Endgame Performance Booster

Massive CPU relief for large mega-maps by optimizing passenger routing frequencies.

Why this Mod is essential:

In the late-game of Transport Fever 3, massive populations place an extreme burden on the simulation main core. The engine constantly forces thousands of citizens to recalculate their paths, causing severe frame drops, micro-stuttering, and a choking simulation speed – even on high-end hardware.

This mod introduces an elegant in-game parameter to adjust the frequency of passenger pathfinding calculations. It does not reduce the citizens' travel desire; they still travel normally but stick to their initial paths, saving immense CPU cycles.

Technical Overview: Engine Pathfinding & The Endgame state

• How the Game Mechanics work: In Transport Fever 3, the engine is designed to continuously challenge the pathfinding of every single citizen. In a dynamic, growing transport network, this makes perfect sense: whenever you add a new train line, build a relief road, or adjust bus frequencies, the NPCs need to recalculate their routes immediately to find the most efficient path.

• The Concept of the "Endgame": As a map matures and reaches a finalized state, the core gameplay naturally shifts. While everyone is free to play the game their own way, the mechanical "Endgame" is reached when your transit network, dedicated tracks, and high-capacity lines are fully optimized. At this stage, massive amounts of individual car traffic have been successfully shifted onto perfectly synchronized public transport systems. Once your infrastructure is finalized and running flawlessly, the routes your citizens take become static. They will continuously use the same optimal lines because no better alternative exists.

• Why this Mod is used: Even when a network is perfectly optimized and stable, the vanilla engine continues to force thousands of citizens to re-evaluate their paths every few cycles. In a finalized endgame scenario, this continuous spam of recalculations serves no practical purpose—it simply drains massive CPU cycles, leading to severe simulation lag and micro-stuttering. This mod is designed exclusively for this finalized state. By scaling down the recomputation frequency, it stops the engine from searching for non-existent alternative routes.

The Counter-Example: High Car Traffic and Gridlocks

If a map is still heavily reliant on individual car traffic and experiences city gridlocks, activating this mod can cause unintended behavior. When you lower the pathfinding frequency in a congested environment, citizens become slow to react to traffic jams. They will stubbornly drive directly into existing gridlocks instead of dynamically looking for detour roads, which can worsen traffic issues. If this occurs, the core problem is not the mod, but an unoptimized transport network that fails to get people off the streets.

Guide: How to Reduce Car Traffic in the Endgame

To successfully transition a map into a stable endgame state and unlock the full potential of this performance booster, individual car traffic should be minimized. You can systematically diagnose and fix traffic issues using this proven engineering method:

1. Investigate the Driver: Click on an individual car currently stuck in traffic or traveling between cities.
2. Check the Origin: Click on the citizen's residential building (home address) displayed in their info window.
3. Analyze Station Coverage: Verify if their home is within the catchment area (walking distance) of a local transit station. If no station is nearby, expand your local bus, tram, or feeder network to cover the neighborhood.
4. Compare Travel Times: If public transport coverage is already present but the citizen still prefers the car, analyze the route. The game engine chose the car because it is mathematically faster. Increase train/tram frequencies, deploy faster vehicles, or create direct, high-speed transit corridors to beat the travel time of the highway network.

Hardcore Tested Performance:

• Test System: Intel Core i9-14900KF.
• Map Status: Mega-map with 80,000+ citizens.
• Results: Drastic CPU relief, normalized frame times, and fully restored simulation speed during long play sessions.

Recommendation & Interval Settings:

You can adjust the pathfinding frequency via comfortable selection buttons in the mod loading menu (100 = Vanilla game, 1 = Maximum Performance Boost).

• 50,000+ Citizens: Setting to 25% or 10% is highly recommended to eliminate late-game stuttering.
•  80,000+ Citizens: Setting to 5% or below provides the ultimate CPU breathing room.

Features:

• Highly Configurable: Easily adjustable selection matching your map's population density.
• Safe & Stable: Fully savegame compatible, tested extensively on massive active empires.
• Stutter Reduction: Smooths out frame times and eliminates typical late-game simulation lags.