How to stabilize layered nHair

#1

One situation that I found impossible to get under control is long hair coming to lie on top of each other in larger amounts.

Usually when the hairstyle is parted in the middle it's ok because it falls off quite quickly to the sides. Problem is when the parting is at a side and the hair goes across the center line which makes a lot of hairs layer on top of each other. 

When I'm lucky it just "flickers" but usually the simulation becomes unstable and transitions into a ball shape after a while. 

Did anyone experiment with long hair like that and found a stable set of parameters? Increasing substeps actually worsens the situation, the "balling" occurs earlier with higher substeps. Changing the hair weight doesn't have any noticeable effect.

Thanks for hints and tips also.
-odd
#2

Are you swimming all at once or each layer in stages?

I find nCloth is more unstable when simmered in stages. So i try to sim all at once.

#3

I’d like to see a screen shot of the set up. Also if this is supposed to be realistic hair or cartoon.

#4

I approached it the wrong way. At low substeps settings (3-4) the simulation is stable but imprecise.
So I carefully increased the setting step by step to about 12, where it became more and more unstable. I should have gone to 25 or higher directly.