[1.7] Saved Games Error Out

Okay I have a video about 15 minutes of issues I've experienced in 1.7 I have put the info in support ticket #AQL-838-40681.  At this point it makes any larger existing game virtually unplayable in it's current state and I hope this points out some of it's flaws.  Overall I love this direction and believe there is a lot of good here and can't wait until all the bugs and kinks are worked out.  Good Work Stardock.

Few more things...

• Don't have all existing star bases have auto sponsors when loading old saved games.  This creates a big mess to attempt to figure out when loading old games, especially if one has many, many star bases.
• Because of the above happens, as soon as a new module is unlocked the game goes crazy with adding new constructors to the build ques of any and all ship yards even those that one doesn't really want to upgrade.
• The current process doesn't see any constructor as having more than one module, which was mentioned in the dev stream and I'm assuming will be worked out.
• Existing games don't get the little white lines showing which shipyards are sponsoring the star base.
• Game locks up/responds slowly after the above happens even though memory and cpu usage are not an issue.
• Video shows all of the above along with saved game on ticket #AQL-838-40681.
• Edit: Mentioned in dev stream, have the latest best (auto upgraded constructor be chosen by default), it's a pain to have to change this with every star base.

P.S.  I love the soundtrack just sayin'

usually i do not care for game sound tracks but GC3 is my exception,  Good job

Additional Points from second saved game from 1.61 (65 hour game)

• Turn time prior to 1.7 was about 2-3 minutes post 1.7 is approaching 40 minutes with no sign yet of the turn completing.  (will hopefully update time when it finally does complete, don't have time to continue to keep near the computer while it continues to do whatever it's doing, I'm assuming should I continue to leave it go it will eventually complete.)
• The fast constant sound of selecting ship/buildings present in my video I created in ticket is not present as a fast sound in this game.  Instead it's there as a sound about once every 10-20 seconds.
• Appears this causes turn time to go up drastically as something else is happening in the background with no apparent sign to performance.
• CPU sitting at 40-60%
• Memory sitting about 11 GB of 16 GB usage. (67% used) [This fell after about 13 minutes to only 9 GB usage]
• This game was a game that previously was unrecoverable crash in 1.61, started in 1.7 to see if it would continue.

It appears once the game adds all the modules to the que the game slows to a crawl as far as response time.  This seems to be one of the main issues next to longer turn times and everything set to auto when attempting to load saved games.

Right now, the system sets all shipyards as sponsors by default when loading an old save game.  We didn't want you to have to select every starbase and assign a new shipyard.  We've also set the auto-upgrade as a default for both old and new games.  What are your thoughts on this?

We'll look into clarifying the auto/manual assignment of shipyard sponsors 

Can you give some more details on the research project and destroying buildings issues?

I'm not sure about this.  I loaded a insane map with 80+ factions from 1.61 and didn't notice a slow down when I loaded it for the first time.  I'll run some more tests....

Here are my thoughts which I mentioned in the video part of the ticket...

• All existing star bases from previous saves should be set to manual and auto should not be selected.  (This way one doesn't get the huge amount of items being added to the que once one clicks turn for the first time after loading the game in 1.7.)
• The above causes anywhere from a few second delay on that first turn to hours, depending on how many shipyards are present in the previous game.
• Because of the above this allows the player to choose to add the existing star bases to que up constructors or just stand pat at what they currently are at without having to go through the massive list of existing star bases and changing their settings.
• Not to mention most existing star bases usually are left alone after a while unless one feels they need to upgrade it for any reason.
• When having all these ships added to the que either manually or automatically the next turn (or as you add multiple ships to the que over 50 star bases) the game starts to crawl horribly with huge delay's  (Towards the end of my video in my ticket it shows this response on the planet that I'm attempting to change the buildings on.)
• As far as making it more easy to understand the new system.  I think it's good now, some old players (existing to the game) which don't like to read and like to just click and go may over look different things.  Little popups over the shipyard sponsors (when they are grayed out because manual is not selected) stating need to select manual to be able to adjust shipyard sponsor would be nice.

Beyond that, should those two issues be fixed I think this is a huge step forward but, right now playing 1.7 on one of these games is nearly impossible.  Really the video clip I posted in my ticket shows all of this, it lasts about 15 minutes, however, the first couple minutes is just the game loading, beyond that between minutes 7:30 and 9:45 is where the auto upgrade is constantly adding ships into que, which is real annoying and in some games with even more star bases this period slows the game well beyond that.  In my other 1.61 game (that has an unrecoverable crash into the very next turn.) The game just sits on adding ship to que every 10-20 seconds and I was waiting yesterday for around an hour trying to get that turn to complete (either crashing or continuing) and was still in that loop.

Hope that answers your question.

Did you click turn and have more than 50 star bases on the map?  Otherwise my save game is in my ticket you could load that and click turn to reproduce.

