I've recently figured out that certain plots included in the Mega Pack bundles can place a large number of light sources - a very particular one is the Intimate Spaces / Player indoor residential plot, which places a large number of candles. I had pretty bad problems with this plot especially but I am sure there are others with a similar use of lights. Even turning down mod performance options almost all the way down (see pic) these light sources still try to load and render. When you have a handful of plots, that's fine, but when you have a large settlement with 60+ plots it makes the game very unstable and at best, tanks my FPS.
Even if these lights are occluded by geometry, i.e. placed walls or what have you, the engine apparently still tries to render them; the steps I took to diagnose and fix this were incredibly dumb things like "hm facing this direction tanks FPS" and approaching the suspect plots backwards while staring at the ground. Eventually I was able to get the plane of the plot within camera view and forced it to change to a different type, and the FPS problem immediately cleared up, so I'm pretty certain this was the problem.
This is 100% consistent and has nothing to do with other aspects of the mod, and probably can't be tweaked or tuned around, because it isn't a problem with the mod itself - it's just the game engine trying its best to render enormous numbers of lights. I'm a bit surprised to note this problem with large numbers of lights isn't mentioned in the "My Settlement Crashes On Approach!" guide. The only SS-related mods I have installed that add plots are the 3 in 1 Pack, Conqueror, and the Mega Pack semi-official content actually published by Kinggath. I realize there's no way to control all the other mod collections out there, but the ones you publish yourself you can absolutely require some minimum standards for.
Please enforce some strict standards for minimum lighting (preferably 1 light at most) when the "Extra Lights" option is set to OFF. Thanks!
Even if these lights are occluded by geometry, i.e. placed walls or what have you, the engine apparently still tries to render them; the steps I took to diagnose and fix this were incredibly dumb things like "hm facing this direction tanks FPS" and approaching the suspect plots backwards while staring at the ground. Eventually I was able to get the plane of the plot within camera view and forced it to change to a different type, and the FPS problem immediately cleared up, so I'm pretty certain this was the problem.
This is 100% consistent and has nothing to do with other aspects of the mod, and probably can't be tweaked or tuned around, because it isn't a problem with the mod itself - it's just the game engine trying its best to render enormous numbers of lights. I'm a bit surprised to note this problem with large numbers of lights isn't mentioned in the "My Settlement Crashes On Approach!" guide. The only SS-related mods I have installed that add plots are the 3 in 1 Pack, Conqueror, and the Mega Pack semi-official content actually published by Kinggath. I realize there's no way to control all the other mod collections out there, but the ones you publish yourself you can absolutely require some minimum standards for.
Please enforce some strict standards for minimum lighting (preferably 1 light at most) when the "Extra Lights" option is set to OFF. Thanks!