Interregnum gets unplayable Thread - Star Wars: Interregnum mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

Greetings,

1st of all: Interregnum is the best of Sins-mods I came accross so far! Additionally to the atmosphere, especially the balancing is imo a major plus of this mod, since in other mods the capitals are not even worth the description "capital" since they die like flies.

Here is my re-occurring problem for which I desperately search help/support:
After 3-5h gaming the game begins to stutter and ~5-10 min later is completely unplayable. I did some tests and observation; these are my facts so fare:
(Referring to Steam-Version of Sins with [Mods-Rebellion v1.82]: [Star Wars Interregnum Alpha 3.1] & [Enhanced 4X Mod 1.8] and a [EnabledMods.txt] that looks as follows:
TXT
Version 0
enabledModNameCount 2
enabledModName "Star Wars Interregnum Alpha 3.1"
enabledModName "Enhanced 4X Mod 1.8"

1) happens with biggest possible maps down to at least maps with 74 planets (e.g. did no tests with small maps)
2) happens in Single- and Multiplayer
3) happens with both CFF Explorer and LAA
4) after the "freeze" the application isn't completely frozen from windows' view; the taskmanager still shows 25% cpu-usage and even after a while the shown memory-usage changes slightly (as usual)
5) after the "freeze" the application won't get on it's feed again even after waiting for >1h
6) within the tests I could not find some specific trigger like "just researched this" or "big battle with xy" etc. - this might of course be the point for an AI-hostile
7) a friend has the same problem as written above, so we can also add to the facts: happens on win7 & vista and Intel- & AMD-CPU
8) happens with even lowest grafic-settings
9) happens only with this mod, not vanilla or other mods

I have prepared 3 savegames prior to the described problem (0, 1, 2). At some it might occur in 5, at other in 30min. For [vor_bug_00.zip] I can even offer a minidump here. For testing I had set the speed to 8x and the result was that minidump instead of stutter&freeze.

We would be VERY happy and thankful if you could help with our problem!

Try reinstalling both the mod and the game, corrupt files could be the cause. If the problem continues wait for Goa to reply, this is just what I had to do to get my game to work. Also make sure you activated LAA correctly, you could have done something wrong whilst activating it.

This might be an issue that has shown up for some people for some time. If this stuttering is what I think it is, it is actually an issue from E4X which of course carries over into Interregnum. I've never actually had it happen to me, I've only seen it from sent in save files like you've done. That and the lack of an obvious trigger is why it still hasn't been fully tracked down.

For the most part it does seem to only happen on large maps, however I did get one save on a small or medium map, which makes me think it may be faction specific. Our best guess is that it is Advent Loyalists AKA Orthodox, but we could never find a trigger even on a small game.

Thanks for the autosaves, perhaps I will be able to notice something with them that I didn't in the other ones. I might be rather busy this weekend though so I probably won't get to them until the weekend after that.

Hi all,

Sure, me and my friends are experiencing same problem... Online or solo saves and games start to lag automaticlly after several hours of play ,even you've got good or excellent pc spec.. And the original game Sins never done that.. This mod is so awesome that we really hope you can find a solution because it's hard to enjoy with that problem... We are really sad!

Thanks again for your team hardwork!

hi

same problem here since first version of the mod. i allready sent a save to goafan.

latest multiplayergame without advent went without stutter/freeze. (56 planets, 6players.) but perhaps that was random. will check furter....

Update: Advent Loyalists / Orthodox might really be the problem. In both SP & MP maps up to 99 planets so far haven't triggered a stutter / freeze if not adding them to any hostile team. Will add further data here within the next days (testing up to biggest maps, choosing Advent / Orthodox as player).
@all: Thanks for your answers/replies. This motivates us to also contribute to the feedback, as we would love to get our most beloved sins-mod even better in balancing, interface etc.. =)

Schubduese wrote:

Update: Advent Loyalists / Orthodox might really be the problem. In both SP & MP maps up to 99 planets so far haven't triggered a stutter / freeze if not adding them to any hostile team. Will add further data here within the next days (testing up to biggest maps, choosing Advent / Orthodox as player).
@all: Thanks for your answers/replies. This motivates us to also contribute to the feedback, as we would love to get our most beloved sins-mod even better in balancing, interface etc.. =)

Glad it sounds promising that it might be them. I've checked everything the mod (rather E4X) changes about them and couldn't find anything conclusive, but perhaps more eyes will help with the problems. I've never had it duplicated on an Orthodox player, so I'm a little worried it might be the Orthodox AI. Not sure if its even that different from other factions though.