I believe Seliore is gaming on a AMD machine.  The game is significantly slower on AMD CPUs.

I am using an AMD machine and the CPU is not heavily being used with this game usually during turns between 40-60%.  I have asked about this before and Frogboy stated AMD is not an issue as they are one of Stardock's partners.

I have an 8 core FX 9370 CPU and i'm not talking about the normal slow down, I'm talking turn time is increasing because of all the extra constructors being put into que and huge game lag once all the shipyards/star bases have huge ques...

Not to mention if AMD was so horrible than why don't I see huge slow downs on responses in other modern games, including Ashes (even though an RTS)?

Ashes is DX12 or Vulkan API, I believe.  Better/different optimization.

I have said it before, AMD has excellent CPUs, but most games aren't coded to use AMD performance improvement, so we have slower games, most of the time.  I went from a similar CPU to yours to an Intel i5 4670k, and I don't regret it for gaming.  However, everything else I do on my computer is very slow.

I sometimes play Galciv 3 on a A8-6600k APU.  It ain't very fast to begin with, I understand, but Galciv 3 is notably slower on turn change by mid game, once a good portion of the map is shown.  I have yet to try a game on this computer with the new starbase improvements.

This is what I'm providing feedback on, not the general slow turn time as the game extends out, however, the actual issues with 1.7 so it can be improved as with the current state it creates a lot of issues, especially with the first turn after loading the saved game.  I didn't post the youtube video here because 1.7 is still in beta, however, I did include it in my support ticket so that Stardock can see specifically what I'm referring to.

do you have the same problem if you start a new game or only on loading the old one?

Well, maybe Stardock will figure out some general optimization for AMD that would help alleviate the problem you are experiencing.

This isn't an AMD issue, this is a 1.7 issue with saved games.  If you saw the video you'd understand, if you'd like I can PM it to you later so you can see what I'm referring to and what is actually going on with saved games on larger maps.

Issue is not present with early new game start in 1.7 but, I haven't played that game for more than an hour or two.  The games I play normally last 50+ hours to get to the point in the game where I'm at in my saved games.  Realize in the video I included I was around the 38 hour mark with around 50+ star bases all at different points of completion compared to what modules are available and only about 10 ship yards to support them.  

Now imagine all of the star bases all adding all available modules to each shipyard all during the turn process.  This creates one of the issues.  To prevent this you could go through and turn the auto upgrade star base to off and that will prevent this happening during the turn process but, then the player has to go through all 50+ star bases currently to do this.  

Now that one has done that, now imagine going through and if you choose manually adding 3+ constructor requests for each star base.  (To prevent 10-20 being added to most with auto upgrade, I only want to add a few modules the rest I could care less about.)  This too starts causing huge lag in the game with going to other star bases or even planets and trying to destroy/build buildings ect...

All of the above is in that video and is not an AMD issue, that is what I was talking about and, is completely different than the normal turn time delay as the game goes on and how it may vary from processor to processor.  Thank you for the suggestions though.

I did something similar on my Intel gaming rig and had no problems, aside that multiple constructors got stacked on my starbases.

Can you PM me a link to your saved game?  I would like to try it and compare the turn time on my gaming machine.   I will post my results here so that Stardock has a comparison base, if they can not reproduce it on their end.

I did PM you the saved game and the youtube video so you can see what I'm trying to explain.  Although again I'm not really complaining about the turn time except for the period of when the game is adding the constructors to que...

I had about 20 starbases, but not the 160+ starbases and 10 shipyards that you have in the sample game  With so many starbases, I am now seeing a delay on the first turn after upgrading.  The alternative is setting the starbases to manual and then folks who wanted the feature would have to set them to "auto-upgrade" and you'd still have to wait (it just would be spread out over time).  

I had similar problems (not as huge as you, since I had less starbases), when I switched from the basic constructor to my latest multi-modules constructor.  It didn't take that long to change turn though, but the starbases were quickly filled with a bunch of ships when I tried to manually order the modules, and it refused to automatically upgrade when there were constructor ships with remaining build points in orbit.  And that was a new game, so your problem is likely worsened by that long game.

The current system will need refinements, to take into account more than one construction module so as not to order so many ships and allow shipyard to be on auto-idle.

Right now, as I research tech and get upgrade modules, if a shipyard I no longer needed is shutdown, it will order modules from another, more distant one crowding that shipyard that I'm using for something else.  Then I have to cancel the upgrades, re-awaken the shipyards, reselect the modules manually (at least two or three if they are distant) and then I'm having similar problems to Seilore (again, it's faster because I have less starbases&shipyards), but it orders a bunch of constructors from everywhere and the ships stay stacked around the starbase.

That sounds like a better alternative, what about the delay after the fact, just general building/deleting buildings or changing build ques?  The video shows this toward the end?