Outworld Station Crashing at Launch? 18 Fixes for FPS Drops & Freezes

Fix #1: Windows 8 Compatibility Mode (The One That Worked)

This is the single fix that got me through the door. Right-click OutworldStation.exe in your Steam install folder, go to Properties → Compatibility → “Run this program in compatibility mode for” → choose Windows 8. Check “Run as administrator” too. Apply, restart Steam, try launching again.

Why this works: Outworld Station runs on Unity 2022. Some Windows 11 builds (especially 24H2 and insider previews) have a conflict with Unity’s IL2CPP code generation step during the initial shader compilation. Compatibility mode bypasses this. I had the black-screen crash on both my desktop (Windows 11 23H2 at the time) and my laptop (24H2), and Windows 8 mode fixed both.

Fix #2: Disable Fullscreen Optimizations

Still on the Compatibility tab — check “Disable fullscreen optimizations.” This stops Windows from overlaying its Game Bar rendering pipeline on top of Unity’s. Outworld Station does its own fullscreen handling, and the two layers can fight each other.

I tested this specifically: with optimizations on, my alt-tab took 6-8 seconds and sometimes crashed the game. With them off, alt-tab is instant.

Fix #3: Force Dedicated GPU on Laptops

If you are on a laptop, the game sometimes picks the integrated Intel GPU instead of your NVIDIA or AMD card. Open Windows Settings → System → Display → Graphics → Add an app → browse to OutworldStation.exe → set to “High Performance.”

I caught this because my laptop fans were silent during the crash — the game was running on the Iris Xe, which cannot handle the shader compilation load. Forcing the NVIDIA GPU solved it immediately.

Fix #4: Delete the Global Illumination Cache

Navigate to:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Trickjump Games\Outworld Station\GI Cache

Delete everything in there. This folder stores precomputed lighting data from your last session. If it got corrupted during a crash (which happens often), it will crash again on the next load because Unity tries to reimport a broken cache.

Do this after every crash-to-desktop. It takes two seconds and has saved me more times than I can count.

Fix #5: Verify Game Files (But Do It Twice)

Right-click Outworld Station in Steam → Properties → Installed Files → Verify integrity of game files. Let it finish.

Now do it again.

I am not joking. The first verify always reports “1 file failed to validate” and supposedly fixes it. The second verify comes back clean. I do not know why Steam needs two passes for this game specifically, but I have seen the same report from others. Do the double verify.

Fix #6: Go Exclusive Fullscreen, Not Borderless

Outworld Station defaults to borderless windowed mode. Switch to exclusive fullscreen in the video settings. I gained 22 FPS on my desktop (from 68 to 90) and 14 FPS on my laptop just by making this switch.

Borderless windowed forces the Windows compositor (DWM) to render the game through an extra layer. For a factory automation game where you are constantly scanning across a large station with hundreds of entities, every millisecond of compositor overhead compounds into perceptible stutter.

Fix #7: Lock Your Frame Rate to 60

In %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Trickjump Games\Outworld Station\settings.ini (or via the launcher options if they added one), set:

vsync=true
targetFPS=60

Or use your GPU driver control panel to cap at 60. The game’s physics — and more importantly the drone logistics system — runs on a fixed tick rate tied to 60 FPS. Running at 120+ FPS makes the game look smoother, sure, but the simulation ticks are still at 60. The extra frames are wasted GPU cycles that generate heat and fan noise for no gameplay benefit. Meanwhile, the frame time variance at uncapped FPS introduces micro-stutter that you feel when panning across your base.

Fix #8: Reduce Buffer Size on Connector-Heavy Lines

Late-game Outworld Station slows down because each Connector maintains an internal buffer of items in transit. If you have a main bus with 30+ connectors in sequence, that is a lot of buffer state to update every physics tick.

My tested fix: split long connector lines into segments of 8-10 connectors max, each separated by a storage container. The container acts as a “checkpoint” — the previous segment empties into storage, and the next segment pulls from storage. This reduces the chain length per physics update by roughly 65% in my Station Level 12 save.

Fix #9: Turn Off Post-Processing

In Graphics Settings, disable:

• Bloom
• Motion Blur
• Depth of Field
• Screen Space Reflections

These four settings cost me 15-20 FPS combined, and in a game where you are looking at conveyor belts and storage containers, the visual gain is negligible. Motion blur specifically makes factory layouts harder to read when you are scanning quickly.

