My guess is might have to do with how the UI handle's the threads between the CPU and the engine, GPU wise that would simply be due to it having to render less when the window is open and in-focus.

I checked mine out.

Overview tab: 77% GPU usage, 54% usage in core 1 (typically STO), used 2862 MB
Doffs with close to 300 doffs: 18% GPU, 18% core 1, used 2906 MB

Assume RAM stays the same. I toggled back and forth between tabs and noticed the massive drop in CPU and GPU utilization every time. It went up and down as soon as I went to or from that page.

Near as I can figure that means the game isn't sending anything to be computed. Some kind of internal code slow-down. Otherwise the CPU/GPU would just crunch through it. No input = no output, hence the low fps. I was getting about 12. Otherwise I'm pretty well capped at 60 (monitor max).

Huh. Then I wonder if it's a slowdown on their end, kind of like the Fleet Bank slowdown.

yep, same thing.
Seems like some parts of coding were outsourced to somewhere else

I was right to check the CPU/GPU usage then since the same is happening on your machines aswell. Should help the UI Code team narrow it down, since as I said before it does need a performance update (granted a few things have been moved around/added/removed but its still essentially the same UI since beta).

Coming from CO, the answer is more or less simple:

The UI elements as a whole in CO/STO absolutely suck system resources out of PCs. It's a severe engine design fault.

Example: During our giant open world boss fights in CO (so 50-75 people in the same zone all right next to each other), FPS drops to the teens or less unless you do two things.

1) Disable all player names over everyone's head (normally on by default).

2) Disable all damage number floaters (normally on by default).

According to someone who ripped open the main hogg files, all UI text is forced anti-aliased and is transparent. In large numbers, this utterly kills FPS on any and all rigs.


Also in CO, anything that the system has to check on (say, with costume unlocks), apparently checks so every single frame. If you search for costume unlocks on the auction house, expect your FPS to drop into the teens. I'm guessing this applies to the DOFFs as well, as they're always being 'checked up on' in the background.


TLDR: The guys who designed the UI in the Cryptic engine did a terrible, terrible job. The above issues have been around in CO since Day 1.

In S6 they hosed it. Before that it was fine. In S6 the following began:

For a MINOR change in the actual graphics (some of the backgrounds behind items, some color changes) the FPS tanks in both doff roster list AND the foundry missions list.

On top of this, the UI stopped reading preferences. It defaulted back to default settings. This means that among other things, names stopped displaying over other players' heads on the ground, mines, small ships, shuttles, etc, stopped getting outline reticles, names, and health bars. Looking in your HUD options there are all still checked properly, but the game refuses to read them properly or follow their settings. If you UN-check the properties and RECHECK them right afterwards, then apply your settings, it would follow them.

.... for a while. It would quite frequently snap back to a default setting again, making you go BACK into the stupid HUD setting and uncheck/recheck it all, over again. I've had to do that a couple dozen times since S6 launched.

In S5 there were none of these glitches and slow-downs. The few minor graphics changes they did in S6 screwed the entire interface over.


So it's not a problem that's been here since beta. It's a recent S6 garbage code problem.