Will SupCom always run slow late game

E

EchoMatrix

Gawd
Joined
Feb 1, 2005
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806
I was wondering, every time I play Supcom it slows down late game becasue all of the units. I got a Q6600, 4GB ram, 285gtx and it runs pretty good but online and LAN with friends it bogs down. Is it always going to run slow becasue its a pretty beefy game, or will the latest, greatest system put with another of the same type run this game liek a bat outta hell?
 
I have it reinstalled, but whenever I play giant bullshit skirmishes vs the PC it still CTD's when it hits the 2gb cap, even with the associated patches ran and in Win7 64.
 
OP should use the SupCom Core Maximizer. SupCom was never patched to use multiple cores properly, and that fixes it as best as can be done.

pigwalk said:
I have it reinstalled, but whenever I play giant bullshit skirmishes vs the PC it still CTD's when it hits the 2gb cap, even with the associated patches ran and in Win7 64.
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Did you try the >2GB fixes noted in this post?

http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?p=22082#22082

There is also a 3GB enabler mentioned in Kenquinn's post here; later posts in that thread seem to say that fix is included in SupCom FA but not in the original SupCom.
 
Forget everything else, you want the following mods to maximise game speed later on;

1. Duncane's AI Fix
2. Thirdlaw AI
3. AI Cheat options & lobby enhancement.


I've zipped up the 4 files you need and uploaded them here;

www.willmaltby.co.uk/fa_gamedata.zip


Extract these to your "...Forged Alliance\gamedata" folder.


As you may have noticed, this is primarily for Forged Alliance expansion, but should work for regular Supreme Commander. These files won't overwrite anything unless you've placed modded files already into your gamedata, but you might wanna back it up anyway.


The Sorian AI mentioned is the best and most challenging, but will slow games down harrowingly badly. Trust me; me and my mate have played alot of coop supcom skirmish games against AIs and have spent quite a while investigating/testing various mods and AIs to try to find something bareable for long sessions. This is what works best. Use the 'AIx' cheating AI option and put the cheat multiplier up to at least 3 if you want a challenge.

Also, avoid any maps with any water and you'll enjoy twice the sim speed regardless of AI.
 
Didn't development for Thirdlaw AI stop in 2007? By looking at the file date from the file in your pack, it seems I am right. If so, then no wonder it will be faster than Sorian's AIx since it is poorer in how it plays. Bumping up Thirdlaw AI's ability to cheat will not allow the AI to develop a better playing style. Still, I suppose it is beneficial for the OP to test out the various available AI's and see which he prefers.

The AI fix is likely going to have a very small effect on simspeed, if anything. Every little bit helps, but the fix is mostly for changes in the way the stock AI plays, though it can be used in conjunction with third party AI's. This fix, lobby enhancement, and the cheating AI options can be found in the OP of the link I provided for Sorian's AI, so stating "forget everything else" is quite inconsiderate when the information you posted was already posted previously. The links provided in evilsofa's post are also very helpful and should be mandatory if one wishes to play with the AI or with real people.

This leads me to my next point... The OP makes no mention of playing against AI players. In fact, he makes it sound like it plays good with AI but bad with actual people. If that is the case, then the best he can do is download and use the stuff evilsofa linked to.
 
Yup, I'd say it runs ok with just my machine. (from what i remember) its choppy but not slow. But i do have rez set up pretty high.

And FYI I was talking about SupCom:FA. Who would not buy the update? lol

Do those mods work online as well or just LAN? since your adding to the core files.
 
and plays slow even with just people. But they were online people so who knows what comp they had.
 
EchoMatrix said:
I was wondering, every time I play Supcom it slows down late game becasue all of the units. I got a Q6600, 4GB ram, 285gtx and it runs pretty good but online and LAN with friends it bogs down. Is it always going to run slow becasue its a pretty beefy game, or will the latest, greatest system put with another of the same type run this game liek a bat outta hell?
Click to expand...


are you running windows xp or vista/7?

also if your running supcom 1 but not the FA expansion do the 2GB fix that was recommended a few posts up.. if your running the FA expansion ignore that since FA has the memory allocation bug fixed..

if you are running windows xp i recommend you get the coremaximizer program that allows you to force supcom to use all 4 cores.. if you dont then it only uses 1 core when you start a match.. and this game really needs all 4 cores.. also this game is very sensitive to core clock.. so if you can get to 3.2 ghz or higher i highly recommend it.. anything under 3ghz no matter how many cores you have will perform like shit..
 
dj_2004 said:
Didn't development for Thirdlaw AI stop in 2007? By looking at the file date from the file in your pack, it seems I am right. If so, then no wonder it will be faster than Sorian's AIx since it is poorer in how it plays. Bumping up Thirdlaw AI's ability to cheat will not allow the AI to develop a better playing style. Still, I suppose it is beneficial for the OP to test out the various available AI's and see which he prefers.

The AI fix is likely going to have a very small effect on simspeed, if anything. Every little bit helps, but the fix is mostly for changes in the way the stock AI plays, though it can be used in conjunction with third party AI's. This fix, lobby enhancement, and the cheating AI options can be found in the OP of the link I provided for Sorian's AI, so stating "forget everything else" is quite inconsiderate when the information you posted was already posted previously. The links provided in evilsofa's post are also very helpful and should be mandatory if one wishes to play with the AI or with real people.

This leads me to my next point... The OP makes no mention of playing against AI players. In fact, he makes it sound like it plays good with AI but bad with actual people. If that is the case, then the best he can do is download and use the stuff evilsofa linked to.
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The Sorian AI, while newer and very accomplished, is flawed in that it's too good and too efficient which drives the game to a halt.

