X3 Terran Conflict Back in Action

[gigabyte]

Well folks I am back in action, I finally have Terran Conflict set up properly on my system and I am starting fresh with the AMS Mod, what a BLAST .

I have to say the i7 with Win 7/64 does make this game a pleasure to play, I am exploring right now, not following the plot yet, I want to ease back into the action. I decided it would be fun to start fresh and not cheat up a whole fleet so I am using a Vidar and have a GunBus as a wingman just touring around discovering all the sectors. I did cheat up a Fast Response team and parked it at the AMS Shipyard just incase I run into somthing interesting, but I have not called them out so far. The "FRT" is something I put together in my last adventure in the AMS world, it was piece meal, but worked well so I created a purpose built one this time. have a Minicar (the small carrier) with 8 fighters loaded for bear on board all assigned to Red Wing, if I find a battle I want to join or some fool pirate clan picks a fight I will call out the team and launch Red Wing on them. I also have a pair of Gunbus's to ride shotgun and protect the team and finally a freighter to pick up any dropped missles after the battle. I can't wait to give this a try as soon as I find a nice collection of Pirates or some Xenon tucked away somewhere. There is also the Batle carrier but I have not added that to the team yet, I might if I go after a full sector, especially if I decide to tackle a sector with an enemy shipyard, but we'll see about that when the time comes.

 

[GT182]

Sounds good Mike. You'll need them going against the Xenon sectors in the future when called upon to destroy them. I've tackled them on my own mostly and it was a battle, especially destroying a Xenon station. I even lost one of my military battle carrier to them.... a most sever loss.

 

[Lionheart]

Sounds good Mike. You'll need them going against the Xenon sectors in the future when called upon to destroy them. I've tackled them on my own mostly and it was a battle, especially destroying a Xenon station. I even lost one of my military battle carrier to them.... a most sever loss.

Goodness man! You took out a Xenon base?

Very impressive...

I cant imagine losing my carrier. So dang huge. I watched it ram a Xenon ship once, lol... Hilarious. I had overtuned it to fly faster, and it didnt compensate when it was going at a huge Xenon ship. It was to turn on it and fire a salvo. Instead, it turned on it, and right before ramming it, shot it and suddenly the said Xenon ship was dust and components... Extremely fast disassembly of Xenon warship...

Glad you guys are flying again. I need to log some time myself.


Bill

 

[GT182]

Goodness man! You took out a Xenon base?

Very impressive...

I cant imagine losing my carrier. So dang huge. I watched it ram a Xenon ship once, lol... Hilarious. I had overtuned it to fly faster, and it didnt compensate when it was going at a huge Xenon ship. It was to turn on it and fire a salvo. Instead, it turned on it, and right before ramming it, shot it and suddenly the said Xenon ship was dust and components... Extremely fast disassembly of Xenon warship...

Glad you guys are flying again. I need to log some time myself.


Bill

Actually 2 of them Bill, in two different Xenon sectors. Hard missions but that was my orders....eliminate them. Besides, there's very good money in being a mercenary. I can handle that better than buying and selling goods. Me loves a good fight.

Haven't flown yet as I was waiting for the patch to increase preformance in TC. last date I flew was 3/3/10. :redf: But I guess Mike nailed it on having too many claimed ships running around eating up cpu cycles. Most were sent to shipyards to sell off but most hadn't arrived at their destinations when my problems started. I might have to go back to a Save where things were ok and then work on liquidating my salvage inventory. Most I don't need, nor intend to use.

 

[Lionheart]

Roger that Gary.

I had always wondered that....

I noticed that if one of my ships was attacked by AI that is off in another sector, all the dog fighting is going on in the CPU 'thinking' zone, an entire 'other' dogfight, though the scene isnt being rendered on computer, which is a huge RAM issue. But none the less, multiply all of this by 10 or 20, and you can really bring down your computer.

In FS, AI will disappear when not in distance, and thus not existing and not using RAM or CPU resources.


I need to sell off some of my stock as well. Luckily, I have most of them docked (fighters and carrier), and the rest however are freighters doing biz, and that creates some resource useage...



