FPS stuttering on a high-end PC

[Topis]

I’m a veteran DST player and a long-time supporter of Klei. Recently, I decided to finally sit down and properly learn ONI. In my previous attempts, I used to hit a wall around cycle 60-70 and take a break, but this time I was dedicated to it. I loved the game so much. I've been playing it non-stop for the past two weeks and have successfully reached cycle 600.

However, around cycle 350 or so, I started noticing an FPS stuttering issue, which is something I absolutely cannot tolerate in games. It wasn't as severe at first, but it has now become genuinely frustrating. I only have 7 duplicants at cycle 600, meaning I still have a very long way to go in this playthrough. During every stutter—which happens every 10 to 30 seconds—my frame rate drops from 144 FPS down to the 105-110 range, and then jumps right back up. I have a high-end PC, so it’s completely obvious that this is not a hardware-related issue. I even tried capping my FPS to 120 via the NVIDIA Control Panel; unfortunately, the stutter remained, causing a proportional drop down to 90-95 FPS.

I’ve tried pretty much every single solution available on the internet. I also installed the Fast Track mod. It improved certain aspects of the game, but had virtually no impact on my stuttering issue (though I still appreciate the mod itself). I know for a fact that there are many other players experiencing this exact issue.

Klei is releasing the 5th DLC, the Aquatic DLC, in 5 days. The DLC looks amazing and I've watched a few videos on it, but I honestly don't think I can enjoy the new DLC at all with this issue being present. I’m really curious to know if Klei is actively looking into these performance issues and tracking them. If they are, I truly hope a fix comes along soon.

I would really appreciate any help with this issue.

[Shinkarr]

Maybe it's auto-save? I kinda fixed my stutters on potato laptop by changing VSYNC to "adaptive" in per-program setting in the nvidia panel. I have screen tearing from time to time but it doesn't bother me much.

Proportional frame drops after fps capping sound more like an issue with ONI itself tbh.

[Topis]

3 minutes ago, Shinkarr said:

Maybe it's auto-save? I kinda fixed my stutters on potato laptop by changing VSYNC to "adaptive" in per-program setting in the nvidia panel. I have screen tearing from time to time but it doesn't bother me much.

Proportional frame drops after fps capping sound more like an issue with ONI itself tbh.

I know about the auto-save stutter, that's not it. It's a thing in DST too.

Also pausing the game doesn't change anything, the stutter still happens. I think it's better to add clips. The stuttering varies a lot; sometimes it happens every 10 seconds, and other times it takes up to 2 minutes. Because of that, I'm adding 3 clips.

[Gurgel]

Intel CPU? They have absolutely crappy caching and task-switching. 

[HarryMcCleave]

Ironically you might find capping your framerate to a lower limit helps, the spikes you are seeing are garbage collection running, we produce plenty of garbage objects on a per frame basis, so the higher your framerate the more often the garbage collection needs to run [insert random programmer grumbling about how every win is a loss somewhere else].

[Shinkarr]

A-ha! But garbage collection seems to be able to take more than 1/60th of the second for huge bases. So I definitely recommend adaptive vsync. Without it I'd be unable to get my >2k hours. 

Edited June 6 by Shinkarr

[Topis]

1 hour ago, Gurgel said:

Intel CPU? They have absolutely crappy caching and task-switching. 

Yes.

 

5 minutes ago, HarryMcCleave said:

Ironically you might find capping your framerate to a lower limit helps, the spikes you are seeing are garbage collection running, we produce plenty of garbage objects on a per frame basis, so the higher your framerate the more often the garbage collection needs to run [insert random programmer grumbling about how you every win is a loss somewhere else].

So basically, are you telling me that as I progress further into the game, I need to gradually cap my FPS lower and lower? Will I eventually have to reduce it all the way down to 30 FPS? You also mentioned that lowering the FPS only reduces the frequency of the stutter, which means even if I drop it to 30, I will still keep experiencing these stutters, right?

Wouldn't it make more sense to focus on the causes instead? You mentioned that the reason behind this is garbage collection. Is there really no way to optimize this, or maybe spread it out over time so the lag spike isn't as bad? Does Klei have any plans to fix these performance issues in the future?

[BLACKBERREST3]

I've also heard that stacking critters to one cell, mods that limit their pathing behavior, and stacking items to one cell also helps with lag. You could also upload your save to see if others are having the same stutter on their machines or if it is entirely localized to a specific architecture of processor.