Let me explain;

From what has been gathered by the community; what makes the game slow is that the AI creates a thread for every unit it creates and never deletes it even if the unit dies. So sim speed is directly correlated to the amount of units the AI pumps out. The Sorian AI is very efficient and will effectively send all units successfully at the player leaving few wasted and/or hanging around not doing much (though it will occasionally still do this). Because of this efficiency the game will grind to a halt considerably sooner as a result.

The Thirdlaw AI, while not the greatest or most challenging, is better 'paced' and will lead to a game that runs a hell of alot faster for longer. It'll still slow down eventually, but nowhere near as quickly as the Sorian.

Also, the very latest Sorian iteration (2.0.0) has issues which the community has noted, which causes a more sudden and noticable slowdown about 20-30 into any given game. Version 1.9.9c is reckoned to be the best version of the Sorian which alleviates this problem. I've tried it myself and it is faster, though still alot slower than the Thirdlaw AI.



Actually, I've just noticed that Sorian AI 2.10 is out which notes some fixes to sim speed. Maybe this problem has now been fixed. I'll give it a go later in the week.


Sorry for my apparent 'rudeness'. It wasn't my intention. I guess I'm just still bitter from THQ abandoning SupCom to make the shitty, inferior, 'consolitis' infected, Supcom2 before they bothered to finish/fix the last game. :p
 
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EchoMatrix said:
and plays slow even with just people. But they were online people so who knows what comp they had.
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The game speed is ultimately set by the weakest link since it runs independently on each machine and then synced. Unlike most online games where the server controls all and feeds the clients.

Your machine should handle it well, so if a single player game runs fine and goes slow with someone online, it's probably them. Also, playing on a lan versus online is massively faster. My mate came down one weekend and we hooked up our PCs via ethernet and the difference was night and day, even with the Sorian AI.

The game is unfinished, that's the real problem. So sad considering in terms of gameplay it is so very polished and utterly unmatched, imho, by any other RTS beside TA.
 
One last tip;

Many/most ISPs prioritise different port numbers for latency if it's a known port for a popular game.

I've found using xbox live's 3074 number to be the best for latency, followed by unreal tournament's 7777.

Seriously, this makes a hell of a difference, so get those mapped in your router or whatever and you might see a big improvement.
 
ok, thanks for the help. its just not me then... I pre ordered supcom 2, but got a refund after the demo. I see now its on sale for like $20.... go figure. shit game for shit money...

I'm not gonna buy Taylors new game no matter how good/bad it is
 
spine said:
From what has been gathered by the community; what makes the game slow is that the AI creates a thread for every unit it creates and never deletes it even if the unit dies. So sim speed is directly correlated to the amount of units the AI pumps out. The Sorian AI is very efficient and will effectively send all units successfully at the player leaving few wasted and/or hanging around not doing much (though it will occasionally still do this). Because of this efficiency the game will grind to a halt considerably sooner as a result.
Click to expand...

But with the AI playing better, the player may not last as long. For instance, if Thirdlaw is sending out ten unit platoons every minute against me (let's say T3), then I'll easily annihilate those again and again. If Sorian is sending out twenty unit platoons (again T3), combined with air support and extra troops in transports, then I'm going to have more trouble wiping them out, thus possibly leading to a shorter game with me being defeated (unlikely! :D). Of course, the game could take longer with me slowly pushing forward into the enemies base than with Thirdlaw and me more easily killing my opponent.

One way to never run into simspeed issues is to 1 vs. 1 with a Sorian AIx. In about ten minutes the player will be bombarded with nukes and experimentals. :p

spine said:
I guess I'm just still bitter from THQ abandoning SupCom to make the shitty, inferior, 'consolitis' infected, Supcom2 before they bothered to finish/fix the last game. :p
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I agree that THQ shouldn't have abandoned FA so quickly. Obviously GPG was still interested in patching the game since they released a beta patch as the latest patch (labeled beta since they did not receive any more funding from THQ to finish it).

This is partly why GPG moved to Stardock as the publisher for Demigod. Stardock was a much better publisher, but networking issues early on plagued the game. Of course, this was fixed and I think patches and new material are still being added to the game. With SupCom 2, GPG decided to go with Square Enix. I tried to give SupCom 2 a chance but I just can't get into it like I can with FA. Just too much is missing from SupCom/FA. A shame as the game plays really smoothly with AI.

For GPG's next game - Kings and Castles - GPG should be in complete control as I'm pretty sure they are handling all matters. So far, it is looking pretty cool.
 
I ordered SupCom:FA from Amazon.com for under $8 last week. While waiting for it to arrive in the mail, I dug up the original SupCom I got long ago and gave it another try, because I wanted to at least play through the original campaigns. I've got an E6600 OCed to 3.0GHz, 4GB RAM and Win7 64-bit. The original SupCom (not FA) crashes a lot, especially when turning on 7 Sorian 2.01 AIs on a big map - nothing seems to fix that (I don't get to the point of slowing down, it just crashes first). It's also crashy even in the first campaign mission.

Things I tried included: patching SupCom to the last 3280; the large address fix (while it's in FA, it's not the original); Core Maximizer 1.0.3; excluding SupCom and Core Maximizer from DEP; running with no AV; turning off the SPDIF-Out (Rear) in the Sound Control Panel's Playback area; running SupCom as admin; uninstalling EVGA Precision. All to no avail. At least I have a lot of hope that FA will behave much better than this.
 
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