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[acetech09]

Oh. You'll definitely have the fps drop from dead animals. But you can counteract it - but remember the counteraction only works so far.

[Hyndis]

I will be bookmarking this thread. Maybe I can now finally breed and slaugther hundreds of animals a year without worrying about fps drop from dead animals.

Eggs are probably a better way to go. Less micromanagement and vastly more productive.

If you can get your hands on crocodiles of any kind their output is pure gold. Tame them and breed them. Then build a nest box room. Crocodiles live for decades so you won't have to worry about them dropping dead from old age, and their egg output is tremendous.

You can get omelets that feed 250+ dorfs from a single omelet, or use that single omelet to buy out an entire caravan. By itself.

[Belathus]

...and here I was thinking traffic designations reduced your FPS.

How ignorant I was! Thanks, Acetech.

They can if used wrong. Dwarves who have jobs in large restricted areas will be forced to path everywhere else before going into the restricted area. This'll be made worse by setting the restricted path value to 100 from 25, but as long as jobs there are rare, you'll be fine.

[Elvin]

Looking at your outside picture, what are the FPS costs of having to retrieve large numbers of items from outside past the "barrier? I usually have my military sally forth to kill everything, thus leaving all the clothing etc. outside. It's also necessary to dump all the bodies in magma. So, would this actually save FPS in my case, or not?

[acetech09]

I just tear down the virtual barrier whenever I need to get anything from outside, which I do occasionally. You will experience a FPS drop when everybody's outside, but the traffic designations are in no means permanent.

[Hyndis]

Easy way to minimize hauling trips would be to take advantage of minecarts.

Build a stockpile outside that accepts the kind of items you typically get from a siege.

Then build a track that links from the stockpile. At the other end of the track, have it automatically dump the cart's contents onto a 1x1 stockpile that accepts the same items.

Your dwarves will gather up all of the siege remains and put them onto the outside stockpile. Then from that stockpile they will load the cart. Once the cart is full then have it sent down the track to empty its contents within your fortress. I find its better to have carts being guided rather than ridden or pushed due to safety reasons, and its not that much slower.

You can speed up the process by having more than one route. For example, you could send weapons and armor to a stockpile by your smelter, body parts to your butcher, and clothing could be sent to a refuse stockpile where it will quietly rot away on its own.

Note that if you are guiding carts you can have multiple carts share the same track, even going in opposite directions at the same time without causing mayhem. Multiple roues can also use the same track either in part or in its entirety.

[toomanysecrets]

I have played around with traffic designations quite a bit, and I never get that much benefit.  Maybe a few FPS.  In forts that have been around for a long time, clearing out useless items has a huge, very noticeable impact on FPS by comparison.  Maybe it's just me, and maybe I'm doing something wrong.  But I did some more testing before making this post just in case.  I have a fort with about 170 dwarves in which I had been setting designations to restrict areas that are useless dead ends, and also had set all of my main hallways and stairways to high. I set some restricted tiles over my main gate on the outer walls because this is something I had never tried. Unpaused, and after a couple minutes I was getting about 70FPS give or take. So, next I save, quit, start back up, type "alltraffic N" into dfhack to get rid of every single traffic designation on the entire map.  Unpause, game runs for a bit and the FPS goes to.........about 70 FPS.

Sorry this is so negative, it's just what I think.

[Friendstrange]

Oh. You'll definitely have the fps drop from dead animals. But you can counteract it - but remember the counteraction only works so far.

I know my atomsmashers and magma schutes well enough.

Egs are probably a better way to go. Less micromanagement and vastly more productive.

I use animals for wool and milk so having females is a must. Once enough females are born I slaugther all the males and buy one from the caravan when the females start to die.

[acetech09]

It probably depends lots on your fortress design, and if the A* ever even makes it to the areas you cut off. On my game that I took the screenshots in, just those two designations increased FPS by 15.

[IronValley]

Alternatly, reducing G_FPS in the ini files works wonders.

My current fort has been going strong for 24 years, two generations of children have grown up, and been added to dwarven society! I'm still sitting on between 80-100FPS, even with a healthy pig population.

Other objects of note in the fort: A lever that opens a retracting bridge, that will drop invaders a few z levels in to my very own scorpion pit! (Elves send me a breeding pair of Giant Desert Scorpions, and I changed the raws to allow breeding and training).

I'm also trying to find some safe and healthy way to add my current population of 6 Dragons to the fortress defense. After capturing two dragons over the course of 12 years, I figured modding them to breed would be a good idea. Unfortunately, in the process of setting up a fairly safe breeding ground, the male dragon reverted to a complete wild state outside of a cage, and has become a  "Current Resident" instead of a Uninvited guest. I'm planning to somehow move him into my old quarry, and make a proper cave for him,.

[acetech09]

AlternatlyAdditionally, reducing G_FPS in the ini files works wonders.

Ftfy

[IronValley]

AlternatlyAdditionally, reducing G_FPS in the ini files works wonders.

Ftfy

This concept should work the other way round, right? Marking commonly used paths as High Traffic Zones, and increasing the cost of Normal designations to perhaps 10 per tile?

[Belathus]

AlternatlyAdditionally, reducing G_FPS in the ini files works wonders.

Ftfy

This concept should work the other way round, right? Marking commonly used paths as High Traffic Zones, and increasing the cost of Normal designations to perhaps 10 per tile?

Oh, yes, that could totally work.  It'd still help quite a bit even if you leave it at its default 2 and use high traffic zones on the most common areas.  But, if you use a lot of high traffic areas and your normal traffic is of a high value (like 10), it will search all of the high traffic areas first, pretty much, before it will allow dwarves to enter the normal traffic areas.  In other words, dwarves travelling through those high cost areas could harm your FPS if you have a whole lot of lower cost areas nearby.  You'd see a whole lot of lag if, for example, you mined a new area out and were trying to dump the left over rock and didn't designate it high traffic.

[Urist Da Vinci]

...
But, if you use a lot of high traffic areas and your normal traffic is of a high value (like 10), it will search all of the high traffic areas first, pretty much, before it will allow dwarves to enter the normal traffic areas.  In other words, dwarves travelling through those high cost areas could harm your FPS if you have a whole lot of lower cost areas nearby.  You'd see a whole lot of lag if, for example, you mined a new area out and were trying to dump the left over rock and didn't designate it high traffic.

Yes, if a dwarf wants to go to a location that is across 20 "Restricted (25)" tiles, the path cost is 500, so he will pathfind your entire fort* before deciding to walk across those tiles.


*Actually up to 250 "Normal (2)" tiles, or 500 "High (1)" tiles away in all directions.

[FearfulJesuit]

No, I mean 450 FPS.

I made the FPS cap 500.

Can you get rid of all your path cost designations and give us an estimate of what it would be without this?

Also, I assume if for example you had a staircase-based fortress it would make sense to designate your central staircase shaft all high (1) rather than normal (2) traffic?