I kept Ambient Occlusion on because it helps distinguish stacked machines at a glance, but that one is personal preference.

Fix #10: Close Steam Overlay (Yes, Really)

Shift+Tab in-game → Settings → “Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game” → uncheck. Restart the game.

I lost a Station Level 9 to this. An autosave triggered while the Steam overlay was open, and the overlay’s GPU compositing pass desynced with the save process, corrupting my autosave file. Two hours of progress gone.

Beyond that, the overlay costs 3-5 FPS on mid-range hardware. Not a lot, but when you are already struggling at 40 FPS on a complex station, every frame matters.

Fix #11: Increase Your Windows Page File

Outworld Station is memory-hungry in late game. At Station Level 10+, I regularly saw 14-16 GB RAM usage. If your system runs out of physical RAM and the page file is too small, the game freezes for 5-10 seconds while Windows frantically swaps memory around.

Set your page file to 1.5x your RAM on the same drive as your game install:

Settings → System → About → Advanced system settings → Performance → Advanced → Virtual memory → Custom size. Initial = 24000 MB (for 16 GB RAM), Maximum = 48000 MB.

I had a hard freeze every 20 minutes before I did this. After, zero freezes in 40+ hours of play.

Fix #12: Move to an SSD (Not an HDD)

This sounds obvious, but I ran Outworld Station on a mechanical drive for the first week because my SSD was nearly full. The difference is massive:

The game streams chunk data as you move around your station. On an HDD, panning across a large factory caused audible seek noise and a visible 1-2 second hitch while textures and entity data loaded in.

Fix #13: Disable Autosave Compression

In settings.ini, find:

autosaveCompression=true

Change it to false. Compression reduces save file size but multiplies the CPU time needed to write each autosave by 4-5x. My Station Level 12 save is 84 MB uncompressed. Compressed it is 23 MB — but saving takes 18 seconds instead of 4.

The tradeoff: 4 second save vs 18 second save. I will take the extra disk space.

Fix #14: Run a Memory Diagnostic

If you are getting random crashes that do not match any pattern above — no specific action triggers it, no specific location — run Windows Memory Diagnostic (search “Windows Memory Diagnostic” in Start, click “Restart now and check for problems”).

I spent two weeks chasing a phantom crash that turned out to be a single bad RAM stick. The game ran fine for 30-60 minutes, then crashed when it tried to access the bad memory sector. No other game showed symptoms because Outworld Station is particularly aggressive with memory allocation for its chunk streaming system.

Fix #15: Port Forward for Co-Op

If you or your friends get “Connection Failed” or “Unable to join session” errors in multiplayer, it is almost always a port issue. Outworld Station uses UDP port 7777 for its P2P connection.

Forward UDP 7777 on your router to your PC’s local IP. If you have multiple Steam friends trying to host, each host needs this port forwarded.

If you cannot forward ports (college dorm, apartment wifi, etc.), use a VPN like Radmin or ZeroTier. My co-op partner and I spent an hour fighting connection errors before we forwarded the port. After that, zero issues.

Fix #16: Enable UPnP on Your Router

If you do not want to manually forward, turn on UPnP in your router settings. Outworld Station supports UPnP for automatic port mapping. Some routers have UPnP disabled by default for security, and the game will silently fail to join sessions without telling you why.

Fix #17: Clear the Shader Cache Every Major Update

After each game update, delete:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Trickjump Games\Outworld Station\ShaderCache

Unity rebuilds this cache automatically on next launch. Keeping the old cache after an update causes the game to reference outdated shader variants, which leads to random one-frame stutters when the GPU encounters a shader that no longer exists in the cache.

I noticed this after the 1.0 release patch (May 5). First 10 minutes of gameplay had constant micro-stutter, cleared the cache, smooth again.

Fix #18: Set High CPU Priority

Open Task Manager while Outworld Station is running → Details tab → right-click OutworldStation.exe → Set priority → High.

The game benefits from elevated CPU priority because its factory simulation tick — calculating resource inputs, outputs, and logistics routes — runs on a single main thread. If Windows schedules other background processes (antivirus scans, Windows Update, browser tabs) on the same core during a tick calculation, the entire factory simulation stutters.

I set this permanently by creating a batch file:

@echo off
start "" /high "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Outworld Station\OutworldStation.exe"

Launch the game through this instead of Steam directly. It is a workaround, but it gives the simulation thread consistent CPU time, and that translates directly to smoother factory operations.