Here's 10 ways to dramatically increase the speed of FM

[FMGuido.com]

Hey guys,

A couple of weeks back thiagotietze posted a tip on the forum about how to make FM run faster.

This gave me the idea to merge all the little tips and tricks I've found over time into one post.

Employing these things allows me to

• Play a game and exit it
• Browse the internet for a minute
• The game has processed and is ready for the next game to be played

I posted it to Twitter the other day and got a great reaction so thought you guys might like it as well.

For betting formating, screenshots etc. the tips can also be read here.

# 1. Change rendering mode

This is the simple and most important step for speeding up FM and will make your game run much faster.

What it does, is that it will make the screen load faster every time you click on something.

It does so by disabling some animations, but there really is no difference in how the game looks.

The way to get the game to run faster is the following:

• Go to preferences and then the interface tab
• In rendering mode, it should read “GPU assisted”
• Change this to “software”
• Click confirm and you are ready to enjoy the game even more
• This is really easy to do and it makes the game much more enjoyable on low-end computers

The tip is so good I really think it should have been the default setting and it puzzles me why it isn’t… anyway, on to the next tip!

# 2. Change detail level

One of the things FM spends the most time on is simulating all the games in which you do not play.

While you cannot speed up the simulation time of a game, you can decrease the amount of games that are simulated.

To do so you have to:

• Click the FM icon
• Click detail level
• This will take you to the detail level

Here you can change “set international competition level" and "set club competition details levels to". I recommend changing these from default to minimum.

# 3. Decrease number of leagues / use smaller database

One of the easiest ways to increase the speed of the game is to reduce the number of leagues or use a smaller database.

This is naturally something you select when you start the game.

To ensure the game runs smooth you want to aim for +4 star in estimated game speed.

My recommendation on a slow computer is to load the league you want to play in, and if you want to go good old journeyman on your FM game later, you can always add the league you want to play in.

# 4. Switch off 3d graphics

By default, FM will show matches in 3d.

On slower computers, it can take a long time to load the 3d engine and you can significantly improve performance by switching it off.

The way to do this is to head to:

• Preferences and then the match tab
• Untick the box “View matches in 3D”
• Click confirm

I for one am old-school so I also prefer to watch the games in 2D. However, if you enjoy the 3D graphics and want to keep these you can improve performance by unchecking non-game effects where especially the stadium effects take a toll on your computer.

# 5. Only watch key highlights

By default in FM, the highlight mode will be set to extended. This means that games can quickly take 10 minutes.

One of the first things I do on any Football Manager save is to go to preferences and change this.

• Go to preferences and then the match tab
• Under Highlight Mode change to “Key”
• Click confirm
• This will make the game show less highlights and only show the ones where there is a goal or it was close.

# 6. Send your assistant to press conferences

I for one am about as happy with the press in FM as Jose Mourinho is in real life.

So, to avoid these, I just send my assistant.

Instead of doing this every single time, you can send your assistant by default:

• Go to staff and responsibilities
• Set you assistant to go to press conferences

**A word of caution:**

This does have a gameplay effect and you should only send someone, who knows how to handle it (being media-friendly helps!).

With that said, I rarely find press conferences to have a large effect and I have been very successful without handling any press conferences myself.

# 7. Learn shortcuts

This is actually the only tip in this post, where you have to do something by yourself.

And that is to learn some shortcuts, which will dramatically increase the speed of the game.

You can go to:

Preferences and then click shortcuts to see an overview of the shortcuts. But from that it’s kinda hard to figure out what’s important so I’ll give you the top 10 FM shortcuts here (for the English language version of the game)

Space bar: Clicks continue for you

Ctrl+s: Saves the game

Middle mouse scroll wheel click: Go to home screen

Backspace or left arrow or back click: Go to previous screen

Ctrl+f: Search

F3: Go to squad screen

F4: Go to inbox

F7: Go to scouting

F10: Go to schedule

F11: Go to club information

Ctrl+t: Go to tactics

Learn these 10 bad boys, and you’ll speed up your game navigation dramatically.

# 8. Use caching to decrease page loading times

This is something that works in the background and will make FM run faster in general.

And by default, it will be checked, however, if you have loaded skins you might have unchecked it.

What you want to do is the following:

• Go to preferences and then the interface tab
• In the bottom left corner you have “appearance
• Make sure the box “use caching to decrease page loading times” is ticked
• Click confirm

# 9. Delete or rename inbox file - Should now be fixed after the latest update

Ever noticed your inbox in FM getting incredibly slow?

