Well done! I did not dare publicly recommend the piratebay. 
I can’t really test ingame perf since I’m already on SSD. But I made a ramdisk with imdisk and the results were interesting (SSD wins 2 loses 2)
If you can’t create a 7Gig ramdisk, create a small one and selectively symlink important data files (perhaps someone has a list, and can write a bash script to symlink those files)
SSD:
RAMDISK
you probably are just experiencing the benefits of the standby cache, as all the time things “seem to get better”
so sticking with the first script / app in this thread might just be enough in the end, while i doubt any other solution really makes a difference, except by being random subjective samples
as for loading lags getting closer to items you might just need to reduce texture quality.
creating ram disks with less than 16 gb ram makes not much sense, just buy a new stick for christmas.
if you have a standby cache in your windows, it essentially is exactly the kind of ramdisk you are hoping for: selective for files, magic in the background, etc.
i tried the “precaching” now several times and it works pretty well eliminating joining lag, quite reliably.
also the batch file from niri contains the list of files quite openly
Ehm, why are you trying to fix something “with fire” (precache, ramdisks) which without doubt, is broken: engine-side?
Smarta***** aside, let’s see if I can’t help a bit.
Note that sc do cache a good chunck of info/files and such, in a folder buried deep down inside the documents folder.
So if you want to try to “precache” everything, or at least something that require precaching more than installation folder: you should include also that one buried into doc’s.
If you have a crucial storage device, download Cruicial storage executive that will allows you to enable “momentum cache” for more or less every hd/ssd/m2 device even from other manufacturers (but you need a crucial device installed). It’s a “dummy” ramdisk that create a layer of caching on ram and only that (it doesn’t add a new drive).
But, still? Why this need to be fixed by users? I’m only genuinely curious.
Coz we tired of lags, basically. At least i found a faster way to accumulate game cache, things are much nicer now until i get mah ssd in the future or more ram, whatever gets first.
20 minutes ago, ORCA1911 said:
Coz we tired of lags, basically. At least i found a faster way to accumulate game cache, things are much nicer now until i get mah ssd in the future or more ram, whatever gets first.
But this is, as someone said, a bug.
1 hour ago, Spongejohn said:
Note that sc do cache a good chunck of info/files and such, in a folder buried deep down inside the documents folder.
i doubt those are a problem, the problems are the rather large data chunks read when players join
it’s not about eliminating all disk operations ”)
anyway, there is an easy way to see if the windows standby cache works: run the tool twice.
if it needs a bit of time the first time, but closes almost immediately the second time, you are in luck: you have a standby cache built in into windows.
if it is just as slow the second time as it is the first, you dont have the feature, then maybe the ramdisks help. otherwise, i find its a waste of time and resources to do all that.
If all else fails primocache helps to cache faster.
20 hours ago, ORCA1911 said:
laughs in piratebay*
Anyway, spent 2 hours or so playing sc with primocache running in the background.
Spoiler
First 2 games were horrible slow and lagging, changed the block size a few times, 32KB seemed to be the best option, after that it was smooth sailing. I wasted 2 hours like it was nothing, maybe more, no lags of any kind 
Maybe this is the solution we all are looking for  basically the more you play, the less lags you will get (takes one lag to cache it and you wont see it again).
Hmm… That’s odd. I installed the same cache software (thanks for 60 days trial), did almost the same settings. Then played SC without launching anything else. Some OS flying and Co-op. (tried to get all maps loaded in co-op and used the same route in open space), flying for about 1.5 hours twice - one with the game allowed to load files on demand, second time prefetching model files and textures. Results:
Without precache:
Spoiler
With precache:
Spoiler
As you can see in my case this cache software (and ROG Asus RamCache which I tested as well) did exactly nothing, as all required files were already in the Standby memory and there was no request to block device to load game data.
BTW: deferring write for 60 seconds means that data you are trying to save on disk will be there after one minute, so if you lose power last minute of your work will be lost, not to mention a little mayhem with filesystem ”)
2 hours ago, Spongejohn said:
Note that sc do cache a good chunck of info/files and such, in a folder buried deep down inside the documents folder.
So if you want to try to “precache” everything, or at least something that require precaching more than installation folder: you should include also that one buried into doc’s.
If you have a crucial storage device, download Cruicial storage executive that will allows you to enable “momentum cache” for more or less every hd/ssd/m2 device even from other manufacturers (but you need a crucial device installed). It’s a “dummy” ramdisk that create a layer of caching on ram and only that (it doesn’t add a new drive).
But, still? Why this need to be fixed by users? I’m only genuinely curious.
Can you share the location of that folder, please?
Also from Crucial page:
“Momentum Cache affects only write operations, not read operations. Read speed should remain unaffected by Momentum Cache.” so it does not apply for this scenario.
I dont think precache works with the program tho, more like as it goes it gets better, at least better than it usually is.
11 minutes ago, ORCA1911 said:
I dont think precache works with the program tho, more like as it goes it gets better, at least better than it usually is.
