huge loading times and sometimes disconnect at first loading of OW and battle

[Cecil Selous]

I start this topic to see if anybody else experiences the same issues or can help me to find an explanation.

Everytime when I join the OW for the first time after starting the game It usually took ages to load and I mostly get disconnected druing the process. I have to start at the login screen again and then the OW loads very fast. 

I encounter almost the same problem when I join the first battle after starting the game. It sometimes loads for minutes and the battle is already going when I finally finished loading. This isn't a real problem against AI but if your enemy is a player he can already position himself to have an advantage. If it takes very long I also already received some broadsides. All battles after that, start in a reasonable time and I usually finish loading before the battle timer starts.

I can imagine that it has something to do with my HDD (cheap notebook) but could it also be something else?

[Norfolk nChance]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=934048215

This was a quick tweak guide I did for NA. Look at chapter3 NA Recommended Specs and put them against yours. Also good idea to list the pc build you are using. The guide shows you how to get that info also...

[Jean Ribault]

I thought it would be helpful to input here: I have for a long time noted that the first entry into the OW after game startup takes longer than all susequent entries.  However I have never seen the extremes like you (the OP) has suggested.  I am talking a difference of for example 4 seconds for the first OW entry instance versus 2 seconds, as a general reference, and that is +/-, not measured.  Having said this, it's pretty consistently always the same and I have learned to expect it as the rule rather than the exception.  Be interesting to know what causes this.

Edited July 25, 2017 by Jean Ribault

[Anolytic]

I imagine that the first time you enter OW/battle you load a lot of assets, that will subsequently be cached and more accessible next time you do. I don't have the problem you describe, except when I use Sandboxie. Playing in sandbox it will always take noticeably longer to load OW, and can take several minutes to load the first battle. If I enter OW with 2 or more accounts simultaneously they will nearly always crash in the loading screen, so the first time in a session I try to enter them one at a time.

We have one player in our group, who always before going out to do PvP or Port Battles, makes sure to attack any AI trader just so that he has loaded battle instance once before we start sailing.

[Skully]

The problem only occurs whenever there is an I/O bottleneck on the hard-drive. This can happen very easily on slow disks or whenever you have lots of stuff running.

After your first fight (and if you have enough memory) everything has been cached up and thus subsequent fights will work fine.

Note that the change to Unity 5 might bring more memory demands and thus flush battle instance resources out of memory. We'll just have to see what kind of memory requirements will be needed, but my bet is it'll be significantly more.

[Cecil Selous]

Thx guys. So it's confirmed it is just my shitty hard drive.

I also try to always tag AI for my first battle but sometimes you can't choose.

[Norfolk nChance]

@Ink

@Skully makes a valid point here. Will you be upgrading the Minimum and Recommended Specs?

 

[NitroBiLLe]

i installed NA on my SSD. The first Long loading when you leave a port is not so Long anymore  It loads alot faster now.

[Koltes]

8 hours ago, Cecil Selous said:

I start this topic to see if anybody else experiences the same issues or can help me to find an explanation.

Everytime when I join the OW for the first time after starting the game It usually took ages to load and I mostly get disconnected druing the process. I have to start at the login screen again and then the OW loads very fast. 

I encounter almost the same problem when I join the first battle after starting the game. It sometimes loads for minutes and the battle is already going when I finally finished loading. This isn't a real problem against AI but if your enemy is a player he can already position himself to have an advantage. If it takes very long I also already received some broadsides. All battles after that, start in a reasonable time and I usually finish loading before the battle timer starts.

I can imagine that it has something to do with my HDD (cheap notebook) but could it also be something else?

Same. Wasn't the case until recently. I always had enough time to load battle and set my prepared perk cannon charges before battle starts. I've got NA on SSD and last couple of days loaded when battle have already started.

[Norfolk nChance]

I've no idea, but this may help. I separated my STEAM Library....

SSD 475GB (C:) carries the normal STEAM file program

SSD 465GB (D:) Steam Library, This has the steamapps file with all my games on it

Just remember if you do this you'll need to re-direct STEAM to the games... 

STEAM front page TOP LEFT [Steam] then [Settings] then [Downloads]. Top of page click [STEAM Library Folders] and Default your correct drive. In my case D