The reason for this is that the game is loading a large file.

To dramatically increase your inbox speed do the following:

a) Shut down FM

b) Go the the location below

>On PC: C:Users[Username]AppDataLocalSports InteractiveFootball Manager 2017Preferencesversion 3

>On Mac:~/Library/Application Support/Sports Interactive/Football Manager 2017/Preferences/version 3/

c) Delete or rename the file inbox_scrollbar_state.xml

What you want to do is to to rename the file “inbox_scrollbar_state.xml”. I ususally rename it to “inbox_scrollbar_state_old1.xml” and the next one “old2” and so forth. This ensures if the game doesn’t work properly you can rename it to its original name again.

d) Reload FM and enjoy your fast inbox

Thank you to thiagotietze on the SI forums for discovering this tip.

# 10. Enable Continue Game Timeout

I saved one of the best for last.

And especially if you play in windowed mode and browse reddit while FM processes, this trick will do wonders for your game. Originally developed for network games, this will make you go from one game to the next without stopping in between.

Continue game timeout basically clicks continue for you. And if you enable it, the game automatically goes forward, unless you must make a decision.

The way to enable it is this:

• Go to preferences and then the interface tab
• Under processing it says continue game timeout
• By default, it will say disabled. I have it set at 2 seconds, but you can also set instant, 5 seconds and 10 seconds
• Click confirm and you are ready to enjoy the game even more
• I can’t state how much of a difference this makes as it will basically take you from one game to the next.

**A word of caution on continue game timeout**

I do not use it when the transfer window is open. And the reason is very simple.

If there is a week between two games, the game will likely simulate until it reaches a decision point. The most common decision point is the line-up before a game.

So, if another team bids for a player you might want to buy, you will not see this until you have to play the next game and he might already be transferred to another team…

… which I don’t want to happen.

So to sum up...

How to make Football Manager run faster:

1. Change rendering mode
2. Change detail level
3. Decrease number of leagues
4. Switch off 3d graphics
5. Only watch key highlights
6. Send your assistant to press conferences
7. Learn shortcuts
8. Use caching to decrease page loading times
9. Delete or rename inbox
10. Enable continue game timeout

Hope you guys liked it and if you did, please leave a comment below.

Or maybe you have a tip that I've missed?

Either way, please leave a comment below.

For me tips, trick and guides you can follow me on Twitter

[Powermonger]

Number 10 I didn't know about, I'll give it a go. 

[oakesypvfc]

Have just read through this and applied a few of them, namely #2 and will certainly do #10 when transfer windows are closed. I can already notice the difference. Cheers 

[FMGuido.com]

Glad to hear it! After discovering continue game timeout I never knew how I lived without it!

[Crb1986]

Great post! Thank you

[santy001]

The only things that should probably be mentioned with #2 is that it also decreases the authenticity of your game by lowering the detail other competitions run at, as more is based off of reputations in those competitions. With #3 a smaller database tends to lend itself to it being easier to sell players (especially for more money) but it can be equally as expensive when trying to get replacements. They're not reasons not to utilise them, just considerations worth bearing in mind as they can alter the actual gameplay as well.

[FMGuido.com]

Santy: These are indeed very good points. While I was aware of the issue in number 2 I was not aware of it being easier to sell players with a small db.

Thank you for adding your two cents!

[samuelawachie]

Maybe the mods should just sticky the thread

[Matthewmcw]

Hey there, great work, thanks!

However, my PC doesn't seem to have the file at step 9, nor can I find it or anything similar to it in any other place on my computer, any solution to this? The inbox is the biggest time killer to my games.

[SnUrF]

2 hours ago, Matthewmcw said:

Hey there, great work, thanks!

However, my PC doesn't seem to have the file at step 9, nor can I find it or anything similar to it in any other place on my computer, any solution to this? The inbox is the biggest time killer to my games.

17.3 update should have fixed the inbox issue.

 

-SnUrF

[looping]

17.3 is running extremely slow for me. A huge lag when I click continue. And when i say huge it's a least 1 minute every time (even when nothing happened, no news, no matches, etc..). I've tried everything that is posted here and it's still the same. Very very slow, almost unplayable.

Nothing changed in my laptop.

Do you have any idea?

