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Precombines,Scrap everything,whats the reality?

zu2u

zu2u

Member
Messages
61
So, everyone knows that breaking precombines lowers your performance and borks SS2,or is it?
I like to have big settlements with 20+ settlers in places like sanctuary,Castle,Drive In so i tried something.

1) Scrap Everything present,20+ settlers, around 30+ fps, visitors disabled, special requirements enabled, autoassigment enabled (disabled in the workshop framework) = 90% of people not at the plots (work/entertainment/home),sometimes group around in one single location, town gavel work at some things and dont on others, "send to work" does not work at all,plots take a while to upgrade/update, people get deassigned randomly and assigned somewhere else from time to time, same with robots.

2) bUseCombinedObjects=1 ,no scrapping mods that break precombines,20+ settlers, around 30+ fps, visitors disabled, special requirements enabled, autoassigment enabled (disabled the in the workshop framework) = all of the above but looks like a dump instead of a settlement

So what gives?
 
Scrap mods either just break precombines in settlement areas, or they remove objects from precombines (which by itself breaks them) and then regenerate the precombines without these objects. If done right there would be no visual difference (FPS aside) in an untouched settlement.
But the city plan mechanism relies on 'scrap profiles', which are essentially a list of everything in a settlement which is scrappable; which the scrap mod has changed!
Now, maybe adding to what is scrappable as opposed to reducing what the city plan thinks it can scrap, will not mess with a city plan building and upgrading. But
a) this is unknown, and
b) this is not the only issue, because with a scrap mod you can now go around scrapping objects that might have formed part of the city plan's structure; and the city plan will be blissfully unaware.
So IF you are going to try a scrap mod with a city plan, at least wait til the city is fully upgraded, or better still, make your own city plan that has a custom scrap profile based on the installed scrap mod! :) At least this was possible with SS1, I make an assumption about SS2. Then you can publish it for other users of that scrap mod:)

diziet
 
diziet said:
Scrap mods either just break precombines in settlement areas, or they remove objects from precombines (which by itself breaks them) and then regenerate the precombines without these objects. If done right there would be no visual difference (FPS aside) in an untouched settlement.
But the city plan mechanism relies on 'scrap profiles', which are essentially a list of everything in a settlement which is scrappable; which the scrap mod has changed!
Now, maybe adding to what is scrappable as opposed to reducing what the city plan thinks it can scrap, will not mess with a city plan building and upgrading. But
a) this is unknown, and
b) this is not the only issue, because with a scrap mod you can now go around scrapping objects that might have formed part of the city plan's structure; and the city plan will be blissfully unaware.
So IF you are going to try a scrap mod with a city plan, at least wait til the city is fully upgraded, or better still, make your own city plan that has a custom scrap profile based on the installed scrap mod! :) At least this was possible with SS1, I make an assumption about SS2. Then you can publish it for other users of that scrap mod:)

diziet
Click to expand...
i never spoke about city plan,its hand build settlement
 
zu2u said:
So, everyone knows that breaking precombines lowers your performance and borks SS2,or is it?
I like to have big settlements with 20+ settlers in places like sanctuary,Castle,Drive In so i tried something.

1) Scrap Everything present,20+ settlers, around 30+ fps, visitors disabled, special requirements enabled, autoassigment enabled (disabled in the workshop framework) = 90% of people not at the plots (work/entertainment/home),sometimes group around in one single location, town gavel work at some things and dont on others, "send to work" does not work at all,plots take a while to upgrade/update, people get deassigned randomly and assigned somewhere else from time to time, same with robots.

2) bUseCombinedObjects=1 ,no scrapping mods that break precombines,20+ settlers, around 30+ fps, visitors disabled, special requirements enabled, autoassigment enabled (disabled the in the workshop framework) = all of the above but looks like a dump instead of a settlement

So what gives?
Click to expand...

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zu2u said:
i know why is bad, im asking why ss2 behave exactly the same way when precombines are broken and when they are intact
Click to expand...

