Pitched battles with 100s of NPCs

[Deleted4868880User]

It's pretty well known that trying to run huge pitched battles (100s of NPCs) in Skyrim is a pointless exercise unless you have a supercomputer - but what sort of spec could actually handle it?

I'd guess 64gb of RAM is a good plan lol (or would it be pointless due to Skyrim only using 4gb? If so, could you alter that?), and 8-12gb of VRAM depending on your graphics card preferences. I'd venture a guess that the only other thing that would make a massive impact was your processor (HDD speed would make some difference, but very little I'd think) - and this is what i'd be more curious about... Are there any that are commercially available processors that could actually handle that much data? Guessing the only options would really be a 6-Core Intel i7 Extreme, an 8-Core Intel Xeon, or an 8-Core AMD Bulldozer (doubtful on the AMD front imo)

 

Anyway, those are my thoughts, so please tell me yours :)

[Rooker75]

I don't think it ever quite reached 100 NPCs, but this happened while I was using the Warzones mod: http://jmrooker.tumblr.com/post/39087165987/the-battle-of-the-redoran-plains

 

There had to be 60 or more people in that. My little PC with 3g quadcore, 4gb RAM and NV GTX 465 ran it decently at around ~20fps.

 

Any time I get to messing around spawning hostile NPCs, it's the large numbers of dead bodies more than live combatants that cause problems. I guess because they're taking up RAM. Warzones cleans up bodies pretty quick, so there might be something to the idea.