[FMGuido.com]

SnUrf: I hope it does that as well. Seems many have trouble with the update, so have yet to update it myself.

looping: Unfortunately not. As mentioned, it seems there have been a number of issues with patch 17.3 so I hope there will be a hot fix to the update.

[Gee_Simpson]

On 28/02/2017 at 08:36, santy001 said:

The only things that should probably be mentioned with #2 is that it also decreases the authenticity of your game by lowering the detail other competitions run at, as more is based off of reputations in those competitions. With #3 a smaller database tends to lend itself to it being easier to sell players (especially for more money) but it can be equally as expensive when trying to get replacements. They're not reasons not to utilise them, just considerations worth bearing in mind as they can alter the actual gameplay as well.

Wouldn't it be harder as there is less teams loaded?

[b28937]

One thing that drives me crazy by slowing the game down is the "all known players" in the scouting.  My full list has about 41,000 players it needs to load, so there's always a delay when I click the scouting tab.  Is it possible to reduce the number of players or something else to make the page load faster?

[Fosse]

1 hour ago, Gee_Simpson said:

Wouldn't it be harder as there is less teams loaded?

Teams need players more desperately as there's fewer players to choose from 

[Guest]

42 minutes ago, b28937 said:

One thing that drives me crazy by slowing the game down is the "all known players" in the scouting.  My full list has about 41,000 players it needs to load, so there's always a delay when I click the scouting tab.  Is it possible to reduce the number of players or something else to make the page load faster?

Not having any active filters can help as can periodically deleting scout reports of players who have a star rating below a threshold that you will never consider signing, for most this tends to be half/one star players.

I've not tried on FM17 so not sure if it's even possible but keyboard shortcut to take you directly to the scouted players screen may help. 

[lemeuresnew]

4 minutes ago, Barside said:

Not having any active filters can help as can periodically deleting scout reports of players who have a star rating below a threshold that you will never consider signing, for most this tends to be half/one star players.

if you do this, do you still keep the knowledge of the players moves etc? i usually keep all reports just in case he turns up in an oppisition team and i can use something against them

[VinnyChilds]

This one isn't so much to make the game run faster than it is to make it load faster. In the \Steam\SteamApps\common\Football Manager 20xx\data\movies folder, I rename all of the files except si.ogv (I just add an underscore to the start of the file names). No more sitting through all those loading screens.

Caveat: I assume this hasn't changed in '17 but this is the first version I've skipped for 9 years, it worked in all previous versions.

[bennyman79]

On 3/3/2017 at 16:48, looping said:

17.3 is running extremely slow for me. A huge lag when I click continue. And when i say huge it's a least 1 minute every time (even when nothing happened, no news, no matches, etc..). I've tried everything that is posted here and it's still the same. Very very slow, almost unplayable.

Nothing changed in my laptop.

Do you have any idea?

i have same problem whit the patch.

[Lucas]

 

1 minute ago, bennyman79 said:

i have same problem whit the patch.

Please post issues on our support forum where someone can help you: https://community.sigames.com/forum/513-crashes-and-technical-issues-on-pc/

On ‎04‎/‎03‎/‎2017 at 21:25, VinnyChilds said:

This one isn't so much to make the game run faster than it is to make it load faster. In the \Steam\SteamApps\common\Football Manager 20xx\data\movies folder, I rename all of the files except si.ogv (I just add an underscore to the start of the file names). No more sitting through all those loading screens.

Caveat: I assume this hasn't changed in '17 but this is the first version I've skipped for 9 years, it worked in all previous versions.

This doesn't really make the game load any faster but might give that appearance. The game does a lot of other little things under the hood during the loading videos, so in some cases if there is still work for the game to be doing at this point all you'd be doing applying your advice is staring at a black screen,

[Neil Brock]

56 minutes ago, bennyman79 said:

i have same problem whit the patch.

We're aware of an issue affecting some users with certain setups and we're currently investigating. Thanks. 

[santy001]

On 03/03/2017 at 18:01, Gee_Simpson said:

Wouldn't it be harder as there is less teams loaded?

Not so much because the game still keeps high reputation teams in the mix - particularly those in competitions teams from your active leagues participate in. If you load just the Premier league, high reputation teams in the champions league still need players. It means there's still a lot of clubs and a lot less players to attract the attention of these clubs. Purely speculation as well, but I imagine its a lot easier for clubs to identify reasonably suitable players and youngsters when there are less players as there's less white noise in scouting. 

