Mortified by Server-wide TPS drop when my base loads.

[Eunomiac]

I'm playing on a rather large server, and I was terribly embarrassed to discover that something at my base is causing a consistent TPS drop (by 2-5 pts) when I load the chunks it is in! I'd appreciate any help or advice on how I could pinpoint the source, as I pride myself on being a "clean" player: I have no RedPower Timers, no loops in BC piping or RP tubes, no spawners running while I'm not there... none of the "usual suspects."

I'll list as many likely culprits as I can think of below, and can post screenshots if that would help. Again, I truly, truly appreciate any help or insights you can provide!

EDIT: The (surprising) culprits have been identified, and highlighted in red below. See this post, below, for more information (and a plea for help/advice!)

• A super-overcharged Aura Node: A single experiment with Rejuvenating Bees, described here (with pictures; it's worth seeing!) resulted in an 8000/450 overcharged Pure Node. It's totally isolated (no interaction with other nodes), is now at 3500/600 thanks to Crystal Capacitors and people coming to repair their tools, and Wisps haven't been a BIG problem because of a number of Pure Queens. But I'm not sure if ThaumCraft was really meant to handle that sort of overcharge.
• A tightly-packed AE network: Many blocks are adjacent to each other, and my wiring could kindly be described as "tangled"... so if loops in AE systems cause lag, this may be the problem. I've heard Molecular Assemblers can (or used to) be a problem, but my cube isn't especially large (5x5x3).
• Looping Redstone Energy Conduits: I've never been very careful with these, as I never thought they caused lag, but after finding out I was dropping TPS I've started to wonder.
• Boiler + 18 Industrial Steam Engines: I can't imagine this is the problem, but it's my main power source.
• Hybrid Solar + Energy Bridge Supplementing MJ: Maybe interactions between the EU -> MJ conversion, then going into those looping Redstone Energy Conduits?
• Wrath Lamps: I've always heard fishy things about wrath lamps and ghost blocks, and I have a number of them scattered about.
• Hundreds of Magic Flowers (Cinderpearl, Shimmerleaf): I've innoculated all my bees with Magic Flowers, for aesthetics and to stop them pollinating trees. Since my bees are also innoculated with maximum flowering and territory, these flowers are literally everywhere around my base.
• Routers + Machine Filters: They're my item-of-choice for processing ores via TE machines and bee produce via Centrifuges/Squeezers, so I use quite a few of them.
• Turtles: I try to maintain a decent pace with long sleep() intervals, but if there are issues with these I'd love to hear about them.
• Interacting Forestry Multifarms: I have an Orchard multifarm below and slightly to the south of an Arboretum multifarm, both max size. The Orchard would strip apples from trees growing in the Arboretum, until I erected a massive stone wall in the overlapping areas. Could this interaction be causing it? I've cut power to both with no change, but I don't know if the farms continue to do block checks while power is cut (and I don't want to knock out a block, since that causes issues with multiblock structures constantly checking for completion)
• A very full Indexer: My main "thing" is beekeeping, and I pump my drones into a single Indexer attached to a Storage Bus. They don't stack in the Indexer (though they do stack in my AE interface). Bees all have longest life, so I'm keeping the drones down, but they're good for trading

Thanks again for any time you're able to offer in helping me suss out the problem, or tips you can give me to help pinpoint the source! I will certainly report back here if/when I figure out the issue.

 

[Sengir]

[*]Interacting Forestry Multifarms: I have an Orchard multifarm below and slightly to the south of an Arboretum multifarm, both max size. The Orchard would strip apples from trees growing in the Arboretum, until I erected a massive stone wall in the overlapping areas. Could this interaction be causing it? I've cut power to both with no change, but I don't know if the farms continue to do block checks while power is cut (and I don't want to knock out a block, since that causes issues with multiblock structures constantly checking for completion)

As long as you are running at least 2.0.0.11 you should be good there. A multifarm without power will stop checking for crops/trees/fruits. I also limited the max amount of blocks an orchard checks around a tree trunk some versions ago, so that should not be an issue anymore either.

