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[Taikand]

Greetings, as you can see this is my first post. I created it because I have an inquiry.
I finally managed to get my first fort to over 100 dwarves but I have observed a decrease in fps (from 100 to 80) and I was wondering if I finally reached my computers limits or I can improve it in some way.After using DFHack to clean contaminants it went back to 90ish but now it slowly goes down to 80 again. I'm  having almost a  whole floor of stone that was dug up in search of minerals and I think that may be an issue beacause I have read that DF tracks individual temperature and so on ( YAY, complexity) so I was wondering if there is some way to obliterate it or if simply putting it into a dump zone would improve FPS?
I have read about dwarven !!Science!! ( am I doing this right?) but I don't have the metal required for a Dwarven Atom Smahser so any ideas?

[Ieb]

You don't need metal for atom smashers. It is a term that refers a raising bridge. Designate a dump zone under the bridge and raise it up, anything ordered to be dumped is brought there, once you have all your crap in one pile, order the bridge to be lowered. Upon lowering on the items, they are smashed to oblivion and no longer are tracked.

Make the bridge out of wood, stone, whatever. Anything works.

[Jeoshua]

The biggest drain on your FPS is the number of Dwarves you have, specifically their pathfinding.

Block off that mined-out z-level with constructed walls.  That should improve FPS by a few frames.  Similarly block off any old, depleted mining tunnels that you're never going to use again.

[NW_Kohaku]

Large areas of empty space drain your FPS - so excavate as little as possible, and make your fortress as compact as possible.  You probably don't need that many minerals or metals.

Large areas to pathfind drain your FPS even more (because dwarves will search basically everywhere in your fortress to find a path through the maze of your fort, and that takes plenty of time) so walling off old areas helps, but not as much as removing those empty spaces entirely or not having excavated them in the first place.

Items drain FPS.  Large numbers of items will slay your FPS regardless of how long pathfinding takes. Eliminate from the game any items you don't need.  You can also trade them away on caravans, or use DF Hack's autodump destroy feature.

Contaminants like mud or blood drain FPS just like other items.  Use DF Hack to eliminate those, as well.

Moving fluid drains FPS.  Have as little of that as possible. 

[Taikand]

Can't I use trafffic designation to add more weight patfindingwise to my mined tunnels?

Edit: The mechanisms do not require metal?

[NW_Kohaku]

Can't I use trafffic designation to add more weight patfindingwise to my mined tunnels?

Yes, but that doesn't mean they won't be read, and reading the tiles (to find out the weights, among other things) is the cause of pathfinding lag. 

A weight of 5 is only 2.5 times as much weight as a weight of 2, which is normal.  Dwarves will simply look three tiles further along before searching the next set of tiles back in the low traffic areas.  For cross-fortress pathfinds, you can wind up searching something like 79% of the whole fortress's tiles before you find the goal.  That means most of the time, you'll be exploring all the dead ends inside of bedrooms or the excavated mine spaces.  That's all wasted time.

Simply disconnecting dead-ends that you aren't going to need to path to by walling them off is more effective.

[Dust]

Large areas of empty space drain your FPS - so excavate as little as possible, and make your fortress as compact as possible.  You probably don't need that many minerals or metals.

Large areas to pathfind drain your FPS even more (because dwarves will search basically everywhere in your fortress to find a path through the maze of your fort, and that takes plenty of time) so walling off old areas helps, but not as much as removing those empty spaces entirely or not having excavated them in the first place.

Items drain FPS.  Large numbers of items will slay your FPS regardless of how long pathfinding takes. Eliminate from the game any items you don't need.  You can also trade them away on caravans, or use DF Hack's autodump destroy feature.

Contaminants like mud or blood drain FPS just like other items.  Use DF Hack to eliminate those, as well.

Moving fluid drains FPS.  Have as little of that as possible.

You mayaswell add. Playing the game drains FPS. Minimalist forts are fine if thats your thing. Me I prefer trying to make the fortress as grand as possible while trying not to compromise safety. But !Fun! Usually gets in the way.

[rhesusmacabre]

The mechanisms do not require metal?

You can make rock mechanisms in a mechanic's workshop.

[NW_Kohaku]

You mayaswell add. Playing the game drains FPS. Minimalist forts are fine if thats your thing. Me I prefer trying to make the fortress as grand as possible while trying not to compromise safety. But !Fun! Usually gets in the way.

Actually, testing shows that forts left to run for ten years where you don't really do anything will run as fast at year 10 as they do at year 1.

(Of course, the point that a fort that doesn't do anything but pass time is certainly valid.)

The only things that cause permanent FPS drain are dead animals, which remain in memory forever currently. Butchering animals is a slow bleed of your FPS.

Other than that, if you make moving fluids be still or eliminate those fluids, you get your FPS back.  You can get your FPS back from items by destroying them.  You can get your FPS back from pathfinding by streamlining your fort and walling in areas you don't need with junk stone. 

It's not that you shouldn't enjoy the game, but there are ways to conserve your FPS before the FPS death gets to you.

[Captain Goatse]

The only things that cause permanent FPS drain are dead animals, which remain in memory forever currently. Butchering animals is a slow bleed of your FPS.

So breeding animals is a very bad idea if your hardware si struggling. Right, I will begin to butcher every single animal I can get before they starts breeding!

[Taikand]

The only things that cause permanent FPS drain are dead animals, which remain in memory forever currently. Butchering animals is a slow bleed of your FPS.

You mean the goat I just killed gets the same treatment as a historical figure by being logged permanently and maybe even referenced in crafts/engravings ?
That so....dwarfy.

[Crossroads Inc.]

I forget, does dumping stone into Magam reduce FPS?
or does the melted stone still tracked and lag?

[NW_Kohaku]

I forget, does dumping stone into Magam reduce FPS?
or does the melted stone still tracked and lag?

Stone in magma merely melts into liquid stone, and is kept around for a long time.  I think the cleanup routines don't really even work anymore, so they're basically just the same thing as leaving a regular stone around, memory-wise.

Anything that turns into a gas, any non-stone-or-metal material dumped into magma (even if they have melting points that make them theoretically magma-safe, like glass), or anything dumped into the magma sea are eliminated immediately, however. 

You mean the goat I just killed gets the same treatment as a historical figure by being logged permanently and maybe even referenced in crafts/engravings ?
That so....dwarfy.

All creatures that walk off your map are removed forever from play (including diplomats who merely completed a peaceful talk with you).  Anything that dies is permanently in your active game memory, and the game will continue to check to see if it's that cow you butchered's "turn" forever. 

The best way to deal with animals is to ensure they can't breed, and preferably, to trade them away.

[Crashmaster]

does that include enemies? I have a lot of kills on this embark, 45 years in trying to keep FPS high it's been holding at 25-30 for a long time while the kills list has been climbing; (in pages) dwarves 4, animals 29, elves 1.5, gobbos 129, asst. 0.5, named trolls 1.5, Fortress Defense mod civs 557, mounts 3,  wild/ caverns 60. So 786 pages of dead units at 19 per page is 14934 dead units. I've notice a direct correlation between total units on the units list and the time it takes to load the list but I don't see any more loss of FPS then I would in a similarly aged and dug out embark. Stones are at 964 8061 pop 107.

If it is just butchered tame animals you're talking about would throwing them into the magma sea instead of butchering them erase them from the game's active memory?

[Taikand]

I built a bridge like this
wwww
w=%w
w==w
wb=w
where w is wall
= is open space
b is brige
% is lever
I linked them but when the lever is pressed nothing happens, why?I need to clear the floor above?