[Topis]

1 hour ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

I've also heard that stacking critters to one cell, mods that limit their pathing behavior, and stacking items to one cell also helps with lag. You could also upload your save to see if others are having the same stutter on their machines or if it is entirely localized to a specific architecture of processor.

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried dropping most of the debris onto a single tile. I don't think it really affected the stutter, but I can say it's pretty useful. I haven't really done anything about the critters, but it feels like there aren't even that many critters across the whole map anyway. I might test that in sandbox mode.

Here is my save file if you want to test it out. Viltrum.rar

On a side note, I have a quick question. I use the automatic dispenser on sweep only to gather all the debris into a single pile, but this way I have to manually give sweep orders for the new debris every single time. Is there a way to fully automate this? Like making it so they can't sweep debris from that specific tile, but they can still access it.

 

[BLACKBERREST3]

27 minutes ago, Topis said:

Is there a way to fully automate this?

Yes, but with a caveat. I ran into this issue all the time when I was making an egg shell conveyor for dreckos. There are a couple of ways to hide debris from dupes. One way that still gives full 24/7 access is to use sweepers and loaders without dupe access or sweepers with mech doors hiding a loader.

Another way is to use a conveyor method for debris by using a series of automated mech doors to push debris where you want and restrict door access to dupes. It also helps to figure out grab range for dupes. for example in this pic, dupes can't grab over 1 and down 5, but could if you put a horizontal mech door in its place to push debris upwards.

You really just have to be creative here and the mech door pushers are only semi-automated or not 24/7 access usually.

It helps to keep in mind that buildings with constant draw can be automated with power shutoffs. Also mech doors underneath a building will disable it and prevent creating supply orders.

[Topis]

9 minutes ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

Yes, but with a caveat. I ran into this issue all the time when I was making an egg shell conveyor for dreckos. There are a couple of ways to hide debris from dupes. One way that still gives full 24/7 access is to use sweepers and loaders without dupe access or sweepers with mech doors hiding a loader.

Another way is to use a conveyor method for debris by using a series of automated mech doors to push debris where you want and restrict door access to dupes. It also helps to figure out grab range for dupes. for example in this pic, dupes can't grab over 1 and down 5, but could if you put a horizontal mech door in its place to push debris upwards.

You really just have to be creative here and the mech door pushers are only semi-automated or not 24/7 access usually.

It helps to keep in mind that buildings with constant draw can be automated with power shutoffs. Also mech doors underneath a building will disable it and prevent creating supply orders.

What I mean is this: After gathering all the debris in the game onto a single tile, I still want the dupes to sweep the other debris on the ground and bring it there automatically. It should work just like when you use a storage bin, where they sweep on their own without needing an order.

But if I build that tile a bit far away and block their access to it, will they still be able to take, say, 100 kg of granite from that pile when they want to build something later on? I couldn't quite wrap my head around the logic of what you suggested, so I wanted to double-check. Basically, there are two things I want:

1-Collecting debris onto a tile with automated sweeping.
2-Being able to access and use an item from that tile whenever it's needed.

[BLACKBERREST3]

What you are asking for is a bit of a logical contradiction. Basically you want dupes to see that pile, but you also want dupes to deliver to that tile as well. When they see that pile, they will try to deliver what is already there to itself which is why you have to hide the pile from them in the first place otherwise you get something like this.

 

What I was suggesting was something either like the vid below using automation or just use sweepers/loaders that dupes don't have access to that can deliver that material where it needs to be without duplicant intervention.

 

 

 

 

If you don't care about wasting power, you could always power the dispenser and use duplicant motion sensor automation to find another solution.

simplest solution overall is to clean up all debris first then give access, but if you want continuous operation, I would take a look at what others have built using keywords like "storage facility" or "storage retrieval". They usually have a way to retrieve items like you want, but it is semi-auto and almost always use sweepers.

[Topis]

17 minutes ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

What I was suggesting was something either like the vid below using automation or just use sweepers/loaders that dupes don't have access to that can deliver that material where it needs to be without duplicant intervention.

 

 

Damn, that's a really creative method. I get what you mean now, but there's one thing I'm worried about. I'm guessing there's over 2500 tons of debris in the tile where I store everything. Wouldn't constantly toggling that massive amount of debris between available and non-available put too much strain on the game? Since the game splits debris into piles of 25 tons (approx) max when the quantity is huge, wouldn't calculating the status change for all of them at once cause performance issues? I'm sure you have way higher amounts than I do.