Time - being at some point "a few more settlers, maybe a plot or two, etc" and the game engine starts to cough up blood about the only thing you can do is start a new game.

Scrapping mods often work ok for a while then once you cross a threshold it goes downhill quick.

I often test settlement mods for authors that want to know how my system will handle a location with broken precombines. They normally start off ok. Then you scrap a little to much, add too many settlers, build too much and then leave and comeback "reload-etc" and everything can start to come undone fast. If it isn't already too late.

Studer, fps loss, CTD when approaching, CTD on fast-tvl. Each system and game is different.

The number of mods may affect it, the total number of NPC's in the game, texture resolution of weapons and clothing but at some point, the engine itself can't handle all the individual items and textures added to the game.

The broken precombined means more stuff the game engine has to process. Less is better in Fo4, but you have to be the one to see what your game, style, load order can handle. As a rule of thumb the less you break precombines the better. Still, we often do it, so to better enjoy the game.

:friends

This is always a good question, but it is also why I say :blush

1617906596361.png

:sorry :rofl
 
RayBo said:
Time - being at some point "a few more settlers, maybe a plot or two, etc" and the game engine starts to cough up blood about the only thing you can do is start a new game.

Scrapping mods often work ok for a while then once you cross a threshold it goes downhill quick.

I often test settlement mods for authors that want to know how my system will handle a location with broken precombines. They normally start off ok. Then you scrap a little to much, add too many settlers, build too much and then leave and comeback "reload-etc" and everything can start to come undone fast. If it isn't already too late.

Studer, fps loss, CTD when approaching, CTD on fast-tvl. Each system and game is different.

The number of mods may affect it, the total number of NPC's in the game, texture resolution of weapons and clothing but at some point, the engine itself can't handle all the individual items and textures added to the game.

The broken precombined means more stuff the game engine has to process. Less is better in Fo4, but you have to be the one to see what your game, style, load order can handle. As a rule of thumb the less you break precombines the better. Still, we often do it, so to better enjoy the game.

:friends

This is always a good question, but it is also why I say :blush

View attachment 12328

:sorry :rofl
Click to expand...
i guess i'll try to stay under 15 settlers this time =) i wonder tho, how many settlements can the engine handle,even if you unload them there are some scripts running i guess
 
With broken precombines in settlements it’s not going to be a big difference in the beginning , it’s a matter or when not if problems start occurring with broken precombines. As for why your not seeing a difference is because settlements don’t have the shadow complexity or poly count that spots like downtown have , that is the whole reason precombines had to be used in the first place. So you may not see a big difference in settlements but it will still cause engine level problems that will break your save at some point.
 
XxA1xX said:
With broken precombines in settlements it’s not going to be a big difference in the beginning , it’s a matter or when not if problems start occurring with broken precombines. As for why your not seeing a difference is because settlements don’t have the shadow complexity or poly count that spots like downtown have , that is the whole reason precombines had to be used in the first place. So you may not see a big difference in settlements but it will still cause engine level problems that will break your save at some point.
Click to expand...
But breaking precombines in sanctuary cells wouldnt affect downtown cells,right?
 
So, when we're talking about breaking precombines and settlement performance in Sanctuary, we're taking two large issues that are complex on their own and mashing them together to see what happens.

1) Precombines help the game process items faster, as they are basically pre-batched so it deals with one entry instead of 5 or 10 or 20 entries. Any one individual change is a drop in the bucket....but like all buckets, the drops add up. When you break every precombine in an area, you're adding a new baseline level of complexity that has to be processed every time an action in the area occurs - not just player actions, but ANY action. Settler trying to move from A to B? You've broken the precombine that they used to have an established navpath through, so now it has to recalculate that. Enemy attacks the settlement? Navpaths, line of sight and collision information has all changed, so now its calculating every object that used to be a single entry as a separate collision/occlusion/nav object.

This alone won't break your game (usually).

