[V22.5 Ground Combat] Very slow alien turns, long waits up to 10 minutes

Hi,

on a massive crash site map it takes up to 10 minutes for an alien turn without any shots fired. (first couple of rounds)

It gets better with time but it still is quite annoying. The PC I'm testing on isn't the fastest, but it's not that slow either. (AMD Athlon64 X2 5200+ 2.71 GHz, SSD, 64 bit, 4G RAM, GeForce GTS 240)

Parts of the map were on fire/smoking. One alien was trapped in a stone, but I don't think this is related to the long wait since when it was only that alien left, turns "only" took about 10-20 seconds. This itself should be muuuuch quicker tho: a trapped alien that cannot do anything at all should not be hard to calculate.

Was this against Caesans by any chance? My own personal theory is that this has something to do with the psionic AI, which was changed recently.

Was this against Caesans by any chance? My own personal theory is that this has something to do with the psionic AI, which was changed recently.

Happens with Androns & Sebillans aswell. Up to the point where you enter the UFO and clear the first floor/move inside so that those in the upper floors actually start moving.

Got nothing to do with Psionics in my opinion. Happens even if no Praetor is alive.

I have been noticing this on the carrier missions, the alien turn does eventually end but it is taking a long time.

I don't think it is PC spec related either, seems to be something about the number of calculations that need to be repeated for each alien and I think it becomes exaggerated with higher tier aliens.

My reasoning that is it about higher tier aliens is that up to carriers it has been totally fine, get to carriers and boom 5 min turns.

I don't have the game files available on my work PC, is there a new alien type that pops up in carriers? (of all types so maybe a class rather than a type).

I will also note this is playing with the Berzerk psi turned off and it still happens for non psi races, so I don't think it is psi related at the moment.

Just to add to this:

I timed a few alien turns of a carrier mission last night and they were varying from 3 mins to 11 mins.

This was a carrier mission on the desert tile set against sebilians. So no psi and the total was 27 aliens so not even a huge number of sebs.

Terror missions with the same numbers don't seem to be hanging/slow on the alien turn so I don't think it is alien numbers that are causing the issues.

One thing to mention is that the animations seem to slow during the alien turn, the most notable was the slowing of the fusion reactor that spins in the middle of the carrier, when that was visible there was only 5 sebs left, yet I was still getting the slow down.

I admit some of this could be CPU related, the laptop I am playing on is faster than the OPs but still not exactly a monster.

Even still I would expect a T6600 2.4gh dual core, 4gb ram and a discrete 512mb gfx card to cope just fine.

It has been thus up until the recent build and will happily play more processor intensive things like minecraft and GTA 4.

I will attach a save just before the GC to confirm/deny this bug when I get home.

Could it be related to environmental effects?

Maybe there was more smoke or fire around on the slower turns?

How about the animated props you mention?

Were they visible on the faster turns as well or just on the slow ones?

The save file might help narrow things down a bit.

The ship had some smoke and fire on top of it. Inside was rather clean irc (see savegame attached).

As reported above I also had the impression that the turns where shorter around about the time I entered the ship.

andronteleportbug.sav

andronteleportbug.sav

I just played another map. Very slow turns again (savegame attached). This time there were cesians, no damage to the ship and slow turns long after entering the ship.

Aut.sav

Aut.sav

In yet another mission I only had a few enemy androns left in the 3rd floor of a research vessel. The turns were consistantly slow until I got those last androns to move. As soon as they moved (which they in this case only did when I started shooting at them), the turns were only a couple seconds instead of 1-2 minutes.

Finally got to carriers and can verify this. Alien turns taking 2-3 minutes for me. I'm literally picking up a newspaper and browsing articles while I wait. And wait. This has never happened before on any of my previous games

Confirming the bug. It seems to be within Carrier mission with Androns or Sebillian inside. More than that - if I save the game within this mission I can not load it cause the game crashes. Plus a bunch of another nasty bugs: white boxes instead of some explosions (from tank's plasma cannon), white box instead of a Carrier itself, white box instead of Alien turn picture... Then the game crashed when I tried to quit to main menu and try to load the save. Please fix it becase it made the game literally unplayable

Here's the save: [ATTACH]3476[/ATTACH]

battle 2.sav

battle 2.sav

I haven't gotten a battleship yet (prob right around the corner though) has this been happening with them too (i.e. all massive ship mission turns take much longer than usual, or just carriers)?

All massive ships. You can download one of the savegames I posted and check it out yourself if you like.

I wonder why. I've fought cruisers with just as many aliens as carriers, and no slowdown. And I've assaulted carriers with sebs, caesans and androids, roughly equally large slowdowns. So it doesn't seem to be the number of aliens, nor the race, nor the presence of psionic attacks.

I sure hope the devs weigh in on this, because my massive ship missions are so tedious they're all but unplayable. I airstrike all downed carriers now, and once I go through a prob 3-hour battleship mission to get a praetor, I'll be driven to airstrike all massive ships, period. What's going on...?

