It's just how the damage is distributed, they get stuck in reverse when they do more or equal damage from the back as they do from the front.

Cool

Sorry, got another question.

How big of a map should I play on to get the nice, smooth graphic's I am after. Iv'e played a few games on 40-50 planet medium sized maps and the ships look awsome and travel around very smoothly, even when there are quite a few on screen. However, becasue I wanted a 'star trek' map, went looking and downloaded one which has a huge 255 planets. Now, I edited it somewhat and cut this down to 150 but the ships just don't move as nicely, with a jerkiness to their moverment, even if there is only one on the screen, and even if I turn the graphic settings down to low. Would having a large amount of planets affect these visuals?

After reading some other posts I got the FRAPS program and tested, with  75 frames the norm (on medium maps). This does drop down to about 60 on the larger maps, which does not really seem to explain the difference in ship movement smoothness. Any idea's?  

Did a bit more testing and there is definitely a frame rate drop on the larger map. What puzzles me however, is that even a small drop (from 75-72) is very noticeable in the ship movements, almost like something else (related to the process large map) is responsible. My machine specs are dual core 2.5 Ghz, 512meg graphics card with 4GB of ram BTW.

Graphic setting don't seem to effect this jerky movement in any way, only the map size.

The only real issue I have with this game is at work here: no multi-threading capability.  Basically, when you have such a large map, only ONE of your processing cores has to control EVERYTHING:  ships, fighters, ai, EVERYTHING.  The only ways to fix this are to get a really powerful single core processor or for Ironclad to add multi-threading.  You should be able to turn your graphics back up with a very small or 0 hit to performance.  Also possible with your particular machine is that the game doesn't have quite enough RAM to work with, if of course you're running a 32-bit OS.  If it's 64-bit then don't worry about it.  Your graphics card is probably fine as well.  Mainly with the big maps, it's an increase of processing power that's needed, as long as it's a 64-bit system, and the graphics card is fine if it can already support high or highest graphics.

Yes 32-bit. Thanks for the response. I've further reduced the map down to 110 planets which seems to have helped. (Mind you, its early  in the game).  Would enabling the 3GB switch for xp be of any help here?

If its the processor that can't keep up (as it seems to be based on lowering the graphics didn't help) no, and even if it was your RAM there has been quite a lot of debate if that even helps in Sins.

A 512meg graphic card is pretty light. You've done the basics like defrag,close unneeded programs in backround?

Did defrag, but do run Internet in the background.  Been quite a while since I upgraded, so it looks like time for a new machine. Cheers for all the help guys.

512 ain't light, not for Sins.  It's more than adequate for max settings.  I did one step down with a 256MB 7800GS on my old computer.

That your framerate is high while the jitter goes on guarantees it's not the video card.  Your processor would need to be somewhere north of 8Ghz before it would stop chugging late game on a 255 planet map.

I play random medium and large, and I have a 3.3Ghz Sandybridge setup.  Late game chug typically only comes about when I've borked a new ability.  I can't handle a huge without it hitting though.  One of life's little joys, the engine was designed before processor growth went parallel on us.

I agree, I definitely think its the processor.  After careful observation of frame rate, which at the start of the game sits at 75 without fluctuation, the ships run perfectly smooth. As trade ships and system load increases the frame rate flicker from 75-74 all of the time.  As it flickers, the ships smooth/jerky movement exactly corresponds to the 75/74 flickering of the frame rate.  I might try and overclock a bit more to see if this helps.

Edit: Oh and BTW I have not defraged, and my HD is absolutely full. Will give this a go now.

When we were working on TSOP we pretty much threw everything we could think of at the late game lag issue. From nerfing the texture sizes by 1/2, Reducing poly counts on the NPC models, and strike craft. We even tried auto docking strike craft. NOTHING worked. That tells me that late game lag IS a CPU issue. A CPU issue similar to the problems supreme commander had in its early days. Just too many units on the map. Even with TSOP enabled and a small map running at 1.2 gigs. On an i5 cpu, 6 gig of ram 64 bit system, With a 1 gig vid card system WAY above recommended specs. I STILL get late game lag.

Sins only uses a single core of a multi core CPU. So imagine all of the units, and structures on the map. Along with mines strike craft. Then add in the calculations for unit movement, Weapons fire, Particles, Damage allocation, Mitigation, Abilities, Buff's, and De-buff's. All of this is happening on the map even when you are not observing any AI's fighting it out somewhere else on the map. I think it is pretty safe to say that its because Sins was optimized only for single core CPUs. NO amount of graphic optimization can help that. Sins is 32 bit, but done a little different than most 32 bit games, because some 32 bit game unload stuff it doesnt need. Sins loads EVERYTHING, and keeps everything loaded from game startup until the game is over. In early game thats ok because not much is happening. However when thousands of things are going on at once i think its pretty safe to say the 1 core sins is using in my 3.2 gig i5 is taxed.

Sorry i havent been around.. Nor am i gonna be around for a bit.. RL Work just got crazy again.

