David - you are right the i still can get transforms to pile up a lot. But it works some most of the time.
I get great speed up by using my pyro library discourse.panda3d.org/viewtopic.php?t=3027
After i converted the pyro library for explosions that was cool then i also converted all the radar read outs to use the pyro library to (order lines, heath bars, radar icons) - now that was a fantastic improvement. Now some times lots of this are in the same place and when you zoom out the same transparent icon would get drawn over and over in the same place now i check for that that i only draws one icon in a 3x3x3km block using hash tables.
Now the major slow downs are in the sound system. If i have 51 ships each of which has a continues 3dsound playing just kills fps. Now i need to figure out how to play sounds cheaper like canceling it if its to far a way or not playing more then 2 energy beam sounds at once …
Before most of the slow dawn was caused by a large number of radar (30 and 2d) read out nodes. Now that i use my pyrolib it turns out that most of my slow downs are caused by “over draw” drawing lots of billboards in the same place. Do you have any tips avoiding that?
Now that AI is also getting there and I have to get my “hashspace” ~ which acts like an octree but much faster implemented in python.