Performance Guide — UpsideDown Universe

🖥️ Client-Side Settings

These settings are adjusted in your Space Engineers game client. They have the biggest impact on your personal framerate.

Graphics Settings

Render Distance — Set to 15km–20km. On servers, you rarely need to see farther than this. Higher values waste GPU resources.
Shadow Quality — Low or Medium. Shadows are a major GPU bottleneck in large grids.
Voxel Quality — Medium. High voxel quality hits CPU hard when near planets or asteroids.
Grass Draw Distance — 0m or lowest possible. Grass is purely cosmetic and tanks FPS on planets.
Post-Processing (Bloom, Ambient Occlusion) — Disable or set to Low. These effects add minimal visual value for the performance cost.
Anti-Aliasing — FXAA is acceptable; MSAA is expensive. Consider disabling entirely if you're GPU-bound.

Game Settings

Max Objects — Lower this to 256 or 512 if you experience frequent lag spikes when near large grids or debris fields.
Max Fragments — Set to 64 or lower. Reduces floating scrap pieces after combat or drilling.
Max Floating Objects — 32–64. Lower values reduce physics load from dropped components.
Enable Spectator — Keep OFF unless actively debugging. Spectator mode increases network traffic.
Show Player Names — OFF in crowded areas to reduce HUD clutter and tiny CPU overhead.

🔧 Grid & Build Optimization

How you build directly affects server and client performance. These tips help everyone, not just you.

🚫 Avoid Excessive Subgrids

Each rotor, piston, and hinge creates a separate subgrid that the physics engine must calculate independently. A ship with 20+ subgrids can cripple server sim speed.

Use lock/lock&share on rotors/hinges when not in motion
Combine mechanisms into fewer moving parts
Consider beam/merge block alternatives for static assemblies

🧱 Block Count & PCU

More blocks = more physics shapes = more CPU. Design with intention.

Use large blocks instead of many small ones where possible
Replace decorative armor panels with full blocks on non-visible faces
Check your grid's PCU regularly — see the Block Limits page for server caps

💡 Lighting & LCDs

Every light source and dynamic LCD adds render passes.

Limit interior lights — use higher radius/fewer lights
Avoid corner lights unless necessary (they have poor range)
Turn off LCDs in areas players rarely look at
Use static text on LCDs rather than scripts that refresh constantly

🔩 Conveyor Networks

Complex conveyor systems with many junctions cause pathfinding overhead every time an item moves.

Use straight tubes instead of multiple junctions
Avoid circular/looping conveyor paths
Use sorters to segment networks and reduce search space

🌐 Server-Aware Practices

Things you can do to help keep the server running smoothly for everyone.

🗑️ Clean Up After Yourself

Grind down wrecks — use !qs grind or hand-grind ships you no longer need
Don't abandon grids — if you're done with a ship, dock it or salvage it
Remove floating objects — use the Alt+F10 entity list to find stray components
Don't leave drills running — idle drills create constant voxel queries

📡 Antenna & Beacon Discipline

Set antenna range to the minimum needed — not max "just because"
Turn off antennas/beacons on docked ships inside carrier hangars
Reduce beacon text — long text strings increase network packet size per player

💡

Pro Tip: If you notice server sim speed dropping (check with !status or Shift+F11), ask in chat if anyone is doing large-scale grinding, combat, or voxel deformation. These activities temporarily load the server and usually resolve within a few minutes.

🔍 Troubleshooting Low FPS

1

Open the in-game stats overlay — Press Shift+F11. Check Sim Speed (should be near 1.0), Server Sim Speed, and your Client FPS. This tells you whether the bottleneck is server-side or client-side.

2

Check your location — Are you near a massive grid, dense asteroid field, or planet surface with grass? Move away and see if FPS improves. If yes, it's a local rendering issue.

3

Check entity count — Press Alt+F10 to open the entity list. If there are thousands of floating objects or grids in your render range, that's your culprit.

4

Reduce your graphics settings — Start with Shadow Quality and Voxel Quality. These are the two biggest levers. Then try Render Distance.

5

Restart your game client — Space Engineers has known memory leak issues. After 2–3 hours of play, a client restart can recover significant FPS.

6

Verify game files — In Steam: right-click Space Engineers → Properties → Installed Files → Verify integrity of game files. Corrupted files can cause unexplained performance drops.

⚠️

Don't blame the server automatically! If your client FPS is low but server sim speed is 1.0, the server is fine — the problem is on your end. Conversely, if sim speed drops below 0.8, the server is struggling and it affects everyone equally.

⚡ Performance Guide