Units or groups appearing based on a trigger or script

[macguba]

I've been beta testing LCD's new mission Operation Noname.    There is a createvehicle lag spike .... but there is also a little bit of lag afterwards, whereas there wasn't before.   In other words the whole createvehicle thing was effective in making the early part of the mission playable for me.   Sui is right that the odd unit offscreen makes very little difference, but on very slow comps like mine (benchmark 756) it does add up.

The bottom line is that the most effective anti-lag weapon is really good unit placement ... that way you need fewer units, and fewer units means less lag.

[DrStrangelove]

Createunit is definitely good for:

- missions where the players mustn't find the enemy just by hopping into a chopper and boosting all over the island until they find some red spots on the radar. Good for stealthy vietcong missions.

- reacting to the amount of units the player(s) has/have in their groups. Not to mention, reacting on the type of weapons they have.

- random encounters all over the island. (random= type of units created and command)

All things i try to add into my mission.

[Dinger]

CreateUnit is good for scaring up troops, for dynamic missions and so on.
I am going to disagree about some of the lag causes; or rather about the priorities of them.
yeah, lots of stuff onscreen will slow things down noticeably.
But proximity and AI have a noticeable effect.

When I was making "Short Straight", I had some issues with FPS.  Well, okay, the point of the mission was the helo insertion at the beginning, so I was willing to sacrifice a bunch of FPS provided nobody got shot.  But afterwards, I did want to have some fighting without the frame rate chunder of a dozen helos and three platoons of infantry.

It turns out that even stuff that was out of sight but in the general area caused a severe amount of lag.  Rather than createunit, I used bulk setpos with a savegame to hide the frame rate hit.
So when the leader of the player's group gets a certain distance away from the LZ, a script runs that indexes the position of the two squads (4 groups) securing the LZ, and setposes them to an island far, far away.
I have a single NVA squad that represents a counterattacking platoon.  WHen it gets to a certain distance from the LZ, or when it's triggered, I setpos in the whole platoon, along with the LZ force (with another savegame to hide the freeze)
That way, I get a counterattack late in the mission, when attrition has (hopefully) reduced the number of running and fighting AI units to a more manageable level, and it happens at logical moments in the mission (moving away from the LZ, returning to the LZ).
Oh yeah, and the helos don't have to land -- if they hover way out at sea, they have a minimal effect on FR.  And, the way helos land, it's probably safer that way anyway