Yup my system's i7, 8gb ram, 64-bit and a 4gb video card, and I get the jitters too in late game.  Upon alt-tabbing even middle game, I can check the performance monitor and usually 1 core is maxed at 100% and all the others are sitting at 0 LOL.  Makes me wanna yank the i7 out and look for something else, especially on the (any of you remember/hear of this?) Battle of the Quadrants map that some guy posted awhile ago.  This game would be PERFECT, and I mean PERFECT (at least from a gamer's perspective, maybe not Major Stress's LOL), with multi-threading support. 

damn shame the game isn't multi-cored... it would take the SD team to make the change and that alone would require a game engine re-write and I don't think that's money they wanna spend. They'd be better off making a completely new game if they wanna do that and to make it have multicore requirement. Most people nowadays have multicore processors.

Yup   Unfortunately it's been discussed many times, and that's the same conclusion most people come to.  Guess we'll have to hope for a sins 3

  Hey all long time on the forum been thinking of answering the call to get a kind of manual of sorts put together as a PDF on all the Ships, Installations and Abilities used in the SOA2 Mod. Interested in opinions on what people would find most helpful.

  Currently I thinking about format and just how much information players would want so any suggestions would be helpful.

Multi-threading/Multi-core support with the Iron Engine is not gonna happen at all. As stated before many times.. Not without a complete re-write/rebuild of the Iron Engine itself. Not worth doing just for an expansion. We just have to get as much mileage as we can out of what we have. What the current Iron Engine "can" do is no joke. It is a shame it cant support multi core CPU's

An Iron 2 Engine i can see going the way of Sword of the Stars 2 (and perhaps learning from any mistakes the Mars 2 engine made if any). Obviously if there is gonna be a "next incarnation" of Sins multi core support will be a MUST. Along with support for top of the line DX11+ graphics. I dont think it will go the way Original Sins was planned. Which it was meant to be supported by a very wide range of systems at the time. I think it will go from what is considered "mid range" now to top of the line.

@ Larani:

HTML would be better. I have a SOA weebly started that I can give you page templates for and make you an editor of.

http://soa2.weebly.com/

or you can just email or pm me txt docs and I will update the pages and give you credit for the work.

Hey guys got a quick question, but before that let me say that this mod is AWESOME WORK. I haven't had sins on my HD for ages now and just reinstalled it and went on to look what mods are available... DL this and now I'm hooked! Keep up the great work...

Now about my question... Just got back playing 1 vs 1 against the AI... Me = Fed, Him = Dominion. As the game got close to the end and I had almost everything researched I noticed that there were still 3 things I couldn't research:

1. Under Security the Klingon Defense Ships (BoPs)

2. Under Military the Tal Shiar

3. Under Military the Dominion Shield Emitters (or something like that :-D)

Everytime it said "Need 1 point in Klingon / Romulan / Dominion Tech". However I'm unable to find these... How do you get them / Where are they?

Sorry if this has been asked before, I tried going backwards through this thread but didn't find it... Any help would be appreciated!

Thx, Jimi

To unlock those technologies you need to make pacts with those races.  It needs to be a pact specifically for their race as found under the Pact area of the Diplomacy screen.  Sadly, the AI can't handle these pacts, so it breaks the pact as soon as it is made.

Well that might work out just fine I can get it started that way and then convert it to a PDF later for those that want to print it out and have it to read while there playing. Me I just save the pages so I can look at them later offline.

Oh and Hello myfist0 long time.

PS I think under the races tab one ought to put a quick write up about each reach and then another tab for that races order of battle. OOB Just a thought.

Cut my planets down from 110 to 77, and while not perfect, my system seems to handle this amount a lot better.

In my current game (play as fed) I am starting to win with alliances with rom and kling, all AI on unfair. I noticed that the Domion was really on the ropes and decided to see if I could turn it around for a challenge.  When I reloaded and chose them all of their ship building, and market tab are greyed out, and they are unable to build or move anything. I checked all the other races, and no problems, only the Dom. I followed back the auto saves and found that at autosave 66 they are fine, and autosave 67 they are 'frozen'. Needless to say according to the graphs this is when they really took a dive. Going back ahead to auto save 107 (the latest in my game) they have 0 ships and a huge surplus of money/resources, so it was not my switch to them that had anything to do with this. Has anyone seen this before/known issue?

They surrendered.

Yeah, after reading through some of the 'plain' sins post on other pages (just now lol) I thought as much. I thought it was somewhat funny to read this particular player, or that particular player has work around's so that the ai does not surrender early, which suggests that the games designer made a major mistake when implementing this non moddable, non selectable surrender mechanic. Regardless, thanks for the reply.

On a separate note, can you start the game as someone, and then on a reload switch plays. While I know you can do it, it seems the other AI's don't like it as some (although not all?) of them then just sit there. Why I wonder is I was going to get the Borg of to a great start and then see if I could turn it around as the fed. Any ideas for making sure the other ai's keep playing when you switch (this is different from them surrendering)

Edit: I found (probably everyone knows this already) something to allow me to play as the Dom. By editing  their victory status in the save game, they are now playable. A workaround of sorts.

Edit 2: When switching player I found that you also have to edit the save game for AI for the player you are leaving, both player ai control and unit ai control (set to true). Then, the faction plays as intended.

Yea, I notice it a lot as soon as the game progresses, it's such a shame