If you keep going smaller it may indeed become harder again, but England, Spain, Italy, France & Germany loaded on a small database tends to mean a very high-value transfer market.

[b28937]

On 3/3/2017 at 13:23, Barside said:

Not having any active filters can help as can periodically deleting scout reports of players who have a star rating below a threshold that you will never consider signing, for most this tends to be half/one star players.

I've not tried on FM17 so not sure if it's even possible but keyboard shortcut to take you directly to the scouted players screen may help. 

 

I use a few shortcuts but it didn't occur to me to check for that one.   Yes, there is a shortcut in FM17 that takes you to the scouting assignment screen so you can bypass the slow load of all the players.  By default, it's F7.  Thanks, you're always a big help.

The problem, by the way, with deleting scouting reports is you have to do it one by one, you can batch select all the two star and lower potentials and remove their scouting reports with one click.

 

[BAD-RELIGION]

Great post, most of them I knew already, but some I didn't. Thanks

[Roy Race 9]

yes well done to OP great help to many who are perhaps new to franchise/didn't know 

[CarltonBanks]

On 3/1/2017 at 07:08, FMGuido.com said:

Santy: These are indeed very good points. While I was aware of the issue in number 2 I was not aware of it being easier to sell players with a small db.

Thank you for adding your two cents!

The negative consequences of the things you suggest really should be listed in the post. They can seriously effect play during the game.

[\'Appy \'Ammer]

On 04/03/2017 at 21:25, VinnyChilds said:

This one isn't so much to make the game run faster than it is to make it load faster. In the \Steam\SteamApps\common\Football Manager 20xx\data\movies folder, I rename all of the files except si.ogv (I just add an underscore to the start of the file names). No more sitting through all those loading screens.

Caveat: I assume this hasn't changed in '17 but this is the first version I've skipped for 9 years, it worked in all previous versions.

Great suggestion, thanks

[westy8chimp]

On ‎07‎/‎03‎/‎2017 at 02:26, CarltonBanks said:

The negative consequences of the things you suggest really should be listed in the post. They can seriously effect play during the game.

good point... for instance id never considered #1 so I changed my rendering from GPU assisted to software.. and I think it's the reason why in match my top bar (showing instructions, mentality etc) is now fixed? I could be wrong, maybe it was always there and I'm just looking for differences and imagining them :D So would be nice to know of any side effects of changing settings.

[naz250]

On 09/03/2017 at 14:48, westy8chimp said:

good point... for instance id never considered #1 so I changed my rendering from GPU assisted to software.. and I think it's the reason why in match my top bar (showing instructions, mentality etc) is now fixed? I could be wrong, maybe it was always there and I'm just looking for differences and imagining them :D So would be nice to know of any side effects of changing settings.

I thought I was going crazy. Thank you! 

[sirgiorgio]

The more leagues you load, the easier it is to offload unwanted players or loan out youngsters, IMO. For instance, with a League One club (and League Two and above loaded) I couldn't attract any offer for my U23 players listed for loan. With National League and above, all of them found a club by the end of July. When I got promoted, I put a "decent League One player" on the transfer list: Scotland + view only = no offer; Scotland + playable = two offers.

A larger database doesn't (shouldn't?) have much of an impact on this, because theoretically lower league clubs can't afford to scout Italy or Spain or France or Uruguay...

[johnvictoryman]

Thank you! This actually helped me a lot!

[oche balboa]

Will have a good look at this when i get back home  

[holidaysong]

Applied these recommendations a few days ago and I'm flying through seasons here.

It's reinvigorated the game for me. Great post!

[bennytee]

On 11/03/2017 at 12:02, sirgiorgio said:

The more leagues you load, the easier it is to offload unwanted players or loan out youngsters, IMO. For instance, with a League One club (and League Two and above loaded) I couldn't attract any offer for my U23 players listed for loan. With National League and above, all of them found a club by the end of July. When I got promoted, I put a "decent League One player" on the transfer list: Scotland + view only = no offer; Scotland + playable = two offers.

A larger database doesn't (shouldn't?) have much of an impact on this, because theoretically lower league clubs can't afford to scout Italy or Spain or France or Uruguay...

Your first point is valid,  however less players to go around = more interest

[Nobby_McDonald]

Some very good advice there. I've applied a couple of them and now get through one more match per session.