Excessive Activation/Deactivation of Mekanism generations causing client+server lag

[KirinDave]

So we've been having days where our tickrate drops to 4/s. I finally took the time to install TickProfiler (amazing mod, btw) and discovered that a wind farm of about 48 generators using universal cable was the culprit.

Client side, we observe:

1. A chunk gets reloaded, and suddenly our framerate drops by over 50%. I personally don't have a computer powerful enough to even render it in real time.
2. Observation of the chunk finds the windmills pulsing light updates >1/sec. The effect is quite surreal
3. The batteries connected to the Windmills are almost full and experiencing almost no draw (or so little that it is unobservable).

Server side we observe:
A simply huge amount of time spent in the Windmill ticks.

I've now seen this reproduced with Hydrogen generators and the cycle broke when I replaced my battery. However, I cannot reproduce this reliably. It happens sometimes.

Advice: the lighting updates are superfluous and cause problems even normally. They flicker on and off and really hurt slower clients with smooth lighting, even when this bug isn't being expressed.

As for the server side issue, it's tough to say. The problem is routinely my players connect to other power networks so it could be a complex interaction between libraries. It might make sense to end-run around the entire problem and simply give all Mekanism generators an internal cooldown before restarting.

[Greylocke]

I've seen this as well, whenever generators rapidly cycle on/off. I'm all for shutting off the lighting on generators. It always seemed kind of frivolous to me, anyways.

Also, if we could turn generators on/off with redstone signals, we could control the power cycling of our generators. (Ticket #167). :-)

[aidancbrady]

Alright, server-sided wind turbine lag is now almost completely gone, windmill light updates no longer occur.

[sefz]

I have noticed this as well on the Hydrogen Generator, and possibly the Electrolytic Separator - this will require more testing. The constant light updates cause amazing amounts of client-side lag. FPS dropping to 3-5 kind of lag.

However that being said, this is an awesome mod that, to me, is a breath of fresh air from the current staleness of the other tech mods out there. For that I say thank you.

[aidancbrady]

Thanks! I know of a way to fix this and I will try to put it into action tomorrow.