 

[RedBamboo]

Wraithlamps may cause an issue.
I believe that a lighting glitch with wraith lamps caused them to constantly update has been rumored to cause lag.
Try that?

 

[DZCreeper]

A very full indexer can or at least used to cause massive lag issues. Do not break it! See if you can pump all the bee's into a void pipe, and when its empty destroy it.

Might not be the issue, but its worth a shot.

 

[Dirthead]

I was causing a noticeable TPS drop on the server that I am playing on a couple weeks ago. I practically tore my whole base apart looking for the culprit. It turned out to be my routers. I used them to process most everything, including tons of bee resources. Just turning them off with levers restored the server's TPS and switching them on caused it to drop again. So, for me, it was clearly the problem. It might be worth checking out for you.

 

[Eunomiac]

Thank you all very much for your help! The two guilty parties have been identified, and both were surprising as hell to me:

Routers: I did a lot of research on these before I started to rely on them, because they struck me as the sort of thing that might cause lag... but the only hits I ever got when googling "factorization router lag" (or the like) were along the lines of "they're an excellent alternative to laggy pipe/tube setups". Nevertheless, they were the single largest contributor to server lag (and it's a pretty big server, too). To give you one example, I had 18 Apiaries (not Alvearies) of Pure Bees being maintained by three Routers: one to extract products/Princesses/Drones, one to insert Princesses, one to insert Drones. After disabling all of my Routers, I then enabled only those three --- and server TPS dropped immediately by nearly five points (!), from 19 to 14. Neither me nor anyone else has any idea why: The Routers were well-isolated from other inventories and upgraded with properly-configured Machine Filter, Speed and Bandwidth upgrades.

Magic Flowers: Yep, the Cinderpearl and Shimmerleaf being crapped all around my base by my bees was causing significant server lag; world-editing them away increased TPS by quite a bit. To be fair, my max-territory bees (with a 45x45 pollination area) had spawned thousands of Cinderpearl and Shimmerleaf pretty much everywhere, but the million dollar question is... what in the world are flowers doing that would have so severely impacted the server? The only thing I can think of is the light they produce, but---unlike, say, Timers or Red Alloy Wire---they aren't causing constant lighting updates since they glow at a consistent light level.

Anyways, I've innoculated all my bees with Non-flowering Serums, so that solves that problem. But...

I love Routers! I desperately want to keep using them! I have a wall of Centrifuges to process my bee produce, for which Routers are perfect; I also use Routers to keep Frame Housings stocked in my Alvearies. Does anyone have any knowledge about proper/efficient Router setups, or any pitfalls in using them that might cause lag? I hate using AE for everything (I don't want my Alvearies looking like they came from the Matrix), nor do I want to triple the space I need for my Centrifuges (not to mention more ugly cabling - and yes, I know about Facades, but my base is made of Forestry woods).

 

[GOATFACE]

I don't know about routers causing issues but I can confirm AE usage is causing substantial TPS drops on the server I play on.

Tickrate drops from 20 to <10 by telling AE to craft either something complex with many steps, or a lot of one item, or constantly exporting/importing items, in a large network.
This seems to be independent of the ME Chamber, as utilising export busses set to "always craft" for items that strictly go through interfaces (tested with sand -> glass via interface to induction furnace) also causes this tickrate drop.

I have spent some time testing it and can only conclude that it is simply the size of the network - to give you an idea, it uses 1000 energy units/t. It is entirely contained within a 3x3 chunk area.

I also love routers, but I love AE more and hate to have to constrain myself from using it to its full potential.

To be clear, I am looking for a solution. If there is any particular specific interaction of blocks that can cause this, I would like to know it so I can avoid it. I had a similar AE network on a different server which suffered from none of these tickrate drops even when crafting IDSUs.