I wonder why. I've fought cruisers with just as many aliens as carriers, and no slowdown. And I've assaulted carriers with sebs, caesans and androids, roughly equally large slowdowns. So it doesn't seem to be the number of aliens, nor the race, nor the presence of psionic attacks.

I sure hope the devs weigh in on this, because my massive ship missions are so tedious they're all but unplayable. I airstrike all downed carriers now, and once I go through a prob 3-hour battleship mission to get a praetor, I'll be driven to airstrike all massive ships, period. What's going on...?

I dont know why but lot of UFOs in the game are massed with aliens. It was better if you fight less enemies with better combat quality or a lesser aliens with a boss.

This ^ has nothing to do with the purpose of this thread: massive ship missions being all but unplayable

As a note, Operation Endgame has the same slowdown, so it isn't something intrinsic about those 2 layouts (or if it is OE has it too).

How about the animated ship props?

I know both of the ship types mentioned as having slow down also have large animated props.

Is the slow down present on ships without them?

Maybe they could be blown up and check if it changes anything.

Just a suggestion off the top of my head, not had the issue yet but not been able to play much recently either.

Maybe the devs could disable animated props while it's the aliens turn, so we could test for this. This would make sense anyways when the props are invisible to the player.

I'm pretty sure tho, that the props aren't the main reason for this issue, since turns become shorter when there's less aliens left. Especially it appears that aliens turns are way quicker once you've seen all enemies once. It's hard to make reliable statements regarding this tho, since turns are so long that I didn't have the time to test this a lot.

If there are save files just before ground missions you could try adjusting the number of aliens on a ship before attacking.

See if having less aliens makes a big difference.

Running in debug mode might also help, you could try moving aliens into view and then moving them away again using the tools.

How about the animated ship props?

I know both of the ship types mentioned as having slow down also have large animated props.

Is the slow down present on ships without them?

Maybe they could be blown up and check if it changes anything

Don't think it's the animated props.

I went into gameconfig and set the chance of alien power cores exploding to zero. Next carrier assault there was no smoke, fire, etc., and the same slowdown occurred. Unless it's caused by the fancy rotating reactors and stuff, but that makes little sense as their presence caused no problems in earlier builds.

EDIT: And Burzmali says it's happening in the final mission, too...?

I would have to look at the OE level to see if it has any animated props, I really can't remember.

As for animated props I was only thinking of those because they are present in the mentioned UFOs that have issues but not in the ones that are not mentioned.

They also have quite a few image files in the rotation so I was wondering if the recent change to compressed images had caused some kind of issue.

Only way to check I guess is to have a save file just before a ground combat is started and try with the animated props present and removed then compare turn times.

They also have quite a few image files in the rotation so I was wondering if the recent change to compressed images had caused some kind of issue.

That's what I'm thinking. Again, the same animated props in previous builds didn't cause any problems. And I don't believe it's the number of aliens, as I've assaulted cruisers and done terror missions with just as many aliens and no problems. Nor is it the race or psionics, as every carrier (and battleships, I just stormed one) whether containing sebs, caesans or androns, has the same slowdown. So a compressed images issue is the only thing I can think of. But then again I'm a long, long ways from a computer whiz or possessing an analytical mind

Well, just to continue my babbling, it's like TFTDfan said: as the number of aliens decreases, the turns speed up. There seems to be a line of demarcation once you enter the ship; from that point on, the slowdown becomes noticeably less. It might seem this would indicate less aliens (a significant number outside now dead) = less AI processing = faster turns, but this equation doesn't hold up on other large battles (terror missions, etc.). And the progression isn't constant; for each dead alien, the game doesn't slowly but steadily speed up, but, again, it seems to jump once you enter the carrier or battleship.

Going off on wild hypotheses now, is there some kind of trigger point activated when you enter a massive ship? There already certainly seems to be something like trigger points on other vessels, particularly on landing ships, where if one of my soldiers ends his turn several spaces inside, it almost invariably causes a number of aliens to descend to the first floor. Could there be a trigger point before which, and after which, the AI processing is somehow different on massive ships? And possibly on OE too....?

Does anyone have a save just before a ground mission that has this slow down problem?

It would be helpful to say which version they are using.

Out of curiosity I have disabled the animations on the animated props, if anyone wants to give them a try and see if their turn speed alters at all then just extract the zip file to the assets/tiles/UFO folder.

The props affected are the singularity core, anti gravity generator, fusion reactor, hyperdrive, and UFO power source.

They will display their static damaged image instead of the default animated one.

As always back up current files if you want to be able to go back to them easily.

*edit* My average turn time using a borrowed save file on a carrier mission is 1 to 2 minutes.

I haven't tried reverting to the animated props yet to see if it increases as I altered them before I got hold of the save.

*edit2* I still have 1 minute turn times with animated props on so looks like I can't test for this problem myself.

This is on both crashed and landed carriers.

De-animated.zip

De-animated.zip