Merc population

(K1X455) #1

What’s the limit of the number of mercs the game can support before it starts showing signs of strain?

Mind you, hardware is always getting updated. I hope to see more mercs beyond Turtle and Javelin.

(DB Genome editor) #2

It all depends how the game currently manages the data for the merc models. If the model mesh and textures are loaded separately for each instance, then the number of mercs available in the game has no impact on the performance.

If the game shares some of the assets (for instance it loads only one Skyhammer model even if there are 10 in your match), then it would also depend on whether everything is loaded for each of the players’ 3 mercs or only the active ones. In the first case, we’re looking at a worst case of 8 vs 8, maximum 16 distinct mercs active at any time which we have already reached a while back. Adding more new mercs won’t make this any worse. If on the other hand the game loads data for every single merc in everyone’s squads, then there could eventually be up to 48 distinct mercs in a game. This is more than double the current worst case for this scenario, so it is possible that there would be a memory hit (whether it would be significant or not, that’s another story…).