An exemple : Last night I had a duel with Blackbeard on
Isla de Muerta, performance drop down to 8 fps to the end of the fight.
I believe you, don't worry.
What I want to know though is, if that happens, are there an excess of error.log entries after closing the game?
There are basically two general reasons for crappy performance:
1. The actual code is written correctly, but inefficiently
2. The code is written wrong and causes very frequent error messages
A clear example of #1 is the stuttering performance in 3D Sailing Mode for Build 14 Beta 3.4 (I think?).
The code was doing exactly what it should without errors, BUT it was also checking ALL skills for ALL characters in the scene EVERY second.
That basically required so many calculations at the same time that the game couldn't handle it.
On the other hand, in most recent cases it has been #2 instead.
In that case there is a function that an actual ERROR in it which is also called very frequently.
If so, the game performance can also get bad, but specifically
because it is busy logging errors.
You can tell if this second one is the case because you have an error.log that probably has a lot in it.
If error logging is disabled, in theory the game performance would restore to normal.
That would "solve" the performance problem, but NOT the actual error in the code.
Depending on which of the two it is, the proper solution is quite different.
#2 should actually be far easier to fix; just make the code
not wrong and it'll be fine.
On the other hand, #1 often requires a complete rethinking of the underlying code in an attempt to make it use less processing power.
there is a lot of big soldiers patrol and some big groups
of bandits or smugglers in the towns now ( Port Royal) it feels overcrowded
in the towns ( just my impression)
Are you using Shore Crewmembers? There are extra encounters ashore linked to that mod which could definitely trigger the big groups you describe.
You can disable those by telling all your shore crew to return to the ship.