I thought it might be a good idea to have all the helpful advice I've seen to increase BC's performance in one place, so when someone asks we have a "use search button" response for improving game performance.
To begin I'll list the most
simple and common ways to speed up BC:
1. Reduce screen resolution
2. Switch to low color depth
3. Use a non- "T&L" graphics option (recommended for integrated graphics cards or cards with less than 256mb of memory), I believe T&L is selected by default
4. Use the low damage setting or turn off visible damage all together
5. Turn off mipmaps
6. Do not use enhanced glows
7. Turn off specular highlights
Cleaning out your "Screenshots" folder can decrease BC startup time (info provided by Lionus)
Although some may come to the logical conclusion to switch the model and/or texture quality to medium or low, this is actually a bad idea since most mods aren't configured to run under these settings, so unless you know what mods do and don't I recommend against playing with those two options.
NanoFX, despite the way it revolutionized BC modding, is a big slowdown of BC. For those on lower end or older computers it may be a good idea to disable some features. The best way to improve performance with NanoFX are:
1. Turning off BridgeFX
2. Turning off ExplosionFX
3. Turning off SpecialFX (Atmosphere's, Plasma trails, etc.)
DS9FX can be a little taxing also, the manual gives some very good options on how to get the most out of the mod, but in the interest of completion I'll post the major ones here also. Note that you will need UMM to access these options:
1. Turn off planets in a few systems. The DS9 and Cardassia maps are the largest in Xtended, with 14 and 8 planets respectively. If you are in a large scale battle, this many planets in one map can cause a bit of a slow down, especially in the case of the DS9 map.
2. An alternative to turning off planets completely is to reduce their texture detail. This can be especially helpful in the DS9 and Cardassia maps.
3. Use the wormhole 7 model (selected by default in Xtended), as it is both accurate to the Bajoran wormhole we saw on TV and low poly. Those computers on the low and/or older end of the spectrum may want to avoid wormhole 8, as it is a little more high poly than the others.
4. Reduce the number of plasma storms in the Badlands. Although they are low poly, if you are on an older system, you will enjoy a small performance boost in larger battles. Additionally, you can adjust the detail of the Badlands model you are using.
DS9FX is also very beneficial to have on your current BC install(s), as it includes several game fixes. All players with DS9FX should make sure that the "
Memory Cleaning" and "
Model Pre-loading" features are turned on for better performance. Please see the DS9FX Xtended manual for complete details on what these features do and how they help your BC instillation.
Another thing you can do with DS9FX is to cut down DS9's textures back down to their native 256 x 256 resolution. You can do this without ANY loss in the quality of the station because the textures were simply up-converted (stretched) to their current 512 x 512, which doesn't improve quality and just taxes the graphics card un-necessarily. Understand that you'll only get a marginal performance boost at best, but for those on lower-end machines every little bit helps, and combined with taking the steps above, well, pennies add up to dollars. ;)
Disabling some features of
Bridge Plugin may increase performance. Animations (for example the Intrepid bridges command console folding out at yellow and red alerts) and texture swapping (used to give the appearance of animated LCARS) are the biggest bridge slowdowns today. You will need UMM to access these options.
1. Disable Active LCARS
2. Disable Animated Maps
3. Disable Animations
4. Disable Extra Models - Only applies to Galaxy and Sovereign bridges at present. 3rd Era went through some trouble to make sure that the extra models didn't cause too many problems on PC's, even older mid-range PC's should not have to much trouble with the extra models. I recommend this option only for the oldest of the oldest (or crappiest of the crappiest
)
There are mods that can add additional ships to the map, for example Abandon Ship, AI Shuttle Launching, MVAM, etc. These may cause slowdowns in large scale battles, but I don't personally foresee them being an issue for one on one - medium sized battles on most computer 5 years old and younger. Turn them off for performance boosts. (Thanks goes to RifleMan for the info).
Of course the single biggest (and most obvious) slowdowns affecting BC today is hands down
ship models and their respective textures. High-poly models with 2048x2048 resolution textures can cause major lag on older and even some modern systems, especially with NanoFX. Models/textures like this are generally made on a "look pretty first, playable second" mentality and therefore should not be used for everyday gaming unless you have the system to power them. They make for GREAT screenshots though...
Also, after installing new ships, it is always a good idea to delete the vox files in the ship folder so the game will damage the model properly. However, while the game creates the new vox files, there will be a slowdown, therefore it is not a good idea to play with new ships en mass if you're creating new vox files. (Thanks goes to El for providing this info).
Adjusting your graphics card settings is of course a logical/given step when trying to increase performance not just for BC, but for any computer game. There are various ways to do this, depending on what graphics card you have, the software, and drivers installed. For complete details you'll need to go to your graphics card manufacturers website or the instruction manual that came with your card/PC and go from there.
I think those are the major BC slowdowns that are asked about the most, but please feel free to add to this topic and I'll add them to the first post for easy reference. Hope this helps all you newbies out there with older/lower end machines.