I can confirm that the problem is most likely something to do with the Orthodox Advent. I have no idea how or why but here is a summary of my experience. I have played a few dozen games of Interregnum on the Galaxy Far, Far Away map with 130ish planets and 10 players since sometime after the Rebel faction released and all of those ended in the stuttering problem (or me losing) with the game slowing down until it stops altogether and practically freezes the whole computer (Yes I know the definition of insanity). Having read this I started inserting a third Warlord faction in place of the Orthodox Advent. Now I have played game after game all the way through (or I get my head handed to me. . .) without an issue. The difference is night and day.

Interesting. To be clear you left the Ascended Advent in the game and didn't run into any issues, correct?

Yes the Ascended Advent are still in play. The set up is me as Galactic Empire, 3 Warlords, 1 TEC, 1 HTS, 1 VCC, 1 VIR, 1 Alliance, and 1 Ascended Advent on the 130 planet Galaxy Far, Far Away map. I am able to make it all the way through the game just fine this way. This same set up except with 2 Warlords and the Orthodox Advent included would always get to the point where it jacked up my RAM useage until I was unable to even get Task Manager up to shut it down. I would have to turn my laptop off and restart it.

Update: We did a bunch of games without any Advent faction. NO stutter/freeze at all.
One PC had reoccuring other bugs which I'll try to describe later too.
In addition to Sypher297's post I might perhaps be able to narrow the problem further down. Did some SP with choosing Orthodox Advent myself. By random I might have a savegame seconds before the stutter/freeze.

Schubduese wrote:

Update: We did a bunch of games without any Advent faction. NO stutter/freeze at all.
One PC had reoccuring other bugs which I'll try to describe later too.
In addition to Sypher297's post I might perhaps be able to narrow the problem further down. Did some SP with choosing Orthodox Advent myself. By random I might have a savegame seconds before the stutter/freeze.

I've never heard of this happening in Single player as the only Advent player. please upload the save somewhere and post the link.

Edited by: GoaFan77

Here are the savegamefiles. Depending on your machine the freeze might come very soon. At least that's what happend while testing the file at another PC.
Would like to add: though it might seem as a complete freeze (like Sypher297 ad others reported), it is imo not a freeze like an fatal error would result in. The script is somehow hanging in loops. After minimizing via task manager to the desktop one can see in some time that in the slight changes in the % of cpu-usage. This is obviously contradictary to the window-tab with the application-status, which shows: no response.

I agree with you Schub. If it was an error of some type the program would fail on its own and release the used RAM. As I mentioned, it simply uses more and more RAM until I am simply unable to do anything at all. It is possible to pull up Task Manager and kill the game but it takes an eternity before the Task Manager can be seen on the screen. If I hover over it I can see the mini-image but my desktop is largely blank for a long period of time. Honestly the behavior reminds me of a memory leak in the way it hogs RAM.

Hey Guys,

I did notice one thing different about the Advent that perhaps could cause this issue. Since I never really got it to happen to me its hard for me to say if its fixed, but if you are playing the new Alpha 3.2 version please let me know if it seems better of if you run into this still.

Thanks!

Ok, did not see this thread before posting mine. I can say that I never play with the Advent so in my case this is not the problem.

I read the ReadMe that came with zip and put both mods in order but it keeps crashing when the load screen shows up did I miss something?

Heller49 wrote:

I read the ReadMe that came with zip and put both mods in order but it keeps crashing when the load screen shows up did I miss something?

The mod is currently not for the recent 1.85 update, we're updating it now. You can use the steam properties -> Beta tab to go back to 1.84 to play the latest version now if you like.

GoaFan77 wrote:

Hey Guys,

I did notice one thing different about the Advent that perhaps could cause this issue. Since I never really got it to happen to me its hard for me to say if its fixed, but if you are playing the new Alpha 3.2 version please let me know if it seems better of if you run into this still.

Thanks!

Still running into the issue (Alpha 3.21) with Advent.

Pivus wrote:

GoaFan77 wrote:

Hey Guys,

I did notice one thing different about the Advent that perhaps could cause this issue. Since I never really got it to happen to me its hard for me to say if its fixed, but if you are playing the new Alpha 3.2 version please let me know if it seems better of if you run into this still.

