Stellaris - [2.5.1] [1fd6?] Synth Tech causing massive lag in colony windows

[Leakingamps]

Description
[2.5.1] [1fd6?] Synth Tech causing massive lag in colony windows

Game Version
Shelley v2.5.1

What version do you use?

Steam

What expansions do you have installed?
Synthetic Dawn,
Utopia,
Leviathans Story Pack,
Apocalypse,
Megacorp,
Distant Stars,
Ancient Relics

Do you have mods enabled?
No

Please explain your issue is in as much detail as possible.
I'm currently in the endgame crisis with 11.7k pops and 127 colonies. I can open any one of my Colony windows with minimal lag, an no sustained FPS drop, as expected. Researching Synths tech brings my framerate into the single digits, and adds several seconds of control lag, for as long as the window is open.

Fanatic Materialists/Egaliterian
Synths have citizen rights, Robotic Workers are allowed.

Attached is a save just a few days before Synth tech finishes. Open a planet screen before it does, then unpause, let it finish, and take a look at a planet screen. The difference should be stark.

Using Console to change from fanatic materials to fanatic spiritualists (and thus outlawing AI) completely resolves the lag, even while at 2.2k bots of 12.7k pops. Switching back to fanatic Materialist does not reintroduce the lag until AI is Citizen Rights again.

Note: The save file attached does have multiple crisis running - I started them with these commands:
event crisis.10
event crisis.50
event crisis.1100
No other commands were used.

Hardware:
2x8 GB DDR4 RAM
AMD Ryzen 5 2400G
Integrated Graphics: AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 (Raven)
OS: WIndows 10, latest update.

Steps to reproduce the issue.
Obtain a fairly large empire. Unclear what the minimum boundaries are, or items that cause the growth of the issue.
6.8k Pops including 1.4k Robots was enough to cause an obvious issue (101 colonies)

Ensure AI is Citizen Rights, and Robotic Workers are allowed.

Research Synths

Open any colony window

EDIT: Corrected a few errors.
Edit: Attached Screenshot
EDIT: Added System Specs

Upload Attachment

 

[hart30]

I also experience in late game a strange massive lag. It appears every year it seems. First i believed my yearly autosave was causing it, but disabling it didnt stop the lag. I usually clicked on the planet window or System view, in General some random tab, and the massive lag appeared, pausing the game for like 5s. After that the game ran smooth again (as smooth a game can run in late game).
Dont know if the issue is related to the synth tech one, i have a really good pc (in early game i almost cannot Keep up with the pace on fastest).

 

[Leakingamps]

It sounds like what you're experiencing is what's talked about here: https ://forum.paradoxplaza. com/forum/index.php?threads/performance-megathread.1253705/page-22#post-25976333 (Not allowed to post links yet, but I figure this will do a better job explaining how to get around it than I could. The TLDR is that open job slots, not pops, causes endgame lag.)

Rather than what I'm having, since my lag is specifically related to opening the planet screen. I noticed no additional slowdown outside of the colony screen when I researched Synths.

 

[hart30]

nice thread. Knowing this exists is really helpful.

 

[Morflying]

Was there ever any fix found for this? I am experiencing this right now, and it's very frustrating.

 

[WealthyAardvark]

@Morflying If there is an issue tied to Synths, it seems to be exceedingly rare. Please upload any before/after saves you have so this can be studied.

 

[Morflying]

I am very new to Stellaris, and not that computer savy.

I do not have any idea how to upload a save. I know I was playing Iron-Man, and only have a single save, somewhere.

I have been talking up this game to all my friends at work, until I ran into this game-breaking bug, and found out it has been in the game this long.

Just stunned that something like this, hasn't been addressed.

I already requested a refund, though I know that it is unlikely.

Hek, I probably got my 200+ dollars worth, I put in almost 100 hours into a single game... maxing out the timeline, galaxy, etc.

Just to run into a completely game-breaking bug, that there are dozens of youtube videos, demonstrating, that hasn't been addressed.

Soul crushing.

I still love Paradox games, but I will not be saying anything good about them to my friends for a while.

