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Simulation load affecting physics damage

Stein Beuge shared this bug ago

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I've been playing on vanilla Keen servers recently, and have noticed that lag can cause damage to be calculated incorrectly. The bug has been minimised over some patches and isn't as common as it once use to be, however it can still occur during moments when the Server Thread Load is over 100% even when Simulation Time seems stable.

If the game is lagging when a minor impact or scrape is happening at usually safe low speeds, the damage is amplified greatly, leading to massive damage throughout a ship. It can be confirmed by looking at a damage ship and noticing how the usually protected parts are damaged compared to armor blocks protecting it, as well as larger amounts of deformation compared to regular armor block damage (reduction of plates and weld state)

It seem like during these spikes, the damage is calculated multiple times, or the damage vectors grow based on the time it was lagging. it could also possibly be that the ship builds extra momentum during the spikes, which is resolved in to large damage impulses when the server catches up.

I have the same bug

Replies (2)

Stein Beuge ●

This is an actual bug, why does it have to be voted up to be addressed?

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Keen SWH QA Agent 2 ●

Hello Stein,

Thank you for reaching out to us on the forum.

To help us investigate further, could you please share a screen recording/video where the issue occurs? When recording, it would be helpful to:

Press Shift + F11 to display performance stats (including Sim Speed, Thread Load, etc.).
Check your ping and server stats using F3, to see if high latency might be contributing.
Show both the moment of impact and the resulting ship damage.

Along with the log files from the time the issue occurred. This will allow us to better understand whether this is a performance-related side effect or an unintended damage calculation issue.

You can access your log files by typing %appdata% into your Windows search bar and you will be redirected to the hidden Roaming folder. After that just follow: \Roaming\SpaceEngineers.

Kind regards,

Keen Software House: QA Department

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Stein Beuge ●

Brother I ain't spinning up a server to test these things unless Keen would like to hire me as a tester lol. I also do not know what other things were happening on the server during this moment to cause Server Thread Load to be in the range of %150

Here's a free write up of what happened.

I was playing on Keen AU #1

I had positioned myself to mine uranium, during mining I was rotating slowly, the rear of my ship touched a wall. I was barely moving during the maneuver when most of my thrusters burst in to flames, including ones nowhere near the point of impact. I immediately recognised the bug so I pressed SHIFT + F11 right away, I could see that the sim speed was mostly stable but Server Thread Load was spiking to around 150%

My usual ping to the AU servers is about 40-50ms (RTT from Shift+F11), when checking Server Thread Load in recent days I have seen it go up to about 200%

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