CPU Usage 100% ?

It registers as 100% CPU usage, but doesn't actually use all of the cycles when idle.

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki

Yes, SE5 does use ALL the cpu power it can get because it is handling the gui like a first person shooter game. Why else would there be a option to watch the frame rate.

My solution is to change back to the desktop after starting se5, and change the process priority of se5.exe to "below normal" via the task manager.

But i still think this behavior is inexcusable for a turn based strategy game ...

Maybe we'll get an option to disable all those constant and unnecessary animations in in a future patch.

You could mod out the animations very easily, if they really bother you... XFileClasses_Stellar.txt is where all of the system object animations are called.

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki

I'm wondering if one of the graphics settings disables the animations already...?

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Make that all the CPU power of a single core. Shame, because I thought MM was looking into using multicores more efficiently

Turn on multithreading support in Settings.txt...

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki

so there's no way around the 100% thing?

i've always enjoyed playing SE games on laptop, but my poor laptop starts heating up like nobodies business, just at the main menu let alone in game.
this laptop can handle games like oblivion on medium settings without getting hot, so what is a guy to do?

the priority trick mentioned has no affect - simply because, if nothing else is using that CPU time, it gets assigned to any program asking for it that is of highest priority (so you still end up with a 100% cpu usage)

Simcity 4 runs smoother than Space Empires 5, which I have to admit is quite amusing. The link below might interest some of you. It's a disconcerting measurement of the issue at hand.

http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/3416

interesting.
i've noticed that in the latest version of the game the mouse doesn't move smoothly anymore in game, and menus take a noticeable amount of time to open.
this definetly wasn't the case with 1.07 though.
it's very frustrating to want to play a game but can't...

i've found a way around this that seems to work:

i installed a program called speedswitchXP and set it to "battery optimised setting"
here's the weblink for it: http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/index.html

- this basically means that the CPU's highest allowed processing speed is lowered.
so far i've not noticed more then a very slight increase in turn processing for the AIs (as in about 1second longer at around turn 20 with 10AIs in the game)
also, menus open faster in game, and the mouse moves much smoother.

i hope this helps other people.

My computer also, is brought to it's knees by SE 5.

It's taking about 30 minutes now to process a turn, and if I play the game more than 5 turns or so, it takes about 15 seconds to load up planet or ship list screens, or go to an item after double-clicking it in news.

They need to address this! The game has an obvious memory leak somewhere, and is using WAY too much system resources...

All that is done before the naked stars is remembered

You can speed up the working parts of the game by loosing the starry background and most of the animations. That won't help the end turn but that is getting much faster with .35 patch, primarily because the combat speeds there go to 32x speed.

The AI overhead needs to be addressed. And, yet, everybody is crying more a more sophisticated AI. Better AI means a slower AI.

The actual AI script execution is very short. It's that small delay before the green movement bar kicks into place. It's the movement phase that takes up a lot of time - which has been somewhat addressed in the latest series of beta patches.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

I'm guessing there's a lot of recursive programming in SEV. Things like launching units in batches of 100 in stead of 10 or 1 takes a lot more time than I would have thought if the programming is simple iteration. If this is so a bit of tail recursion seems to be in order...