Fast Forward and Performance

Fast Forward and Performance

This page collects three short, closely related topics: fast-forward (jumping into a mission already in progress), performance options (keeping framerate sane on large campaigns), and auto-purchase (letting the campaign spend your budget for you between turns).

Fast forward

Fast-forward accelerates mission time so you spawn into a conflict that is already underway instead of waiting through startup, taxi, and a long transit before anything happens.

Fast-forward begins when you push the take-off button and runs until it reaches the first of these:

• First contact — an enemy threat range or an ingress waypoint.
• Startup, taxi, or takeoff of a player flight.

You enable it under Settings → Mission Generator, "Fast forward mission to first contact." Related options:

• Player missions interrupt fast forward. If a player's startup falls before first contact, fast-forward pauses for that startup/taxi/takeoff. Testing tip: add a "+15 min past ASAP TOT" offset to player flights.
• Auto-resolve combat. If takeoff would occur after first contact, the system simulates the combat and starts the mission at your take-off time. Note the documented warning: combining auto-resolve with "Never" for player interruptions means fast-forward will never stop.

Once you push Take off, you cannot change settings — to make changes you must reload the game state.

Performance options

Large campaigns can stress CPU and GPU. These options trade detail for framerate:

• Distant unit culling. Removes ground units and buildings beyond a set distance from exclusion zones (front lines, airfields, mission targets). Air units are never culled. Set it too large and culling does little; too small and the experience suffers.
• Budget / aircraft counts. Lower budgets and income reduce how many aircraft can be bought. Keeping the maximum under roughly 150 aircraft per side helps performance.
• Smoke on frontline. Frontline smoke can hurt GPU framerate, especially during CAS.
• Convoy distances. Disabling full-distance convoy driving reduces CPU-heavy pathfinding.
• Infantry squads. Removing them cuts unit count without changing gameplay outcomes.
• Destroyed unit carcasses. Unchecking removes dead-unit wrecks to recover performance.
• IADS script. A SAM-management script keeps SAMs inactive until threatened, improving performance. (See the fork note below on the IADS engine.)
• Tacview. Recording everything it tracks can cause significant framerate drops.
• Dedicated server. On modern multi-threaded systems an external server is no longer a performance win; it mainly matters for multiplayer.

Fork note: IADS engine

Upstream's performance IADS is Skynet. This fork defaults new campaigns to a MANTIS IADS engine (Skynet is still selectable, and existing saves stay on whatever they were saved with). Functionally it serves the same role — managing SAM activation — so the performance guidance above still applies. See the project README and IADS design notes for detail.

Auto-purchase options

Auto-purchase lets the campaign spend your budget for you each turn, mirroring how the opponent AI buys. There are three independently toggleable behaviors, applied in this priority order:

1. Runway repair. Damaged runways automatically begin repairs when affordable — top budget priority, so your fields come back online (see Base Capture).
2. Front line reinforcement. Up to half the remaining budget buys ground units, prioritizing active fronts with fewer than ~30 units, then distributing extras across active points.
3. Aircraft reinforcement. Remaining funds buy aircraft to fill out incomplete missions, preferring fields outside enemy threat zones. If nothing affordable is in range, the leftover budget carries over to the next turn.

See also

• Base Capture
• Frontline Stances and Movement
• Unit Transfers
• Mission Planning