[BLACKBERREST3]

That I am not sure how much of an impact it has on performance. I think there is only a difference in performance on how many different piles of debris there are. Makes the most sense to me that it would calculate physics, temps, gravity, etc. for each different pile. I would set up a semi-auto storage retrieval system with sweepers if I was handling that much material. I mainly use door pushers for smaller debris piles.

[Gurgel]

On 6/7/2026 at 1:44 AM, Topis said:

So basically, are you telling me that as I progress further into the game, I need to gradually cap my FPS lower and lower? Will I eventually have to reduce it all the way down to 30 FPS? You also mentioned that lowering the FPS only reduces the frequency of the stutter, which means even if I drop it to 30, I will still keep experiencing these stutters, right?

Why not try it instead of doing baseless speculation? 

[Topis]

3 hours ago, Gurgel said:

Why not try it instead of doing baseless speculation? 

What I did isn't baseless speculation; as I already mentioned in the thread, it was a method I had previously tried. If by "baseless speculation" you mean lowering the 144 FPS cap to something like 30 FPS instead of 120 FPS, then yes, I haven't tried that, but I don't think I could tolerate playing at 30 FPS anyway. What I meant there was that the solution was being oversimplified and it wasn't really addressing my actual issue.

On 6/6/2026 at 10:08 PM, Topis said:

I even tried capping my FPS to 120 via the NVIDIA Control Panel; unfortunately, the stutter remained, causing a proportional drop down to 90-95 FPS.

The quote above includes the part where I mentioned trying this solution; when I lowered the FPS limit, the drop I experienced during the issue also decreased "proportionally," meaning capturing this pattern was enough for me.

 

Update: I just tried capping it at 30 FPS, and I'm still experiencing stuttering. As I mentioned before, there's only a "proportional" decrease in FPS. I didn't see a noticeable difference in terms of frequency, and if there is one, it's maybe just a few seconds compared to when it's at 144 FPS.

Edited June 8 by Topis
Added update after testing at 30 FPS.

[BLACKBERREST3]

Have you checked task manager to see your resources? Could be high ram, ssd, cpu, or gpu usage. If anything is high when it stutters lmk and I might have a fix for you.

I've noticed a few things from opening your save.

• You have very little automation - That's a good thing in terms of performance
• There is a shove vole off to the left that has escaped - Thought you should know about that
• The stutter happens every cycle at the same time 30 seconds before this pic was taken or around halfway through the cycle. Something somewhere is causing this stutter. maybe a pathing issue or invalid build order or maybe even a constantly changing sweep / supply order, no idea. I get the stutter too and I am on a surface pro.

Also I think your dupes are being hit by the radbolt generator every now and then.

[BLACKBERREST3]

After further testing and reloading after it ran for a while, the stuttering has fully stopped. It was stuttering at first so I thought it had something to do with dupe tasks, but when I reloaded just now after it ran for 5 cycles, the stuttering is gone. Could be a cache issue like the others were talking about.

[Topis]

52 minutes ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

Have you checked task manager to see your resources? Could be high ram, ssd, cpu, or gpu usage. If anything is high when it stutters lmk and I might have a fix for you.

First of all, thanks for taking such a close interest in my issue.

Here are my pc specs: Intel Core i7-14700K 3.40 GHz, RTX 5070 (12 GB), 32GB DDR5 RAM. There are no spiking issues during the stutters; I had tested this before and I just tested it again.

Even though I have this game since 2019, I only started playing it seriously about 2 weeks ago, so I'm still learning a lot of things. I've only just recently started implementing improvements for automation and shipping. Shove voles have been wandering around my base for a very long time. I don't know if they have an impact, but if you say they do, I can get rid of them immediately. I can destroy the radbolt generator as well.

I noticed something strange: opening the power overlay triggers stutters that happen at the exact same frequency. Let me put it this way: I open the power overlay, and if a stutter happens every 12 seconds, it stays at 12. After I close the power overlay and open it again, it jumps to every 28 seconds and stays at 28. I hope that makes sense. Opening the temperature overlay also causes significant FPS drops, though not quite at a stutter level. Maybe it has something to do with my playstyle.

I usually play for at least a few hours per sitting. I haven’t experienced it going away after 5 cycles, only the frequency changes. Maybe something you did or your PC specs changed the outcome.

 

Update: Damn, I didn't know anything about shove voles. They can eat up to 4800kg dirt per cycle. That's prob why I'm running low on dirt. I'm on my way to find and kill them all.

Edited June 8 by Topis
Shove vole

[Shinkarr]

Optimizing gameplay and critter pathing for FPS is immersion breaker. Game should handle it's own scale at least on high-end PC.

