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[WrathNail]

Or: What is the fastest, most fps-friendly way of tunneling down to the center of the earth?

I know that for a ramp to work, there must be a wall adjacent to it. Ok, well that must mean it takes a dwarf two steps to go down or up. One to traverse the wall, one to traverse the actual ramp. A stair requires only one step (I think), as it allows up or down movement directly.

Then I see people on the forums claiming that ramps are more efficient than stairs in terms of keeping the fps up.

So what am I missing here? Logic says that if a ramp requires 2 units of movement while a stair requires 1, stairs are better since they require less space/pathing decisions. Of course this being Dwarf Fortress, logic is useless 9 times out of 10.

[JAFANZ]

You have it backwards, Stairs require 2 "steps" per level to traverse, Ramps require 1.

AIUI, the other reason Ramps are cited as being beneficial for FPS is that they allow fewer options for entry & exit.

But you should be aware that there are probably as many people who claim Ramps are worse for your FPS & Pathing (for various reasons, including multiple Dwarves wanting to use the "inner" track on Spirals as there are in favour of them.

Personally I consider the primary advantage of Ramps is that a 3+ wide Ramp system is "Wagon-Traverseable", which is only relevant for convincing your Depot is accessible since Caravans don't currently bring Wagons (i.e. Even if you use stairs, the Traders should quite happily path to your Depot).

[Ivar360]

I stick to stairs, not so much because of fps, but it just takes too long to dig down 150 levels with ramps. I have noticed very little difference in fps between the two methods.

[petersohn]

Ramps are more efficient if you want to travel both horizontally and vertically, because with 1 step, a dwarf moves a tile in both directions, while with a stair, he only moves vertically. I don't know if there is any difference FPS wise. I use stairs because they are easier to use. Ramps are ruined too easily by destroying the wall next to it.

[Mckee]

Yes, I'd personally say stairs are easier if you want to head straight down to somewhere simply because they are much harder to mess up once expanding, and whilst I am not involved in dwarven !!SCIENCE!! if the advantage of ramps is the extra horizontal move, if you are just traversing downwards, then the advantage becomes mute, no?

I'd actually like to know now, I'm interested. Personally FPS is pretty good for me on a smallish embark (even with running water, surprisingly) so its just curiosity on my part.

[WrathNail]

Yes, I'd personally say stairs are easier if you want to head straight down to somewhere simply because they are much harder to mess up once expanding, and whilst I am not involved in dwarven !!SCIENCE!! if the advantage of ramps is the extra horizontal move, if you are just traversing downwards, then the advantage becomes moot, no?

This. My thoughts exactly. I follow the idea of horizontal and vertical movement, but right now I have a 1x1 stairwell going straight down for 150 z-levels and the reason for starting this thread is that I don't see ramps beating that in terms of efficiency.

[FleshForge]

Instead of 1x1, consider 3x3 - dwarves passing each other (or animals too, now that I think of it) pause briefly, but if they have room they will sidestep each other without pausing.  Any high traffic halls tend to pass their traffic a lot quicker of they're more than 1 tile wide.  Whether or not this has a bad effect on "real" FPS I think is made moot by the actual throughput of dwarves walking through the area and not pausing every time they climb over each other.

[gtmattz]

Personally, I have come to the point where I just really don't care about the little things that effect FPS, when the major contributor is the number of dwarves and critters in your fort, followed by flowing liquids.  The #1 thing that someone can do to thwart FPS issues is to keep the population low.  My personal experience has shown that if you have a manageable # of dwarves (manageable for your CPU), then excess clutter or pathfinding 'problems' etc. are a minor FPS hit at worst, compared to how your fort will perform if you have too many dwarves and animals. 

In short, stairs or ramps, six of one, half a dozen of the other imo, if you have FPS issues, using one or the other will make minimal difference.

[FleshForge]

Yeah I agree with that completely, I think a lot of the frequent "you must do soandso single fort design technique or you will have shitty FPS" come out to be nonsense in practice.

[mrbobbyg]

I can never get ramps to work, as much as I would like to.  I have some sort of "specialtime" when I try to build ramps to my fort.

[WrathNail]

Personally, I have come to the point where I just really don't care about the little things that effect FPS, when the major contributor is the number of dwarves and critters in your fort, followed by flowing liquids.  The #1 thing that someone can do to thwart FPS issues is to keep the population low.  My personal experience has shown that if you have a manageable # of dwarves (manageable for your CPU), then excess clutter or pathfinding 'problems' etc. are a minor FPS hit at worst, compared to how your fort will perform if you have too many dwarves and animals. 

In short, stairs or ramps, six of one, half a dozen of the other imo, if you have FPS issues, using one or the other will make minimal difference.

True that. I capped my population at 120 and keep all my animals in cages until I need them. That did result in an FPS boost, but well, I hoping there was more I could do by messing with ramps perhaps. Guess the only sure-fire solution is better hardware.

[slothen]

Yeah I agree with that completely, I think a lot of the frequent "you must do soandso single fort design technique or you will have shitty FPS" come out to be nonsense in practice.

im sure if you intentionally designed a fortress with connecting paths like strings of spaghetti and plenty of forbidden doors you could really mess up your fps with an otherwise manageable number of dwarves.

[Larry421]

For what it's worth, ramps also prevent falling 10z and dying during combat with an escaped moose.
I've had dwarves fall down stairway stacks before. It ain't pretty.

[Duuvian]

This is sort of unrelated, but I like building a 4x2 staircase, with a 3 wide spiral ramp going around it for caravans that leads to the finished goods stockpile (where the trading depot also is) Just be sure to restrain a hapless animal with a rope or chain in the middle of the 3 wide corridor; he will be able to smell any stealthy enemies trying to get past and uncloak them.

Also, a wise idea is to occasionally break up your stairway down with a hallway leading to the continued stairs down. This way you can place a trap corridor (or two) for when you eventually hit the caverns.