Morf

 

[WealthyAardvark]

@Morflying You've seen dozens of Youtube videos about this problem? I must say I'm surprised because I keep a close eye on this bug reporting forum and AFAIK Leakingamps and now yourself are the only people I've ever seen to talk about experiencing it.

Your save files are located at \Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris\save games . You'll need to determine which folder from there you need, If you look at what it says on the left side of the screen when you go to load your game in Stellaris, that'll help you determine which one you need ("United Nations of Earth 5" or whatever). Once you know what file you need, the button to upload a file is to the right of the Post Reply button at the bottom of the text entry box. Hit the Browse button and navigate the way to your ironman.sav file.

Beyond that, I loaded up Leakingamps' save file that was provided and had zero issues in the colony window. I'd suggest you both look into doing a reinstallation of the game. Be sure to determine the location of your Stellaris installation to make sure everything is gone before you reinstall. If you're using Steam, that'd be inside your Steam installation location and then at \Steam\steamapps\common\Stellaris

edit: realized that Leakingamps' save didn't have the Synth tech yet. Once researched, problems do arise.

 

[Morflying]

I will definitely try a re-install.

Here is my save, I think.

If you google: Stellaris planet screen freeze time

The top two entries will lead you to two youtube videos of the same problem. Each of those link to many, many other videos outlining the same problem.

They all seem to be linked to similar builds during their play, i.e. synthetic ascension

There are also several bug posts mentioning the same issue, on this forum, throughout last year.

If I attempt a complete uninstall and re-install, will that affect my current save? i.e. will I lose it?

Thanks,

Morf

 

[Morflying]

Attempted complete re-install.

Still having the same problem.

Rats.

 

[Morflying]

Good idea though. I was running the beta patch release.

I didn't beta patch, after the re-install.

I will try that.

 

[Morflying]

Bah, still no luck.

Same problem.

 

[Morflying]

Any other ideas?

 

[Morflying]

I uninstalled, re-installed to baseline, same problem.

Upgraded to beta 2.6.3, same problem.

Keeps happening.

 

[Morflying]

I don't think my system is sub-par, here is my DxDiag, if that helps.

Running Windows 10 Home.

i7-6700k CPO

32 GB RAM

SLI'ed 1080 GPU cards

Do I need to upgrade?

 

[Morflying]

Hey, I have some new info. The problem seems to only happen on Windows.

A savy tech-support person attempted to re-create the issue on Windows, and iMacOS... it only happens on Windows.

No idea if this will help, but it's new info.

Thanks,

Morf

 

[WealthyAardvark]

Now that's fascinating.

 

[Leakingamps]

I've seen a suggestion that this is actually related to having too many pops (>5k), rather than having the synths tech with too many pops. Can anyone with a better understanding of the pop system clarify if robots are not pops and synths are? I don't suspect this to be the case, but I did recently see someone posting on reddit about an issue where having over about 5k pops would nuke this same screen's performance quite dramatically, and can't help but wonder if it's related.

@WealthyAardvark I do have a safe file that can be used to test this - loading up the file I uploaded, planet screens should work fine, until the synth tech finishes, at which point performance tanks to near-zero.

This does occur in the most recent patch, so I re-reported it here some time ago, but it's still seen little traction, and I'm unsure if that's because it's a rare bug, or because most people don't give synths rights when they have that many pops, or if there's something else I'm missing (some sort of other, hidden condition(s)).

Could you load up this save and tell me if you also experience this issue? I'm wondering if it's a hardware bug, (other) software bug, or something up with Stellaris itself.

 

[Leakingamps]

@Morflying I don't think you need to upgrade - that looks like specs that should run the game fine. I suspect there's something in the render logic that's causing it to do pop logic, or uncached disk hits, modifier logic, or some such shenanigans every frame. Maybe something that was supposed to be in the every day logic that instead ended up in the every frame logic? Just taking stabs in the dark on a problem that makes little sense to me.

Edit: if you want to keep playing your game, outlaw AI. That should remove the lag issue, and the economy can be fixed (probably)

 

[WealthyAardvark]

@Leakingamps Yeah, when I first loaded up that save game file you provided I thought you already had Synths researched and didn't notice any problems. When I realized my mistake and researched Synths, the slowdown was evident.