Hi all !
i'm a new Alive user, discovered it few weeks ago...and worked on it almost every night from that day !
so.. HUGE THANKS FOR THIS GREAT MOD !
i really, really thinks is what arma3 needs to evolve !
before go on... my PC specs: i5 4440 3.10mhz, 12GB ram, nvidia 660ti 2GB ram.

well...i'm tring to make a "simple" MPmission: 3 factions fight for Stratis island, PVP, 4 to 12 players.

IND hold the island, with a lot of troops but also a lot of ground to defend
BLUE and RED have only small HQs, but push to advance with aggressive tactics
Civs are just present to make it realistic and for IED (and suicide bombers ecc..)
to complete the picture...i really love to fly helicopters, snipe and shoot with tanks form a good distance, so (mainly for realism too) i really wish to keep the view/spawn distance to at least 2000m.

I readed almost all the last year of this forum and i really, really tried every possible setup that get to my mind, from two mil placement (mil & civ) whitout TAOR (to cover all island) to place manually every single marker&placement (both mil&civ) on every single location i wanted populated, and some mix in between.
the game still go very low FPS (under 10 its unplayable), map is still under-populated, and when playing it multiplayer things get even worse (and i mean A LOT worse).

before asking for your generic suggestion, i wish to share some doubts with you:

• battalion (1200) is the number of units or groups? and why it seems to make no change from 1200 to 400 (with virtualAI debug ON) ?
• setting override units (in placements) its the same performence wise ?
• the virtual AI limiter, is somehow hardcapped?
• is better group units (like fixed M312 machineguns) for performance?
• an infantry group of 8 guys eat more resourced than a single tank ?
• is there a way to disable virtualization data storage? i mean...i just wish to spawn (specific) enemy units around player (lets say 2 to 3km ring) but i dont care if they keeps theyr information when despawned.
• what is the best solution to keep decent FPS for my specific case? (huge thanksssssss)

thanks for this mod and this great community !

Would changing the active limiter on the virtual AI increase his performance as well? Decrease it from 144 to 100 or something, maybe he could keep the longer view distance he wants?

Thanks for your help ! Tonight will try your suggestion ! In the meantime i wish to precise that i dont use 1200, was just an example, i set 3 infantry , 1 mechanized. 1 spec ops for red and for blue. For green side i set 50 infantry (for the whole map ) 10 mechanized and 10 spec ops, 2 tank battalion.
Thanks !

-----------EDIT--------------
i was able to do a little test while eating, and seems that :
MAP: empty stratis (for every test)

TEST1: alivemod,alive module (required),

• virtual AI module (spawn radius 9000 for inf, heli and plane, active limiter 9000)
• custom obj module (size 3000, but seems to be auto-hard capped to a way lower size like 300 because all units were in a very small radius), infantry count 128 (should be groups, some groups are 8 man some are 4 man some are 2 man, lets say an average 5 ai each group) for a total of around 640 AI units, took 6 minutes to load every unit into 3D map, FPS 20 (on agia marina and airport).

TEST2:alivemod loaded but NOT USED at all.
-placed by hand 8 assault squadron of 8 man each (let's call this a battalion for this example), and placed 10 battalions around the map , for a total of exactly 640 infantry AI. loaded everything in a couple of seconds at start (4 fps for 1-2 seconds), then game run smooth at 20 FPS on agia marina and airport.

TEST3:alivemod loaded but NOT USED at all.
-placed by hand 8 assault squadron of 8 man each (let's call this a battalion for this example), and placed 16 battalions around the map , for a total of exactly 1024 infantry AI. loaded everything at start (4 fps for 3-4 seconds), then game run at 10 FPS on agia marina and airport (almost unplayable).

TEST4:TEST1: alivemod,alive module (required),

• virtual AI module (spawn radius 9000 for inf, heli and plane, active limiter 9000)
• military obj module, infantry count 128 (should be groups, some groups are 8 man some are 4 man some are 2 man, lets say an average 5 ai each group) for a total of around 640 AI units well spread around the whole map (well...not so "well spreaded"...airport got 3 units, agia marina too, feel like a bit too low to be a so important place), took 6 minutes to load every unit into 3D map, FPS 20 (on agia marina and airport).

so...my first question is...why it takes sooo long to load the AI in 3D map ? how reduce this time ?

huge thanks guys !

PS: a very little question....grouping units (example i have machineguns grouped to noone, i can group all them togheter ifthey are in the same base) can help performance or makes no difference at all ?

Ahh yes i noticed it ! Anyway i was meaning after the loading, when you join entering the map and playng....with debug on i noticed it take a lot of time to spawn ai ...that is already here, but virtualized !
Really thanks man for your help !!

Ahh ok thats the reason !! Really thanks for the info man !

Hi all ! Ok i think i found my "sweet spot " around 550 units . now another idea...is there a way to optimize it more as host ? I heard of "headless client " ...is it any good ? And its better run a dedicated server (and play from same pc ) or its the same performance wise ? Thanks !

It works !! Running a dedicated server (on the same pc where i play ) helps a lot with performance ! From 8-10 fps to 16-20 ! Unbelivable !! Tonight i eill try headless client and report back !
Huge thanks for the help !

Its in my first post, anyway :my PC specs: i5 4440 3.10mhz, 12GB ram, nvidia 660ti 2GB ram .
For me seems that around 550 units its running 10 fps on stratis with 12km of virtual ai spawn (i know 12km is illogic...i do it to test the worst conditions, where 4 players are in the 4 corners of the map with a standard 2500 meters of vortual ai spawm )

My weak point is the connection....a poor 7 mb download and 0.4 upload

heey i'm back !

i did my best, tried reading other (old) topics about Headless clients...but omething is wrong.
i menaged (with proper modifications to "werthles headless client" ) to make it conect to my mission (edited by placing 2 Headless virtual entity on the map and setting "headless" instead of server on the alive (required)...the client seems connected, but game runs really badly, way way worse than whithout !

i'm surely doing something wrong...is theere any new tutorial or guide from A to Z ?
thanks guys for your help !

I found this topic...seems that werthles headless has its troubles https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/184485-werthles-headless-module/page-6

Well...if someone know a working headless with alive...its welcom to post / explain it here ! Thanks !

I am confused about is the ask. Using HC in ALiVE is very easy, no need any extra configuration. What you need is playable Headless client module in your scenario and proper configuration of server.cfg for your server.

Thx for answer ! Thats exactly my problem...for example : where is this "server.cfg " file ? And how set it up ? Thanks !

....................edit...................

Ok...following your suggestions i menaged to make headless work !
BUT
...the problem persist....it runs way better with headless off ! (On 9 fps. Off 20fps ) !
Plz help !

................edit 2.......................
For reference (for orher players in my situation too ), here is what i did to make headless client work on my alive dedicated server :

• edit mission in eden editor adding a logic virtual unit, named headless client
• edit setting of alive (required ) module, switching from server to headless
• run dedicated server with TADST, cheching the box about headless client
• edited a link to arma3server.exe to run the headless with my mods (ace,alive ecc )

• run first the dedicated server
• run the headless client
• run the game and log as admin (to see the headless )

My idea its that dont work for me because i ended resources...hope to be wrong.

Uhhh huge thanks !! Tonight will try !