2) Settlements take a lot of processing power on their own. Every resource has its generation timers and calculations, settlers need to move, attacks have to be determined, etc. - all in an environment that is already subject to dynamic modification by the player with the objects they place through the workshop system. When everything is said an done, the mechanics of the settlement don't really require the settlers to be physically present at their jobs - as long as they are assigned, it doesn't matter if your farmer is animated as picking weeds or drinking at the bar. As such, settlers standing in a clump doesn't actually stop the settlement working, although it does break immersion (and that happens in the base game). To get settlers to move, the game often uses animation markers that are attached to either their assigned job object (plot, food item, guard post) or built into the settlement (hammering on the wall by the workshop in Sanctuary, for example). Now, I am not a member of the mod team or a coder, but the feel from all the time I have spent in FO4 is that animations are handled pretty much last, after all the other scripts that calculate things in the settlement. The more settlers you have, the more job objects are generally present, and the more things that need to be calculated before the settlers bother to move and animate.

Every settler, every object in the settlement are more drops in the bucket.

3) SS2 adds extra scripts and adds the plots as a new layer on the settlement system, which are, again, drops in your processing load bucket.

When you combine 2 & 3, your bucket starts to get full. You have ever-increasing load from increasing settler counts, increasing job object counts that the settlers cause to calculate, you have ever more possible animation locations for the settlers to decide between, you have inter-settlement resource interactions (vanilla provisions and/or SS2 caravan system), you have plot-specific animations (fires, moving parts, etc), and the list goes on.

When you add #1 in, though, everything gets that much harder. Every settler trying to get to every animation point now has to recalculate their nav paths because the data from the vanilla precombines has been broken up - and until all the scripts that run the settlement are done, you won't see those additional, heavy calculations complete, so your settlers may stand around longer.


Does your bucket start to feel a little full? Probably. Now factor in that for every processing cycle (1/60th of a second), the game engine can only clear X number of calculations. If everything we've added in, all those little drops into our bucket, if that exceeds X, it doesn't complete during that cycle.....so what gets left over gets pushed into the next cycle. And the next. And the next. Pretty soon you start to see things that aren't done: settlers aren't moving, resources haven't updated, etc. As I understand it, there is a limit on what the FO4 engine can handle, as well, so throwing a beast of a system at the problem doesn't make it go away - past a certain point, more processor speed and RAM and the like have diminishing returns.

Precombine breakers aren't bad on their own. Big settlements aren't bad on their own. City plans and SS2 aren't bad on their own. Add them all together, though, and you get bad news.

Since SS2 is focused around the settlement system - which inherently requires settlers and plots and city plans - this means that outside factors that can add to the load on the game while SS2 is doing its core job are....discouraged. The danger for the SS2 team is that if they were to endorse the use precombine breakers with the mod, the weird performance slowdowns and crashes and the like end up pinned on SS2, as it is the COMBINED impact that kills things.

When a bridge collapses, the first thing that gets the blame is the bridge, not the overweight truck full of concrete that crossed and damaged it the day before. Precombine breakers are like that truck on the bridge that is SS2, damaging the foundations and bringing the whole structure closer to collapse.
 
There seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding about why precombines are an issue with SS. It's mainly two issues.
1. During a city plan upgrade vanilla objects(important vanilla objects like bridge sections or highways) can get scraped while this upgrade is happening if precombines are broken.
2. Broken precombines can double or quadruple draw calls in a settlement. SS plots already have a lot of draws (no fault of plots, if you were to hand build and decorate and light them all yourself there would still be the same performance hit). When you add in all the draw and added refs that come with broken precombines/scrap mods it will tank performance even more.

Non responsive mecahnics/Ai/plots are not caused by broken precombines, while it certainly won't help, lag is the main culprit. There are a few ways to avoid allowing lag to build up;
Never quicksave, the only save you should ever make is a hard save. Disable the pipboy saves too.
Never log out in a settlement, always try do this in an empty internal cell or at least were there is little activity in game.
Never pause the game, or allow it to pause by Alt+Tab'ing. Add this to the General section of your fallout4custon.ini to prevent the game from pausing when alt+tab'd bAlwaysActive=1
Allow the game to idle as much as possible if you have to afk.
 
