ARMORED CORE VI FIRES OF RUBICON – Stutter Issue Fix (Automatic)

This is based on Helelo’s (former) stutter fix guide but without the need to launch Task Manager and manually change the process affinity for armoredcore6.exe.

Update: Helelo has updated his guide so that Easy Anti Cheat does not need to be disabled, and therefore Online Play is possible. However, in order to do that a software is used, called Process Lasso, that runs in the background and forces Armored Core to skip using CPU 0. There is a non zero chance to get banned from using a third party tool that is “tampering” with the running game, so if you care about PVP use it at your own risk. If you don’t mind playing offline or don’t want to risk a possible ban, then this guide is for you.

Introduction

Many players are being impacted with an issue that causes the game to stutter heavily.

This can be resolved by changing the process affinity for armoredcore6.exe, disabling CPU 0 and keeping all other cores enabled. In order to do this, we need to run the game without Easy Anti Cheat, and therefore the game will launch in offline mode.

The idea of this guide is to avoid having to manually launch Task Manager and change the process affinity every time we want to play the game.

Create Steam_appid.txt File

This step is required in order to be able to launch the game via running the .exe instead of Steam’s “play” button, and therefore to skip launching Easy Anti Cheat.

Create a txt file named steam_appid.txt in the game folder

• \steamapps\common\ARMORED CORE VI FIRES OF RUBICON\Game

Edit the text file, add the following number:

888160

Save the file.

Create PowerShell Script

In this section we are going to create a PowerShell script that will launch the game, wait 15 seconds and then change the process affinity so that it won’t use Core 0.

Open Notepad, and paste the following lines:

C:
cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\ARMORED CORE VI FIRES OF RUBICON\Game"
.\armoredcore6.exe
Start-Sleep 15
$Process = Get-Process armoredcore6; $Process.ProcessorAffinity=254

Replace “C:” with the drive letter where Armored Core is installed, and adjust the Steam path if not using the default

The number on the last line depends on the number of cores on your CPU.

254 is the number to set affinity on all cores except Core 0 on an 8-Core CPU.

To obtain the number, the values for each “enabled” core are added.

On a 4-core CPU, for example, the value would be 8+4+2=14

• Core 2 = 2
• Core 3 = 4
• Core 4 = 8
• Core 5 = 16
• Core 6 = 32
• Core 7 = 64
• Core 8 = 128

Save the file as “ac6launch.ps1” on any folder of your choice. (Name can be anything, just be sure the file extension is .PS1)

Run the PowerShell Script

So, at this point we are technically done.

If we run our PowerShell script, the game should launch and change its affinity (disabling CPU 0) after 15 seconds.

Right click on the .PS1 file created above, and select “Run with Powershell”

To validate its working properly, let the game launch, wait 15 seconds, then open Task Manager

Go to the Defails tab, look for armoredcore6.exe, then right click on it and select “Set Affinity”

Validate all Cores are selected except for “CPU 0”

[Optional] Create a Shortcut for Launching the Game

So, now that everything is working fine, its a good idea to create a shortcut to make running the game easier.

Open the folder where the PowerShell script is located

Right click on it, and select “create shortcut”

Look for the shortcut, right click on it and select “properties”

On the “target” box, delete the whole text and replace it with the following

powershell.exe .\armoredcore6.ps1

Check the “Start In” text box is properly set to the folder where the PS1 script is located.

Click Apply, the “target” text should update with the full path to PowerShell, click OK to close the shortcut properties

That’s it! Running the shortcut should launch the script and therefore start the game.