Has any science been done to determine whether Pastures are better for your FPS than just letting them run free?
I made a 1x1 pasture for each of my dwarf's pets in their owner's room, this did in fact increase my FPS (likely due to the reduced amount of path-finding). The amount gained isn't very significant, but it is noticeable. It also depends on how many pets you have, of course. The fortress that I first tried this with had 'probably' 45 pets (A few people had multiple pets). It took forever to find each room and assign the pet, though. But in the end, setting my maximum dwarves to 75 was the best FPS boost (I highly recommend it). Also, by making pets reside in the dwarf's room, you can completely remove the issue "Dorf cancels Something Useful: Creature blocking site". And you know, those 125 extra dwarves weren't particularly useful.
PS: Use a 3x3 embark zone. It's enough room for just about anything, and it's not as small as you would expect. 2x2 would work too, but usually thats hard to get enough variety of biomes/resources/water sources
A few questions regarding military:
My military units are constantly yellow/light orange in happyness for their long stationing/training. had the limit of 2 dwarves min on 6 man strong squads but it seems even if they arnt training the marking of every month as a training month seemed to affect their moods.
Im looking for the maximum amount of months in a year I can set them to train without negitively affecting their moods (with some kind of rotation in place between the units as to who is on "holiday") as well as to how this would be accomplished easiest? ie. can it be done in the training schedule screen or must i manually set their alert to inactive/training for each squad.
The configuration I used in my last decent sized military was:
7 dwarves per squad (2 spear, 3 hammer, 2 marksdwarf)
Squad 1: Train, Patrol, Off Duty
Squad 2: Off Duty, Train, Patrol
Squad 3: Patrol, Off Duty, Train
Minimum 3 dwarves for patrol and training
That way, one squad was active for each of the above. Everyone had some actuall off-duty, rather than being able to take breaks. I still had one dwarf in particular who had negative attributes towards fighting, and she would often get very upset and threw a tantrum once. I decided to
make her kill a Draltha near a magma vein, while practicing dodge skill remove her from the military altogether.
Aside from the especially moody dwarf, there weren't any issues. I think personality traits might be an issue for some, and work in favor for others.
Also have heard about pump operation gyms to help boost the miliary might in off periods, is the skill increase as ludicris as danger rooms? would like to help them gain skill a little faster than danger rooms but in a realistic/non game mechanic abusing way.
I've never done it, but considering how quickly dwarves tire from pumping I'm sure the rate is quite good. I agree with you on danger rooms, they are absolutely exploiting. May as well mod the goblins to use training swords, but at least they can still bite. Another alternative is to make them miners, as they get very strong while being productive. You can also make a 4/7 pool and order them to patrol through it, this will safely train their swimming skill and I think their agility/endurance. (Note: I've only read about it, and haven't actually tried it myself)