Bill

 

[GT182]

Roger that Gary.

I had always wondered that....

I noticed that if one of my ships was attacked by AI that is off in another sector, all the dog fighting is going on in the CPU 'thinking' zone, an entire 'other' dogfight, though the scene isnt being rendered on computer, which is a huge RAM issue. But none the less, multiply all of this by 10 or 20, and you can really bring down your computer.

Bill

Yeah, I get the notification too that my ships are being attacked while enroute in different sectors. So where I am now heading to the Mars Terran sector, things are happening in many other sectors. All this makes X3 one hell of a simulation.

I wonder if using the mod that eliminates the rendering of all those small asteroids would also help smoothe out game play. Has anyone tried it?

 

[gigabyte]

Gary I had that one on my old rig and it did make quite a difference, I must find the download and install it again, I am not having problems now but at the rate I am collecting I might soon.

 

[Matt Wynn]

i'm about to re-install tonight, put the AMS mod back in and dig my Galaxy Class Federation Starship out! show those Kha'ak why you don't mess with the err...... can i say UFP in this instance?


Yes you may!

:d

 

[gigabyte]

Back from yet another road trip, I am so looking forward to a few days home and the chance to just BLOW STUFF UP... lokk out Xenon, and Porates, I am out for a good time now!

 

[GT182]

Well, I screwed the pooch on 2.6 into my AMS modded TC. Sooooo I'm working on a reinstall. Should be up and running by Monday night.

Gotta crew the Mig-21 and L-39 tomorrow, and possibly go up for a spin in the 39. Then it's home and mow da lawn. And after that I'm going out for a ride in the GTO to get some ice cream. Cause I deserve it. :d

 

[gigabyte]

Well, I screwed the pooch on 2.6 into my AMS modded TC. Sooooo I'm working on a reinstall. Should be up and running by Monday night.

That sucks, I decided to burn a DVD of the vanilla folders as soon as I completed the install, and it has paid off, when I messed up an update or installing a mod I just blew away the folder and copied the vanilla back to the HDD. I have had to do it a couple of times and it works very well.

Also handy to just copy the whole folder to a new location on your system if you have the space, which I do, so I sometimes do that just before messing about, but I do like the safety of the DVD's.

 

[GT182]

Great idea Mike.... wish I'd have been more on the ball and thought of that too. I've done it with other sims. Must be a CRS thing. Will do it today.

I've gotten my old AMS TC up and running again. Still have the seveer lag in the Mars Terran sector but I think I know what's causing it..... HEAT. My pc temps jumped to 51 degrees C lastnight. So I took off the side cover and set a small desk fan to blow airconditioned air in, and got the temp dropped back into the high 30s. Now to figure out what's causing the temp spike while in X3 TC_AMS. Doesn't do it in anything else. A good cleaning is due too but it's not all that bad in there. And I've updated all my pc's drivers... Driver Genius Pro really works great.... no problems. And the Nvidia driver went in without having to uninstall the old one. They were right. Worked like a charm. :d

Also found this for a small preformance boost....... http://www.thexuniverse.com/threads/14156-SS_T-s-X3TC-Performance-upgrade?p=145757 I've got it in and will give it a try.

I'm sure you've all seen this site but here it is again.... http://www.universesearch.co.cc/x3tc/ This has the low poly asteroids in it and should help with preformance too.

Plus this XUniverse thread for more...... http://www.thexuniverse.com/threads/13553-Combat-Mod-Terran-Conflict. Other stuff in there too.

Oh, one other thing. If you open up your game folder you'll see the new update CAT and DAT files now say X3 Reunion. I'm scratching my head over that one.

 

[GT182]

Just had another brilliant idea. Tried AMS TC again and it ran better this time, lag wasn't quite so bad but still no exactly playable. So after scratching my head a bit more I decided to che and see how fragmented AMS TC was. Real bad, so I'm defrqagging it. Hope this worls out.

Now mind you I'm only defragging the TC folder with the AMS mod itself to see if it helps or not. I'll edit this post with the results. Cross yer fingers.