[Peachiz]

Does it only happen during scrolling around the map?  It's most likely a v-sync issue.  I've had a lot of problems with this.  It's not the debris or critters on a single tile, trust me.  Try going to Nvidia control panel \ manage 3d settings \ programs tab \ select oni from drop down menu \ set vertical sync to "fast."  This seems to have fixed it for me (recently).  I have hundreds of critters on a single tile, critters all over the map, debris everywhere, or debris all stacked on one tile, those things don't matter, at least on my PC.  Also, in the past, turning off v-sync all together seems to have worked.  If the fps drop only happens suring scrolling around the map, then it's a scrolling issue, not an fps issue.  For instance, if you are just letting the game run and watching your fps meter, does it have the same random drops while stationary on the screen somewhere? 

[Topis]

54 minutes ago, Peachiz said:

Does it only happen during scrolling around the map?  It's most likely a v-sync issue.  I've had a lot of problems with this.  It's not the debris or critters on a single tile, trust me.  Try going to Nvidia control panel \ manage 3d settings \ programs tab \ select oni from drop down menu \ set vertical sync to "fast."  This seems to have fixed it for me (recently).  I have hundreds of critters on a single tile, critters all over the map, debris everywhere, or debris all stacked on one tile, those things don't matter, at least on my PC.  Also, in the past, turning off v-sync all together seems to have worked.  If the fps drop only happens suring scrolling around the map, then it's a scrolling issue, not an fps issue.  For instance, if you are just letting the game run and watching your fps meter, does it have the same random drops while stationary on the screen somewhere? 

No, it happens even when I'm not scrolling. The only reason I was constantly moving the camera in the video was to make the stuttering more noticeable. What you said is probably correct, gathering the debris into a single tile and deleting all the critters in sandbox mode didn't change the situation at all. I observe the exact same FPS drops even when not scrolling. I just tested it, and it still happens.

I tried setting V-sync to "Adaptive" and "Fast," but it actually made things worse. I experience these stutters much more noticeably when I center the camera on my main base, so it's probably related to the structures I've built, etc. I don't know if this is helpful, but when I rename storage bins that have skins on them, their names get wiped after a while. I think it happens after a save/load or restarting the game. However, I have 5 skinless storage bins far away from the base center, and their names haven't changed at all for a very long time. Maybe it has something to do with the skins, I don't know, I will look into that.

[Peachiz]

Huh, well in that case I don't know what it is.  I thought I had your problem solved lol.  It actually sounds like something running in the background doing a check every so often, or maybe a mod is acting up.  Have you tried removing all mods and adding them back one by one?  I hope you can find it, little things like that can ruin a game for me as well.  good luck!

[Gurgel]

6 minutes ago, Peachiz said:

Huh, well in that case I don't know what it is.  I thought I had your problem solved lol.  It actually sounds like something running in the background doing a check every so often, or maybe a mod is acting up.  Have you tried removing all mods and adding them back one by one?  I hope you can find it, little things like that can ruin a game for me as well.  good luck!

Sounds very much like that. This is not normal Oni behaviour unless you have very underpowered hardware. Maybe some mod is driving GCs like crazy or something. 
First test would probably to see whether this goes away with no mods (try a new map if needed). If so, good. Find out which mod it is. 

If not, you may have some background process doing some things it is not supposed to and not actually an Oni problem. Also note that the latest windows updates seem to have broken a lot of stuff. I have analog audio disconnects, non-detected USB devices, broken or reset settings, etc. all showing up on 2 totally different Win11 computers in the last few weeks.

[Topis]

22 minutes ago, Peachiz said:

Huh, well in that case I don't know what it is.  I thought I had your problem solved lol.  It actually sounds like something running in the background doing a check every so often, or maybe a mod is acting up.  Have you tried removing all mods and adding them back one by one?  I hope you can find it, little things like that can ruin a game for me as well.  good luck!

This issue actually started happening when I had no mods installed at all. That's why I started looking for mods in the first place. Thanks for your effort, though!

10 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

Also note that the latest windows updates seem to have broken a lot of stuff.

I'm currently using Windows 10. Could upgrading to Windows 11 possibly fix this stuttering issue? If so, I’m willing to upgrade to Windows 11.

 

Update: I just noticed the part where you talked bad about Windows 11. Since I'm currently on Windows 10, it looks like upgrading to 11 won't really fix this issue then.

Edited June 9 by Topis