Performance Guide

Minimizing your performance impact isn’t always an easy task. Therefore, this guide was created to aid you in minimizing your performance impact and maximizing your creative freedom! Tips specific to certain blocks are listed alphabetically by block name. General tips are listed after specific block listings.*

• Avoid stacking them (mounting pistons on pistons) wherever possible.
• Ensure the center of mass of the subgrid is aligned with the piston.
• Use blast doors to keep the piston from bending without the subgrid scraping.
• Use parallel pistons on larger or less stable subgrids. You can use rotors on the ends of the pistons to connect the subgrid to multiple pistons.

• Do not make piston spaghetti. It may sound fun, but it’s likely to hurt both the server and any nearby ships you’ve built.
• Do not surround the pistons in armor. This causes the piston to invoke Klang and hurt performance. Ensure the piston and it’s subgrid do not scrape.

• Move the rotors slowly. This makes them much more stable.
• Keep the subgrid’s center of mass aligned with the rotor.
• Use physical constraints to prevent the rotor from bending.
• Maximize the braking torque of the rotor and turn it off when not in use.
• Use “Share Inertia Tensor” on larger subgrids.

• Do not make rotor spaghetti. In general, pasta made from spacecraft parts is not a good idea.
• Do not lower the rotor displacement lower than the rotor has room for. This again causes scraping and Klang.

• Convert grounded grids to stations, or delete them.
• Recover crashed grids quickly, or delete them.

• Leave crashed grids resting on the ground for extended periods of time. Crashed grids cause massive amounts of physics calculations which occur both on the server and the client, bogging both down.

• Convert your ships to station grids when you are not flying around. A ship grid can use around 2 to 4 times as much performance compared to a station grid.
• Turn off blocks you are not using. Do you really need to keep 10 spotlights on at all times?
• Turn off turrets when you are not fighting. Turrets are a big performance thief. Base turrets are very easy to take out and are therefore pointless.
• Dock the grids you are not using. You don't need your 30k PCU warship to linger around your base, while you are doing other things.
• Use scripts sparingly and decrease the update time: 100 Ticks instead of 1 Tick is much better. Inventory sorting scripts often use a lot of performance. If a programmable block got damaged or turned off, do not use that script. As it uses too much performance.

• Spam any kind of block. The performance usage often increases exponentially as you place more blocks.
• Use a wall of conveyor junctions to connect a few blocks. Never is this ok and when seen you will be required to improve the design or it will be deleted.