Spring RTS Engine

Some guy said, "well your ships have only got like 3 pieces so that doesn't count"

My ships have more pieces than yo mama has chins. A typical ship has several main hull pieces, a dozen smoke pieces, several engine flare pieces, 16 turret bases, 16 turrets, and 32 firing points.

You're just plain wrong...sorry Caydr. More polies and more pieces ALWAYS have some effect on GPU (polies) and CPU (pieces), even if that effect is masked by other, more hoggish things. Its been said a few times - once you start using the graphical extras (shadows, reflections, ect) that can push a GPU, you'll start to notice how much high poly models can wreck your FPS.

Just because the drag from extra polies isn't noticable at minimum settings (when GPUs just do explosions), and drag from extra pieces isn't noticable because of pathfinding, doesn't mean that that drag is nonexisitant.

More polies and pieces=more strain for your GPU and CPU. Period.

If it isn't enough proof, simply try to play a good game on blacklake swamp. While it's entirely possible it become immediately evident that the map starts to choke much faster then simpler maps of the same size.

Well, yeah... and that map is throwing around a heckuva lot of textures, plus the collision sphere calcs and other stuff.

Still worth it though

Especially with Nanoblobs.

Having 50 million stepping stones doesnt require much physical work to show a friend.

You jumping around on 50 millions stepping stones however, is much harder to show.