[Discussion] Dear map makers, please, try not to hit the 6000 particles limit

[12345ieee]

Rationale:
* you are bogging down slower machines
* not all emitters will fire at full particles, resulting in undefended sections or useless friendly emitters
* you are ruining my game immersion, as I am going to abuse the "particle conservation" by attacking emitters that can't defend or stacking up blue particles to reduce the enemy emitters throughput
* it's much harder to balance and play a map that has sections stop and restart firing at random

This is intended as a discussion topic,  I (and my terrible English) sure don't mean to insult anybody that creates free content for me to enjoy.

[GoodMorning]

Seconded.

Particle counts over 2000, and especially over 3000 will induce a slow down on average and below average hardware.  I tend to begin most missions what that in mind.  If you need more of a threat, make more particle[s ] have a "hard" health (or create particles from PRPL that have a health even higher than that).

Highly compressed particles [...] use more CPU power. If you create 1000 particles and compress them with fields there are more interactions between particles and more CPU load than if those same 1000 particles are floating around the map.

The limit of 6000 Emitter-spawned particles is intended as a hard limit, not the standard level.

One set of hardware I use regularly has had no trouble with CW3 with any load less than the Sleeper. Many of the current maps reduce the frame rate on it to single digits, even on low speed. (It seems a significant portion of this lag is from rendering, but...)

Instead of using 6K "SOFT" particles, use 2K "HARD" particles. And those with less powerful hardware will thank you. (If your large map is too dull, shrink it. How much size do you really need? Look at the map "Micromanagement". Bigger is not better.)

[Karsten75]

I think it's a legit strategy. In CW2, for instance, there was a 200 "thing" limit. Once you hit 200 drones on the map, spores stopped coming. :) Often the only way to progress in some maps was to wait for that, then nuke the spore towers and then pay attention to the drones.

Also, it points out the gap between people with more current PCs and really old clunkers. (mine is now > 3 years old, but I still don't experience significant lag.) 10-year old computers and graphics, will lag, on the other hand. Integrated graphics will probably suck also - they already sucked in CW3 - I remember the improvement when I upgraded my previous machine to have a discrete GPU.

Graphics cards under 1GB of VRAM is probably dodgy in the game - but then, when last did any vendor sell a 1GB graphics card? or have had recommendations on integrated graphics at less than a GB?

[12345ieee]

I would understand in a puzzle map, but the thought that the super-powerful, destruction-voted creeper/particulate/whatever has to stop pursuing me because otherwise the universe would lag seems very very silly and I don't want standard maps to rely on that to be beaten.

In the last exchange map I beaten I assaulted in "reverse order", using remotely powered lathes. It was no challenge at all, because the enemy was defenceless at every turn apart the very final block.

I have a brand new laptop, integrated graphics, and, even under linux, not even the worst maps lag at 1x

[Sorrontis]

I would understand in a puzzle map, but the thought that the super-powerful, destruction-voted creeper/particulate/whatever has to stop pursuing me because otherwise the universe would lag seems very very silly and I don't want standard maps to rely on that to be beaten.

Did you just prove that the universe is a simulation  :P

On a serious note though, I find the maps with 2-3k particles, if optimized properly, are the best.

[Keeper Decagon]

What I have noticed myself is that having a lot of land being mired at once produces far more lag than having around 3-4k particles on the map at once. That could be another thing to keep in mind, probably.