Thanks!

Still running into the issue (Alpha 3.21) with Advent.

Hmm, that is unfortunate. Back to the drawing board then.

The bug is definitelly still present even in current version of the mod. However I may have a clue about what's causing it.

Recently as a Guest I posted a comment in Interregnum general discussion about this bug being present in E4X (and Interregnum), not in unmodified game and apparently unaffected by CPU performance (posted on Aug 5, 2016, I don't know how to quote it). I also noticed E4X discussion forum which blamed Suppression Aura as a possible cause (https://www.moddb.com/mods/enhanced-4x-mod/forum/thread/freezing-bug-i-might-have-something). Freezes happen only with Advent in Game (but Ascended as well as Orthodox).

Recently I got a freeze in battle right at the time when multiple Iconus Guardians deployed their shields. Loading and destroying these units before the battle prevented the freeze. However these units as well as a Suppression Aura do not appear to have been changed in any way from the original version.

My point is it may actually be THE NUMBER of Advents AoE abilities active at once rather than any particular one causing it. E4X added heroes with more multiple units affecting abilities (Reflective aura, Subconscious Guidance), which may overload something (?memory? - CPU does not seem to affect it).

Liberty71 wrote:

Recently I got a freeze in battle right at the time when multiple Iconus Guardians deployed their shields. Loading and destroying these units before the battle prevented the freeze.

My point is it may actually be THE NUMBER of Advents AoE abilities active at once rather than any particular one causing it. E4X added heroes with more multiple units affecting abilities (Reflective aura, Subconscious Guidance), which may overload something (?memory? - CPU does not seem to affect it).

Curious.

The CPU thing is really what confuses me. The slowdown seems like the CPU is just getting insanely backed up, as if in an infinite loop, but that should definitely show up on the CPU usage. :-/

I may have an explanation for CPU, though its complicated (and I'm no programmer so please take that into account)

As I wrote before in comments (as a guest) I tried sharing the game through steam with a friend to test the effect of CPU - Core i7-3770K 3,5 GHz 2085 Single Thread Benchmark Score (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html) vs mine Core i3-530 2,93 GHz 1109 Benchmark) - and NO effect on freezes.

However (using google a bit) I found info about memory thrashing (basically situation where shifting data between RAM and Virtual Memory gets so high that it overloads CPU (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19031902/what-is-thrashing-why-does-it-occur)). Sins have known memory issues and this would explain why it appears as a CPU lag (and is not actually affected by CPU as it triggers when RAM is depleted).

Last note - CPU overload will NOT show on task manager - Sins is Single Thread so it will use only one core of multiple core processors. 25% CPU usage actually equalls one core of quad core processor being maxed out (see performance tab to see individual cores).

Well since the "number of abilities" theory seemed simple enough I tried to test it. However I'm afraid things has just gotten A LOT more complicated.

I tried playing game as Ascended vs. cruel AI VIR and I got a minidump crash (!) even with LAA applied. The crash happened early in game (400 supply, 2 capital ships) and most likely at the time when pirates attacked the enemy VIR. And yes, I tried restarting the game, reapplying LAA and even reseting the PC and still got the crash (I could send savefile if you tell me where to upload it).

But that's not the end of it. I also noticed "supply bug" present in the game. As the lategame approaches, enemy AI, irrespective of race seems to stop building army at all. I reffered to post-game statistics, which showed enemy at nearly max supply the whole time, despite the fact, that when I attacked I destroyed 400-500 supply army max (one cap. ship, one titan and few cruisers) at which point his supply dropped to nearly zero, but in a straight line from over an hour ago, as if statistics were not reading/recording data for an last hour at all. The supplies then sharply reached maximum again (clearly impossible to build fleet this fast and there were no enemy units encountered afterwards) and then dropped to zero again (again have a savefile with it).

The presence of LAA resistant minidumps clearly supports the memory problem theory. A tempting explanation might be that the game fails to delete destroyed units from RAM which could explain both bugs. It is possible that the problem is AI affected (appears to be more frequent in tougher AI's) However the "supply bug" appears to affect all races, not just Advent. I have also got few crashes even in games without Advent. As of today, the mod is unplayable.

Edited by: Liberty71