Lots of good info in here explains a lot better then my dumbed down version, and it is explained in a easy to understand ways thanks everybody.
 
Phil_T_Casual said:
There seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding about why precombines are an issue with SS. It's mainly two issues.
1. During a city plan upgrade vanilla objects(important vanilla objects like bridge sections or highways) can get scraped while this upgrade is happening if precombines are broken.
2. Broken precombines can double or quadruple draw calls in a settlement. SS plots already have a lot of draws (no fault of plots, if you were to hand build and decorate and light them all yourself there would still be the same performance hit). When you add in all the draw and added refs that come with broken precombines/scrap mods it will tank performance even more.

Non responsive mecahnics/Ai/plots are not caused by broken precombines, while it certainly won't help, lag is the main culprit. There are a few ways to avoid allowing lag to build up;
Never quicksave, the only save you should ever make is a hard save. Disable the pipboy saves too.
Never log out in a settlement, always try do this in an empty internal cell or at least were there is little activity in game.
Never pause the game, or allow it to pause by Alt+Tab'ing. Add this to the General section of your fallout4custon.ini to prevent the game from pausing when alt+tab'd bAlwaysActive=1
Allow the game to idle as much as possible if you have to afk.
Click to expand...
i see, didnt know quicksaves do so much damage,deleting the present ones helps?
If i disable the scrap mods the precombines gets re-enabled again,does this fix stuff or the save is gone ?
also anyone knows how many settlements can fo4 handle before there are too many scripts running? hypotetically 10 settlers,so 10 plots+10 plots (houses/entertaiment)
 
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zu2u said:
i see, didnt know quicksaves do so much damage,deleting the present ones helps?
If i disable the scrap mods the precombines gets re-enabled again,does this fix stuff or the save is gone ?
also anyone knows how many settlements can fo4 handle before there are too many scripts running? hypotetically 10 settlers,so 10 plots+10 plots (houses/entertaiment)
Click to expand...
New game without the Scrap mod.
I can run all of them built up pretty good. Even alt non vanilla mod settlements. I have Breakheart Banks at 40 settlers and I have the ToD built pretty beefy too. So really I guess it depends. I don't try and build them all at once or have a bunch trying to upgrade at once either. I spread out my builds and upgrades so not to many are building at once. Usually 2 maybe 3 in different stages.
 
Phil_T_Casual said:
There seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding about why precombines are an issue with SS. It's mainly two issues.
1. During a city plan upgrade vanilla objects(important vanilla objects like bridge sections or highways) can get scraped while this upgrade is happening if precombines are broken.
2. Broken precombines can double or quadruple draw calls in a settlement. SS plots already have a lot of draws (no fault of plots, if you were to hand build and decorate and light them all yourself there would still be the same performance hit). When you add in all the draw and added refs that come with broken precombines/scrap mods it will tank performance even more.

Non responsive mecahnics/Ai/plots are not caused by broken precombines, while it certainly won't help, lag is the main culprit. There are a few ways to avoid allowing lag to build up;
Never quicksave, the only save you should ever make is a hard save. Disable the pipboy saves too.
Never log out in a settlement, always try do this in an empty internal cell or at least were there is little activity in game.
Never pause the game, or allow it to pause by Alt+Tab'ing. Add this to the General section of your fallout4custon.ini to prevent the game from pausing when alt+tab'd bAlwaysActive=1
Allow the game to idle as much as possible if you have to afk.
Click to expand...
I have a question about hard saves - do autosaves count? I ask this because in survival by default the autosave is the only kind of save you can do. Sure, you can use extra mods to open up more options, but a lot of those mods use mechanisms to trigger autosaves as well as opposed to standard manual saves.
 
If you have a console unlocking mod, you can just CC save "My Save Game Name"
 
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