An idea for a suggestion popped into my head, involving having a lot of bot aircraft and ground targets in a variation of Sandbox mode. However, after mentioning it elsewhere, the response has been that it wouldn't work from a performance standpoint.
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As I'm told, having so much as two or three bots out at one time takes a major toll on GPU and CPU usage. Hence, the game only puts one to three bots out at one time (which I originally thought was a matter of gameplay balance). To test this, I ran a few different scenarios - solo Sandbox flight, WWII Dogfight, and Bomber Escort - and monitored my CPU usage and framerate throughout. I observed no differences: The latter two modes use as much CPU and memory as the solo flight, while framerate remains locked at 60 no matter what. So my conclusion is that (1) I'm not monitoring it all properly, or (2) the performance hits in question are a problem on mobile devices, or machines significantly lower-end than my own (which isn't much to write home about itself, and is pretty crummy compared to the average gaming PC).
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So now, computer illiterate as I am, I'm curious about this. Has anyone else been experiencing performance hits with bots involved? Is this really an issue of the bots themselves, or just having a lot of physics objects out at once? Is this an issue inherent to the engine, or something the devs might be able to optimize somehow? Iunno if the aforementioned suggestion of mine would be doable even if bot-based performance hits weren't an issue, but I generally like to keep suggestions at least somewhat grounded.
@FullFruntall Think it's because of the polygon count from all the objects, or all the physics calculations going on?
No impact performance with multiple bots. What impacts performance the most are total part count, wings and buoyancy (but not so much if u not in water). The more individual wing parts a plane has the more cpu gets used. If for instance when I race against my quadruple plane there is major drop in frame rate.
@Sofa well, good point.
@AeroEngineering I say forty because the idea I had involved two teams of bot planes and ground units (one friendly and one hostile) duking it out across the sandbox. Then again, iunno if either team would really need twenty planes just to make it work.
Werll,yeah. but forty woould be maor that I would want to take on at once
@AeroEngineering Then again, it could be that the bot planes as of now are thrifty with parts. Two or three might not be a problem, but having, say, forty buzzing around at once could be an entirely different story.
I agree with your theroy. i havent npticed many differences with AI vs not and I also have a horible computer compared to a gaming one.