Is this lag normal?

[D-Reaper]

First of all, I'm not too sure if I should join the multiplayer community as it seems my CPU single core perfomance is quite shitty (340 rating), probably because its AMD and a bit old too. I dont want to annoy other players with my sluggish speed and I can barely stand it myself.

Now, I would like to ask a question: Is it normal that my game plays perfectly fine in any of the campaign missions, no matter unit count or things that are happening at the same time, but it experiences all kinds of lag (FPS drops, sim speed slows from 30 minutes in most skirmishes against one AI in medium size maps) when playing anything that isnt a campaign mission? I understand the campaign missions are scripted and thus the AI doesn't perform as many calculations but it still is very odd that those games run so smoothly compared to skirmishes (I didn't play with other people yet but I guess I'll experience at least FPS drops). What is more is strange is that the FPS drops only happens when playing FAF skirmishes, with the retail FA I just get sim speed issues. It cant be related to inernet speed because I usually play FAF offline from a shortcut so I can save nor it can be my mod selection because It happens the same with no mods. I experienced FPS drops with unofficial camapaign maps from the coop, but the coop original campaigns run as good for me as the FA one.

[MayorDamage]

try watching some odd 4v4 replay like setons to benchmark your system regarding teamgames, if your simspeed drops below -2 before people complain about lag in the chat you are actually slow

[speed2]

There are much less units in the campaign missions, thats why it runs more smoothly

[D-Reaper]

Ok I tested it in a replay and I'm definitely not playing multiplayer as my sim speed is really bad... And about the campaign, I checked the unit counts and in the late missions the amount of them is actually way higher than in the skirmishes when I begin to experience lag, thats why its so weird that in the skirmishes i get such a bad performance early but I guess the campaigns are just very optimized and thats really it.

[ZLO_RD]

net lag, sim lag and FPS lag are all 3 different kinds.
In 16 player game most likely will be some net lag.
Sim lag is something i can see on seton's or 4v4+ high level game.
FPS lag can be reduced by lowering graphix settings or getting better graphix card.

[MobiusBE]

A little off topic, but I was wondering if reducing gfx settings can also benefit sim speed? Or does it only matter for fps?

[Voodoo]

The AMD CPUs are indeed not the best choise for this game but I think you can still play small maps (max 10x10) with 8 or less players.
My friend has also an old AMD CPU but he is also playing. I mean yeah he would never join gap of rohan or setons but he still plays some wonder or other maps without problems. Normally he dies in the first 10 mins anyway but that's an other topic ^^

[D-Reaper]

I must have one weird computer because I set everything to minimum and I still had FPS drops before the slow sim speed even kicked in, yet I play campaign with all graphical settings maxed with zero lag, and yes it seems I can play only 5x5 and 10x10 at a steady pace while still having some FPS drops in offline FAF skirmishes for seemingly no reason at all. Its a shame tho, I really love the big scale of SupCom but I'll have to leave that experience for the campaign 20x20 maps only lol, thanks for the advice anyway.

[ZLO_RD]

so what about your graphics card?
also imho graphixs settings in FA are weird... all i personally need is pretty map detalisation... rest can be simply icons... only reason i turned models and textures up is because my graphix card can handle it (and for viewers on stream)
You can manually set graphix to very low and leave some settings that you care about on medium...

At work i have Pentium G4400 with great CPU score (forgot... i think was like 150... don't wanna lie tho). game runs SO MUCH FASTER compared to my AMD. but it is 2core and sometimes i get insane lag-fps drops and it gets unplayable. i beleave i just have to many other stuff open in background (since i was at work xD) and also i was running integrated graphix. So you should probably check for that. you can check ingame FPS with "/" button on num pad.

when i upgraided my graphix card, FPS went from 50 to 90 with same settings. i have AMD Athlon X3 440 with unlocked 4th core. usually i get around 350 CPU rating.
totally fine for 1v1 (except for turtle maps but that is rare and still manageable. i remember getting weird fps drops on certain special maps like phenom spartain but still it could have been CPU overheating... (but how it is related to FPS drops? no idea xDDDD, this moment when you realise that you don't understand shit)

from my experience game lags when you have tons of engeis assisting stuff, tons of units bumping each other, tons of units having pathfinding problems... even tho i don't understand how it should affect FPS it still does, at least for me.

[D-Reaper]

My graphics card is AMD too (what I can afford lol) with 4 GB and its usually more than enough for most games that I play, even modern ones, and as I said setting all graphic settings to minimum didnt have any impact in the FPS, but then again I only experience the FPS drops in FAF for some reason and pretty early in the game too, original FA runs fine until sim speed slows down if its a medium or big map. And I know Im repeating myself but I just cant express how strange it is for me to play a mission with lots of units, experimentals, factories and just overall big scale action and then a skirmish with like 100 units in both sides gives me horrible FPS and sim speed drops fast if its a 20x20 map (standard size in campaign) or bigger.

Funny thing is that my even older PC had dual core Intel CPU and while I had jumpy FPS due to very low RAM (2GB and a very basic graphics card, now I have 8GB plus the card that I mentioned earlier), my sim speed never dropped when playing 40x40 maps against the spammy AI so I guess single core performance was superb compared to this AMD quad core, but I didn't know about FAF at the time.