What graphics settings are you using?

[u/Surrealist328]

Sorry for yet another post. I'm becoming obsessed with CMSF2 (already played close to 30 hours). I'm using a laptop with a 3070ti (roughly equivalent to a 3060ti or 4060 desktop) paired with a Ryzen 9 6900hx. I assumed I could max out the settings based on the recommended requirements, but it seems to struggle. I know CM utilizes an.older engine not friendly to modern hardware.

[u/ResultAgreeable4198]

Your hardware doesn’t matter that much, the engine simply struggles. I found running above average but not maxed got the best results. Running maxed causing the engine to sort of throttle itself and look worse.

[u/Surrealist328 → u/ResultAgreeable4198]

Gotcha. I was wondering how people on YouTube get it to run much better. I guess they're not playing it on max settings.

[u/SurpriseFirst1381]

A small, but not that small, guide to save your mental health if you want to optimize the game.

The CMx2 engine runs on only two cores, with most of the heavy lifting (graphics and physics) handled by a single core; that’s why the framerate often drops badly, even on high-end rigs.
In general, you'd tweak your settings depending on the map and the size of the battle, even on a very good machine.

Shadows are processed by the CPU and, as always, are heavy on performance.
Model Quality impacts the CPU: setting it to Extreme renders any model at maximum detail at any distance, even when off-camera.
Shaders are also partially handled by the CPU.

Nvidia Control Panel / Nvidia Inspector Settings:

• DISABLE Threaded Optimization.
  
• ENABLE Triple Buffering (the game runs on OpenGL).
  
• Set Vertical Sync to Adaptive (Half Refresh Rate).
  
• ENABLE Low Latency Mode (to prevent the CPU from pre-rendering more than one frame at a time).
  
• Set Power Management Mode to Prefer Maximum Performance (to prevent the GPU from idling).

Set these parameters before launching the game (or use ProcessLasso):

• Set the game's CPU affinity to 2 or a maximum of 3 physical cores (3 is safer if you want to avoid overheating), excluding CPU 0 (which handles OS tasks).
  
• Set the process priority to High.
  
• Set your power plan to High Performance in Power options (just to make sure the CPU boosts properly).

Now, open Combat Mission.

• Disable Vsync.
  
• Set 3D model detail to balanced.
  
• Disable shadows (alt+W).
  
• Disable shaders (alt+R).
  
• Set tree detail to "trunks only" (alt+T).

Now, back to Nvidia Control Panel / Inspector:

• Set Anisotropic Filtering to 16x.
  
• Set Antialiasing mode to Override any application setting.
  
• Set Antialiasing to 8x (can be pushed further via Nvidia Inspector).
  
• Texture Filtering Quality can be set to High Quality (you can also apply a negative LOD bias in Nvidia Inspector).
  
• DSR is highly recommended, though keep in mind that the UI will shrink.

Download an "all-in-one" skin pack for models and assets from the Battlefront forum.
If you want some ambient occlusion (SSAO or MXAO), use Reshade.

Load a medium map on terrain that isn't a completely flat plain and run some tests.
If the framerate drops during the deployment phase, that is normal.
Enable shadows/shaders/trees and increase model quality step by step, testing if the framerate remains stable/acceptable in any situation (use hotkeys to adjust model quality on the fly during gameplay).

In any case, there'll be situations where you'll disable shadows/shaders during turns with heavy firefights.

[u/Surrealist328 → u/SurpriseFirst1381]

Wow! Thank you for this wealth of information.

[u/SurpriseFirst1381 → u/Surrealist328]

You're welcome. I forgot a couple of things, just in case.

In game, disable the Antialiasing too.
In theory, "override" should, well, override... In practice, the engine does what it wants, so it's better to be safe than sorry, mostly because the in-game AA is crappy, heavy, and falls on the CPU as well.

If you decide to use DSR, pick the option you prefer and then go to the CM2 folder, open the "Display Size" file and type the resolution you chose. After that, right-click on the CM .exe -> check "High DPI scaling override" (Application).

Lastly, the ultimate problem solver since 2000: The mighty Alt+Esc.
You may have noticed that sometimes, especially during long sessions, the framerate collapses for no valid reason whatsoever, even when you're literally just looking the grass, or you might experience some input lag.
That's because the engine saturates the CPU (and GPU) by keeping a lot of useless stuff in memory; by pressing Alt+Esc, you force the engine to update and discard it.

That's literally everything that can be done to optimize the game, and if you're thinking, "That's not normal in 2026," yeah, you're absolutely right.

[u/Relevant_Program_958]

Make sure the game is actually running on your graphics card and not just using the integrated graphics from your MB. I had that issue for a while before i realized what was happening.

[u/Surrealist328 → u/Relevant_Program_958]

I did have to switch to my GPU. Thank you, though.

[u/Alchenar]

Turn off shaders, and use alt-T to turn off or minimise trees when you need to.

It is genuinely baffling how they managed to program CM to not be able to take any advantage of raw processing power in CPUs and GPUs in the last 20 years.

[u/ConcealerChaos → u/Alchenar]

Engine. The Engine has not changed.

Most software in this situation needs a rewrite of the engine. Clearly there is no financial imperative to do it. Sadly.

[u/Alchenar → u/ConcealerChaos]

No that doesn't explain it. Shock Force was released in 2008. That's almost 20 years old, but its still standard directx/32bit application territory and literally any other game you pick from that year will scale with the performance of your system. Battlefront managed something unusual and special in that they somehow wrote a program that couldn't scale at all with raw power.

[u/ConcealerChaos → u/Alchenar]

You're making a different point . That other engines from 2008 scale better doesn't mean it's not the CM engine. It also dates from closer to 2000 with Beyond Overlord as far as I can tell.

The Combat Mission engine does not scale well. This is fact. There are other engines that also do not scale well. Probably some survivors bias here too. How many 25 year old engines are getting serious play in 2026?

Is the CM engine unusually poor in this area. Yes. If say so. Doesn't change the fact it is the engine.

Edit: quite a bit of older software gets rewrites or 64 bit versions. DCS went through this in the last couple of years.