Not Enough packets produced; -60 energy at most

[cool49]

When I go on some intense maps, i have like 10 blasters and 20 launchers.... i have a micro rift at ship and at point of battle. My weapons are deprived of energy. my energy pool is constantly 219/220, +70; -60. What is going on.. i have patch 363

[Ranakastrasz]

Yep, This is expected. Unless you have crystal energy saved up, the maximum packet production is limited at 60. With crystal energy, it is unlimited. It is irrational, and confusing, but apperently it is also nessisary for the game to run at a reasonable rate, due to the high cost of path finding.

Hopefully we will eventually get this silly mechanic fixed.

[cool49]

Yep, This is expected. Unless you have crystal energy saved up, the maximum packet production is limited at 60. With crystal energy, it is unlimited. It is irrational, and confusing, but apperently it is also nessisary for the game to run at a reasonable rate, due to the high cost of path finding.

Hopefully we will eventually get this silly mechanic fixed.

Couldn't you introduce multi-core dependencies? One core for graphics, one core for paths... etc? I have six cores, one of which is being fried
I dont know if the 60packet limit is for difficulty. You can also make it possible to fuse a microrift into the Liberation Ship

[miquelfire]

I had played a map that somehow max out 8 cores. And I wasn't even using 60 packets of energy (I was about 30)

Later on, I used up 60 as the map had no crystal anyway.

[CrazedSeal]

Does Air support multi-threading. Not sure.

[CobraKill]

Nope as far as I know.

[Ranakastrasz]

I dont know if the 60packet limit is for difficulty. You can also make it possible to fuse a microrift into the Liberation Ship

Well, it is hard to bypass the limit by not overbuilding, and hence avoiding crystal waste (keep 1 crystal, you can produce up to 220 packets after you max energy capacity)

A microrift would not work, because it would allow you to magickally resupply blasters or otherwise cut off from supply. One idea someone had was to make packets larger, like send 2-3 energy in one packet, assuming the blaster or launcher needed it (blasters wouldn't, but launchers use more than one packet per shot iirc) which would cut the packet pathing cost by maybe 30% on average.

[Kithros]

Well, the main reason the limit exists (I'm guessing at least  - I can't say I know with certainty) is that if you pause the game, and start building a lot of buildings at once, the game will lag every time the LS needs to send out packets to each one of those buildings in a single frame (try it on day 20 for instance) - the solution to that was to make the LS send out packets more evenly so it wouldn't need to do them all on one frame to prevent the lag, but by doing that the LS can't send out more than 2 packets per frame (60 per second).

[Ranakastrasz]

Well, the main reason the limit exists (I'm guessing at least  - I can't say I know with certainty) is that if you pause the game, and start building a lot of buildings at once, the game will lag every time the LS needs to send out packets to each one of those buildings in a single frame (try it on day 20 for instance) - the solution to that was to make the LS send out packets more evenly so it wouldn't need to do them all on one frame to prevent the lag, but by doing that the LS can't send out more than 2 packets per frame (60 per second).

True. However, If you were to stagger them, and send *larger* packets (for building, increase the *cooldown*, or it's position in queue, to avoid faster building) I imagine that would reduce it quite a bit, and allow the larger energy outputs.

[Lysander]

How about decreasing the frequency of calculating the paths?
Say, if you start building a unit, the path is calculated only once, and every following packet goes by that path, until either the unit or the LS moves, or a microrift is built, or a packet assigned to this unit collides with creeper. At which point the path for this unit is recalculated.

[J]

When the creeper moves a new shorter route could become available

[Lysander]

Well then also do a periodical recalculation every couple of seconds.
If need be, put the units in a queue so you won't be hit with a lag when the recalculation happens. Tough it might not be necessary if you do path finding for units rather then for every created packet.

edit: tough if you do it this way, you might as well forget about watching for the conditions I mentioned it the previous post.