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[ShaveDaWookie]

Howdy overseers,

So ive started a new fort with the goal making it to the hundred year mark.
world start year: 1050
population:45
visitor cap: 5
animals: under 10, some cows and chickens in a large pasture
Temp, Weather off for FPS
invaders, artifacts off so I can run a year at a time without a pause

So the problem is my FPS has been slowly tanking from 100 to 50-75. Ive tried to be diligent about not making to much crap and getting rid of the extras. Caves are open but blocked off, so some loss there. Does anyone have any suggestions? Ive looked at the wiki page on FPS, and tried to implement what i could.

[Pyrite]

I've had some success using a single spiral ramp through my fortress. Ramps seem easier on FPS than staircases.

[ShaveDaWookie]

cool ill look into it, ive just started using quick fort, pretty sure i saw some of those designs on there.

[forgotten_idiot]

invaders, artifacts off so I can run a year at a time without a pause

Where is the fun in that?

[MorsDux]

50-75 is awesome. I have 5-7 FPS.

[Grand Sage]

I agree with morsdux!

As far as I understand programming and df in particular, The biggest strain on fps is the pathfinding. So either dont have a lot of units, or have few accessible tiles.
number 1 can be achived by either setting the caps low, or sending a bunch of your dwarfs off-map for most of the game. number 2 can be achived by something like what pyrite suggested. also, a lot of people had some good experience with walling of the entrance to the cave layers, when one is made. you might also want to wall of mineshafts and big rooms that are no longer used.

But in general, one expects to be around 30 fps eventually. I think you might find a few interesting things in a thread called archcrystals on this forum. its a 410 year old fort, thats basically running on 3 fps for the last... 310 years? I belive he did a lot of things to improve his fps.

[MorsDux]

When my FPS was around 8-10 I made a test, killed 350 (all but a handful) of dwarves, all of the 200 animals, destroyed 60,000 items (really almost everything the fort had), closed off caves, flux and ore dig layers, turned off everything that could affect fps.
The average FPS went up to 30. Its a joke. Pathfinding (for me) wasnt the issue as literally only 2-3 percent of the moving entities remained, and still FPS didnt go up much.
My current theory is that either my 5x5 map might be too big or my large world is. Im sticking with my fort for a project but after that im gonna embark on a 3x3 in a much smaller world, with only 1 cavern layer and max 40-50 z levels.
Up until that I just workflowed/managered everything, turned of all announcements except sieges, and just let DF run in the background at night or when Im at work.

[CyberianK]

That does not help. I did 2x2 embarks and pop limitations and quantum stockpiles plus destruction of items but still FPS goes down with age to an unplayable state.
Maybe if you wall off everything and don't do much then you can keep FPS but where is the fun in that?

Imho the game is just unplayable. I visit the forum from time to time but since my last try a few months ago I don't play anymore. Its sad that one of the best games of all time is unplayable due to performance issues. And with Toadys priorities I don't expect anything to change if there is change then its only getting worse because more features get introduced.

[wierd]

A major source of slowdown is the increasing depth of the item and creature vector tables.

All those xxSOCKSxx and dead kittens add up. 

Atom smashing actually removes items from the item vector table, so atom smashing xxSOCKSxx, and using DFHack to purge the dead critter list (and keeping animal pops low) will go a very long way.

There is some dated, but still compelling data collected from several years ago that establishes this.  Given the core mechanics of the game's design have not changed, it is likely that these are still factors in old fortresses.

[Leonidas]

Atom smashing actually removes items from the item vector table, so atom smashing xxSOCKSxx, and using DFHack to purge the dead critter list (and keeping animal pops low) will go a very long way.

Does selling junk to merchants also remove the items from the vector table?

[wierd]

I dont think so.

[Pyrite]

I've noticed that butchered animals no longer appear on my fortress' list of the dead. Has this helped?

[MorsDux]

I dont think so.

Ahem. Might be possible that in order to use less dfhack commands in game I sold around 3,000 tattered cloth items each year to merchants instead of destroying them with my atom smasher.

Too bad there is no dfhack command to purge these tables.

Next fort I will try to militarize everyone from the beginning (to avoid using civilian clothes altogether).

[Dragonborn]

Multi tile trees are another big source of lag.  Treeless embarks can still run at 60+ FPS for me, even after a decade.  I also do not use worlds larger than medium for Fort mode, and I rarely put the population cap above 90.

Trees can also be the cause of a slow down that will bring your FPS to a crawl until it's resolved.  If a wild animal gets frightened and runs up a tree, it'll get stuck and the repeated pathing attempts will cause your FPS to drop to the single digits.  I don't know if the patch that fixed the 'dwarves get stuck in trees' issue fixed it for other creatures too.

[Sethatos]

I agree with morsdux!

As far as I understand programming and df in particular, The biggest strain on fps is the pathfinding. So either dont have a lot of units, or have few accessible tiles.
number 1 can be achived by either setting the caps low, or sending a bunch of your dwarfs off-map for most of the game. number 2 can be achived by something like what pyrite suggested. also, a lot of people had some good experience with walling of the entrance to the cave layers, when one is made. you might also want to wall of mineshafts and big rooms that are no longer used.

But in general, one expects to be around 30 fps eventually. I think you might find a few interesting things in a thread called archcrystals on this forum. its a 410 year old fort, thats basically running on 3 fps for the last... 310 years? I belive he did a lot of things to improve his fps.

Well, I get about 7 - 8 fps which is pretty good for 4+ centuries. The biggest slowdown I found was in population over the first 200 hundred years. If you can keep your dwarves under 50 it greatly improves things to the tune of 40 - 60 FPS. But after a few decades everything just starts to pile up from the unit list to items to wear on items, everything inevitably slows it down. When I do a "cprobe" with Dfhack on a new creature like a rattlesnake for example, it's creature number is 10388. Even with a dead unit purge it still has to remember all those that came before it. Not to mention all of the items, event logs, descriptions of engravings etc. Remember, every time your dwarf creates a masterwork anything, that's an event log it has to record, not mention name and describe it.

The best tool I found in dealing with this is your expectations. I feel very comfortable watching the game at 8 fps to where it seems normal for me. Above 30 feels lightning fast to the point where I actually don't like playing it at that speed.