Edit:
Well, just as I thought, it was a mess. Completed and will run it tonight to see if the defrag helped any. This wasn't done with the standard Windows defrag, I used O&O's Defrag Pro. Takes longer but works much better... IMHO.

 

[gigabyte]

Gary just out of curosity, how much RAM do you have and are you using a system managed Swap file or did you set a fixed swap file?

I was having some real problems with a couple of CAD machines, and one of the best solutions ended up being to set a fixed swap file that was 2.5 - 3 times the size of the installed RAM.

I am not sure how this would work with games, but it will not hurt to try it that is for sure.

 

[GT182]

2GB of matched DDR2 RAM Mike. And I was told that 2GB would be the max RAM I could use. But I've heard of others using 3GB of RAM with XP. Tho mayby they were using XP Pro, I've only got XP Home.

My Virtual Memory is set as follows:
Virtual memory at 2046
Max at 4092

I just changed to 3070 as is recommended
Max not touched

Is this good now or..... set one or both higher?

I've never played around with this before so all the help I can get is good and greatly appreciated.

And to add. This is on C Drive where as my X3TC is run on F Drive. Maybe I should set the Virtual Memory for that drive too?

 

[gigabyte]

Gary, let me double check on the Max RAM for XP Home, as far as I recall the Max usable for Home and Pro are the same 3.75 GB, which means you can install 4 GB but will not get to use the highest .25 GB.

Regarding the Swap File, I would suggest setting it fixed to 4096 Min and 5120 Max for your system drive, and create the same setting for each drive that you use to run apps, or games (provided you have the space). I have mine set for 2.5 x 12 GB (my current installed RAM) for my C: (system), D: (Apps), and G: (Games). I have an E: (Data) and F: (Backup) which have no swap file set. This works very well for my system and has been my rule of thumb for a long time.

The one critical thing to remember is make sure you have clean unfragmented space on the drive(s) before you set up larger Swap Files, it is probably wise to delete the current swap file (just set size to 0 or turn off virtual memory) defrag the drive(s), REBOOT, and then create a new swap file for each drive as listed above. It may seem like a lot of work, and it may be hard to tell the difference in some cases, but it should make a difference with memory intensive applications and give you the best performace you can get from your system.

 

[GT182]

Thanks for that info Mike. Right now I have 4 sticks of 512 Ram. I'll get 2 1GB sticks as a start to upgrading my RAM. I"ll do as you said on Virtual RAM and see what happens, then let you know. Thanks again. :ernae:

Anyone not knowning about how or doing this, like me, save it someplace safe so you'll have it to refer back too.

 

[gigabyte]

Thanks for that info Mike. Right now I have 4 sticks of 512 Ram. I'll get 2 1GB sticks as a start to upgrading my RAM. I"ll do as you said on Virtual RAM and see what happens, then let you know. Thanks again. :ernae:

Anyone not knowning about how or doing this, like me, save it someplace safe so you'll have it to refer back too.

Gary if you want to get the Max from the system the best thing you can do is go for matched sticks of RAM, depending on the cost and if you can spare the cash (RAM is pretty cheap right now) your best bet would be to pick up 2 sticks of DDR2 2 GB RAM that are matched to the fastest speed your board can handle. The difference for most apps will not be noticable but any games that render graphics can show 10-15% better performance with matched high speed RAM.

If you are doing it in stages, start with 2 1GB sticks as you mention, but when you can pick up 2 more of the exact same and replace the 512's.

 

[GT182]

Yeah Mike that's my plan..... 2 1GB matched sticks of DDR2. But if CompUSA has 2 2GB matched for a reasonable price I'll go that route. The fastest I can get. The ones I have now, tho 512, are all matched.

When I build a new pc I want a motherboard that can handle DDR2 and DDR3..... if they still make them.

 

[GT182]

Mike I've played a bit for the past 2 nights and X3TC/AMS seems to be running better. Just a bit of lag so far but nothing I can't handle until I can upgrade my RAM. So far so good.