Said images on fleet screen, are all smaller than 1 single image of a planet in the overview screen. So if you have problem with these, you should have problems with the rest of the images, in this case just turn image display off (all modern browsers provide this option).
If you are concerned about internet connection lag or bandwidth, be advised that these images are loaded once and for all (unless you have tweaked your caching techniques to something worst than normal) or at max once per session. Total size of all these images (including defense which all appear in the simulator) is about 100KB.
What you describe about "dramatic" delay times on refresh, or sever minutes to load etc etc is falling into the LAG part, which is a reality. The good part, is that LAG is something RARE in Zorg Empire. Let me speak with numbers.
Here is the WORST PERFORMANCE of the last 7 days (Weekly performance evaluation of each server). It was scored by Massacre Server and is worst than average weekly performance:
-14/01/2012, 21:18 (Slight lag: 4 seconds min - 1 minute max)
-14/01/2012, 15:27 (Slight lag: 4 seconds min - 1 minute max)
-14/01/2012, 15:03 (Slight lag: 4 seconds min - 1 minute max)
-14/01/2012, 13:33 (Slight lag: 4 seconds min - 1 minute max)
-14/01/2012, 11:48 (Slight lag: 4 seconds min - 1 minute max)
-13/01/2012, 15:36 (Slight lag: 4 seconds min - 1 minute max)
-12/01/2012, 15:33 (Slight lag: 4 seconds min - 1 minute max)
-11/01/2012, 08:36 (Slight lag: 4 seconds min - 1 minute max)
-11/01/2012, 07:54 (Slight lag: 4 seconds min - 1 minute max)
-11/01/2012, 00:48 (Slight lag: 4 seconds min - 1 minute max)
-10/01/2012, 23:15 (Slight lag: 4 seconds min - 1 minute max)
-10/01/2012, 10:36 (Slight lag: 4 seconds min - 1 minute max)
-09/01/2012, 17:42 (Slight lag: 4 seconds min - 1 minute max)
-09/01/2012, 15:51 (Slight lag: 4 seconds min - 1 minute max)
-08/01/2012, 00:03 (Slight lag: 12 minutes - these are pretty pretty rare)
-07/01/2012, 05:36 (Slight lag: 3 minutes)
Total lag time for this week: 15 minutes minimum to 30 minutes.
So, lag was this week, at worst 0.29% or 99,71% lagfree time.
For the same machine, there is no downtime at all in the last 157 days, except for the network upgrade scheduled time where universe was not down but inaccessible (It lasted about 3 to 5 minutes first days and about 9 minutes second day).
So downtime lets say it is 15 minutes. In 157 days, that's 0,00663% downtime or 99,99447% uptime.
When we speak about lag time of 30 minutes at worst, we mean that there were 30 minutes in total this week, where you might experience slow page updates etc. It is perfectly possible to be amongst a lag period and experience nothing. Especially in Zorg Empire where lag usually only lasts a few seconds, it is exremely rare to affect all the players online at that moment.
These numbers are perfectly fine and are comparable to the best providers worldwide. Usually, Massacre which experiences the most lag among our current universes, averages at about 5 to 10 minutes a week. Standard on the other hand, barely experiences any lag time at all.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Apart from server lag, where anyone may experience some slow ups, regardless of what system he uses, there is also CLIENT LAG, which is caused by your own system. What plays a MAJOR role here, is first and foremost your OWN CPU. Old systems and old mobiles have weak CPUs which are the bottleneck at most of the cases. RAM can play a significant role too.
If your system is old, try using Google Chrome. It is the most lightweight among browsers, while it provides full features. It is also very stable.
If you are using an old mobile and ZE runs slow on your part, there is nothing much you can do apart from:
-Turning off graphics (it won't do wonders though)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
There is also NETWORK/provider lag and NETWORK/provider disconnections. This is where you get to blame your internet provider. While most users are able to detect when there is a disconnect (FFS! MY internet is down again!) it is harder to detect when your own network lags. The best way to easily detect network lag, is to try and determine if there are "busy" hours. For example, I had an issue with my provider where I would experience slow downs and disconnects at a particular hour every day. Eventually I made a phone call and I told them "Hey, every day at 18.00 I am experiencing issues!" Luckily, they fixed it (I also improved my router).
There are also other problems, more rare. Like network split ups, gateway fails or even more rarely datacenter outages (we have experienced this once). When there is a network split, there might be a region (let's say a whole country) that will momentarily be unable to join a specific datacenter. These split ups only last a few minutes though but there can be a problem for servers that are located only in one place (like Zorg Empire - however we are hosted in a very big datacenter). For these cases, you can read up here:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=84 (HOW-TO check if a universe is down globally or it is just you)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Regarding your suggestion, I won't disapprove it as we are always in favor of adding options. It should remain open till the next update on menu/graphics. We can incorporate this under a more general option for people who have old systems or simply want less bandwidth. It definitely cannot be forwarded right now as there are other far more pressing matters that have a really high priority.