What I mean - I start to wonder what OS do you have. It should basically do what you are experiencing with this cache software - have a single freeze when loading new models, cache the file in standby mem and then with the next request - access the memory mapped version of the file. This is what is happening in my case. This cache software just doesn’t work in my case as the OS is handling this kind of job on filesystem level, so it would be redundant. I did two tests of this cache software as I said - one without touching anything and then with precaching those models. It made no difference with cache hit ratio as all the request didn’t even go to HDD (which would be intercepted by the cache software and be displayed in the Cached Read stats). Do you have a very old windows 7 or something?
12 minutes ago, niripas said:
I start to wonder what OS do you have.
i started to wonder at page 1.
as orca uses a single hd 8 gb machine, anything is possible, even background updates of windows, swapping, etc. to cause stutter.
as i have said before, the precache effect is also hard to “reliably” test, because of the random nature of when the join lags usually occur. which is why in the past i always thought its a network issue.
frankly, having 8 gb ram and creating ram disks or anything else that basicly reduces the available memory, and having a better experience makes no logical sense to me.
15 minutes ago, g4borg said:
as orca uses a single hd 8 gb machine, anything is possible, even background updates of windows, swapping, etc. to cause stutter.
as i have said before, the precache effect is also hard to “reliably” test, because of the random nature of when the join lags usually occur. which is why in the past i always thought its a network issue.
frankly, having 8 gb ram and creating ram disks or anything else that basicly reduces the available memory, and having a better experience makes no logical sense to me.
Actually I tested this on my machine, reducing amount of RAM to 8 GB and moving SC to mechanical HDD (4TB Hitachi NAS). There was a stutter every time when someone joined. Then I rebooted the machine, ran the SCPrecache.exe and there was only one slight stutter when someone joined and that was it. So yeah - probably I missed a file or a few on the list to precache. This definitely looks like a cause of this freeze at join issue, but I am not a specialist 
1 hour ago, g4borg said:
i started to wonder at page 1.
The screenshot i took, win7 os.
I dedicate 2 gb of ram to the programs cache from now on, since people play generic stuff, one load lag is enough and i dont have it anymore. I wish the precache thing worked for me, seems much less of a hassle.
Results of PrimoCache:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Honestly, that looks like Chinese to me but whatever.
老实说, 这看起来像是中国的, 但无论如何
3 hours ago, g4borg said:
i doubt those are a problem, the problems are the rather large data chunks read when players join
it’s not about eliminating all disk operations
I saw people in this thread putting on a ramdisk the whole installation folder. My point is that it’s more usefull to load into ram “cache” the files the game constantly read and write on, more than the whole game’s folder. But I got it, the game don’t load all the right assets before entering into battle (prolly cause of the constant change to mm and the “preload” didn’t been tuned accordingly)
2 hours ago, niripas said:
Can you share the location of that folder, please?
Also from Crucial page:
" Momentum Cache affects only write operations, not read operations. Read speed should remain unaffected by Momentum Cache." so it does not apply for this scenario.
That’s the usual pr marketing bs.
It does improve writing and reading but for some kind of operations it doesn’t (most of those operations which are not affected are related to server’s tasks).
This is an SSD with momentum cache ( which btw does the same thing as the Samsung software , but it can be applyed ('cause of a bug) to all hdd more or less, and instead the samsung’s one can’t).
Which is basically benching ram speed , and this is a “not cached” ssd:
The folders for windows 10 are located in: C:\Users"type your username here"\AppData\Local\Targem
And:
C:\Users"type your username here"\my games\StarConflict
Note that AppData is not visible unless you choose to make them visible in the properties of your file browser.
Btw, again: this is a game bug, users should not solve this by themselves.
With the game on my 2 ssd I have no lag.
Fun fact: Intel is selling their Optane memory/disks as the new “ultra uber next-gen thing” which makes the exact same stuff as samsung/crucial software. A phisical (expensive) cached layer between ram and hdd, try to tell them that writing improvements doesn’t apply to all of their tasks and see what happens 
7 minutes ago, xXConflictionXx said:
Results of PrimoCache:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Honestly, that looks like Chinese to me but whatever.
老实说, 这看起来像是中国的, 但无论如何
First screen is an HDD (it’s not chinese, it’s just a basic bench regarding reading/write speed of a memory support, it tests different filesize and query type), second screen is benching the ram speed since it’s reading and writing from a ramdisks or whatever you (or samsung/intel/crucial) wants to call it.
1 hour ago, Spongejohn said:
The folders for windows 10 are located in: C:\Users"type your username here"\AppData\Local\Targem
And:
C:\Users"type your username here"\my games\StarConflict
Note that AppData is not visible unless you choose to make them visible in the properties of your file browser.
Btw, again: this is a game bug, users should not solve this by themselves.
Oh that folder. It’s mainly used for dumps. It’s size is minuscule. AFAIK SC doesn’t cache anything on HDD.
And yeah - it should be fixed on the engine/game level, but as this workaround works, it solves the issue at least for some players (and that was the whole idea of me sitting on Monday morning drinking coffee and looking for the excuse to not kill software developer that decided to use wget to trigger functions on the web application on one of my servers and generating 100s of thousands newsletter mails to the SQL database first instead of sending them to the mail queue as they are generated)