatnot.

So it is not an outright freeze, just a slowdown to the point where it looks like it has frozen, any suggestions?

ty for patience and help.

KP
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
you could post savegame and galaxy-file (if its a custom map) to see if anyone else has this problem too.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Here are the fleets facing off, like i said its gonna be a big un.AI Advent22 Diciple2 Defense60 Illum26 Subjugator37 Guardian55 Drone Host5 Purge36 Crusader3 Carrier3 Mothership3 Radiance3 Rapture1 Revelation40 Fighter40 BomberMe Advent10 Diciple36 Crusader27 Defense7 Subjugator26 Illum20 Guardian2 Radiance2 RaptureMothershipCarrier10 fighter10 bomber8 repair bays, 1 anti matter recharge at my asteroid. Definatly gonna be a hard fight, but all my Caps are above lvl 6 with full anti matter and i think i could micro out a win, if it would let me.KP
End of quote


i think the problem is the two Advent fleets, the same thing happened to me. My guess is that its the AoE calculations of the Guardians and Subjugators that are causing the massive slowdown, even with all graphics turned down to low.

just so you know, after quitting the game a few times in frustration, i ended up letting it sit for half an hour (at a frame every couple minutes). once a minute of game time (over that half hour) had passed and 1/3 of the ships died, the game continued without a problem (until the next big Advent-Advent fight). i also found that hitting f10 and pausing now and then and coming back into game seemed to help.

my suggestion is not playing Advent on larger maps right now, as chances are you'll have the same thing happen again. sad, really, until they do something to fix this.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
http://files.filefront.com/here+they+comesave/;9996051;/fileinfo.html

here is the save game file. just a medium random map w/ no mods. Me and the AI just finished eliminating the other 2 AI and then it broke the ceasefire, sending everything at me before I had time to do anything much other than toss up a bunch of repair platforms.

At the point of the save 1/2 of the AI fleet fleet is at the asteroid and the other 1/2 is jumping in.

KP

WWW Link
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
I know what you guys mean with slowing down because of that AOE effect of those guardians.

my fps usually drop below 10 at those points - but if I zoom out far enough it steps up to 40-60 again.

if this is a graphic issue turning down the details and effects should resolve the issue.
if it's not helping than that's not the cause of your freezes
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
i think the problem is the two Advent fleets, the same thing happened to me. My guess is that its the AoE calculations of the Guardians and Subjugators that are causing the massive slowdown, even with all graphics turned down to low. just so you know, after quitting the game a few times in frustration, i ended up letting it sit for half an hour (at a frame every couple minutes). once a minute of game time (over that half hour) had passed and 1/3 of the ships died, the game continued without a problem (until the next big Advent-Advent fight). i also found that hitting f10 and pausing now and then and coming back into game seemed to help. my suggestion is not playing Advent on larger maps right now, as chances are you'll have the same thing happen again. sad, really, until they do something to fix this.
End of quote



was thinking that myself, i stopped playing advent in 1.03, I wanted to give the 1.04 changes a try.

KP
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top

I was going to post about the freeezing issue as well before I saw this thread. Even though I play Advent, I didn't notice that it is specific to Advent fleets.

I'll play a game just with TEC and see if the same thing happens.

I know what you guys mean with slowing down because of that AOE effect of those guardians.my fps usually drop below 10 at those points - but if I zoom out far enough it steps up to 40-60 again.if this is a graphic issue turning down the details and effects should resolve the issue.if it's not helping than that's not the cause of your freezes
End of quote


He was talking about the actual AOE calculations which happen whether you're watching the battle or not, so as he said changing graphics settings make no difference.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
ok I played your game and it didn't totally freeze as you described but it still "stopped" every 5 seconds for about 10 seconds and was unplayable slow.
between the "frezes" my fps was about 10-15 and the game seemded to play faster than usual.

no micromanagemend possible at this moment, after 10-15 minutes almost all your fleet was gone and the attacker lost ~50% of his fleet.

still something is weird as i know i have waged bigger battles and didn't have that extreme hangup.
sure it was slow but not that bad...

it not only seems that advent is causing this problem but advent vs. advent.
zooming out or in didn't change much here and my GFX surely wasn't stressed out too much.
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
good to know its not just me, should have posted the save game first, would have made life a lot easier :) Thats what happens when you make a post first thing in the morning after staying up all night ripping your computer apart trying to make it play a little space battle properly, you get cranky.

I've had plenty of huge battles that caused issues, but this was the first to just bring my system to a screeching hault. Winning a 3 star large map had to have taken more juice than that battle.

Anyone else have any luck getting through the fight?

KP

Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
I tried out the save. It was choppy and froze for a few seconds near the start of the fight, but gradually got better as ships were destroyed. I was able to micromanage stuff using the empire side bar, and ended up killing several enemy cap ships and the majority of the attacking fleet before they bugged out. I lost all defending frigates and a single cap ship, and was able to apply numerous cap ship upgrades during the fight.

I wouldn't describe the experience as enjoyable, but at least it didn't completely freeze on me.

I have Vista Home Premium on a Core 2 Duo E6750 at 2.66 GHz, 2 GB RAM and a 512 MB 8800 GT. It seems that CPU is the limiting factor as I had plenty of free RAM.
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
how can cpu be the limiting factor here?

the TP had its cpu at 3.1 GHz and a total freeze.
I have a 2.2 GHz mobile core 2 duo with partial freezes
you have a 2.66 GHz core 2 duo with almost no freezes

I also played a medium 30 planet map yesterday vs. 1 TEC and 1 Vasari and in mid game had a battle twice the size of that save game

over 500+ ships and 30+ capital ships where involved
no hangups and no freeze at any time through that battle.

so how come that advent vs. advent battle is so damn slow?
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
The problem appears to be with the AOE damage Advent cap ships use. I played through the save a few more times and *did* see some total freezes, lasting 20-30 seconds. The difference seemed to be whenever Malice was cast, I could see the AOE light up and then everything froze. When I monitored CPU usage with Resource Monitor, it looked pretty spiky. I didn't see any disk activity during the freezes, and I had about 10% free physical memory during the whole run. Graphics settings don't seem to matter, either, but I didn't test that.

If it's not disk access, and it's not memory related, and it's not graphics related, then it's gotta be some CPU-intensive task the game is doing. Calculating AOE damage for Malice seems a likely candidate.
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
I tried out the save. It was choppy and froze for a few seconds near the start of the fight, but gradually got better as ships were destroyed. I was able to micromanage stuff using the empire side bar, and ended up killing several enemy cap ships and the majority of the attacking fleet before they bugged out. I lost all defending frigates and a single cap ship, and was able to apply numerous cap ship upgrades during the fight.
End of quote


Sounds aboout right, with my other fleet I had on the other side of the star beginning its invasion that would pretty much spell defeat for the AI.

how can cpu be the limiting factor here?
End of quote



Could be the that intel's are slightly better than amd's. My AMD has a faster core speed but prob has a slower FSB and L2 cache.

If it's not disk access, and it's not memory related, and it's not graphics related, then it's gotta be some CPU-intensive task the game is doing. Calculating AOE damage for Malice seems a likely candidate.
End of quote


interesting, be nice to hear from above on this.

KP
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
messed around with it a bit more and it has to be Malice. I turned off my Malice autocast and the fight lasted until the AI used it. Talk about devestating both to my fleet and my CPU. Every one of my ships went red and the game stopped, it jumps ahead occasionally as i watch my fleet fall apart without bewing able to do anything.

at this point i should just retreat in 3 different directions and hope the AI splits its fleet.

KP
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top
You would have lost the engagement.