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[UmbrageOfSnow]

Any fortress of mine tends to have large above-ground structures to waste lots and lots of stone.  I frequently actually run out of stone for short periods of time.  I also tend to put stockpiles in above ground structures over where they will be needed, constructed floors are waste-stone-free.  Otherwise I tend to ignore the random stones in my castle, although between several stonecrafters making trade goods, major construction projects, and making blocks for when I want an outside structure to be fancier, I kill a fair amount of the stones naturally.  Also stone stockpiles near mason, mechanic, and craftdwarf shops.

[Vercingetorix]

Four Craftsdwarf Workshops producing the four types of rock goods usually eats up stone at a fairly rapid pace, at least enough so that the living areas are cleaned up pretty effectively.  Plus, I can always just give them away if there's nothing we want to trade for...

[Miggy]

I ignore it usually, unless they're in the way of a stockpile or I suddenly have 10 idle dwarves who doesn't have anything to do. In that case I quantum stockpile it next to my mason's shop, where I then mass-reclaim it, so that my masons always have easy access to stone.

[Dreen]

• d > b > h
• quantum stock wherever I need a stockpile
• every year or two mass-atom-smash a lot of stone for fps sake

[StrawberryBunny]

You can also pave your fort with constructed floors. It's a little fiddly until you manage to clear out some initial space, but the 1:1 floor to loose rock ratio means you CAN clear up the floor space. You can build anything but other constructions on constructed floors, including stockpiles. Just give ten or so dorfs Masonry labour and it goes REAL fast.

I'm still scared by rumours from way back when that supposedly, constructions cause FPS death or otherwise affect pathing more than regular ground. Indeed, Gatereign died of excessive use of constructed walls\floors and liquid activity...

To the best of my knowledge, constructions don't contribute to FPS problems. However, even if they do, they wouldn't be nearly as bad as loose stone considering all the pathing involved with each loose stone, whereas a construction only needs to be pathed to if you specifically designate it for demolition.

[forsaken1111]

You can also pave your fort with constructed floors. It's a little fiddly until you manage to clear out some initial space, but the 1:1 floor to loose rock ratio means you CAN clear up the floor space. You can build anything but other constructions on constructed floors, including stockpiles. Just give ten or so dorfs Masonry labour and it goes REAL fast.

I'm still scared by rumours from way back when that supposedly, constructions cause FPS death or otherwise affect pathing more than regular ground. Indeed, Gatereign died of excessive use of constructed walls\floors and liquid activity...

To the best of my knowledge, constructions don't contribute to FPS problems. However, even if they do, they wouldn't be nearly as bad as loose stone considering all the pathing involved with each loose stone, whereas a construction only needs to be pathed to if you specifically designate it for demolition.

How exactly does loose stone affect pathing again?

[o_O[WTFace]]

Its believed that jobs look for dwarves to do them, rather then dwarves looking for jobs.  So there is speculation that each of your 76234897234879324 stones are looking for someone to haul them or stone stockpiles that need filling, or at least checking to see if they need to be looking for those things.  Its all very plausible, but to the best of my knowledge not a whole lot of actual science or code analysis has been done on the issue. 

Personally, I think its very possible, but also possible that the empty space produced by mining causes lag (or more lag).  Mining out an area generally causes pathing to have to check that area when trying to get somewhere above, below, or near it, if I understood that epic A* thread properly.  Also since correlation =/= causation unless you're a politician it could just be that forts being big and old causes both lag and lots of mined out stone.  Maybe I'll mine out some z levels and test it tomorrow?

[avari]

Personally, I just hide it until I have dozens of idle dwarves (my forts seem prone to that). Then I might dump it somewhere. In the current version I usually dump it into the magma. This destroys the stone, does not feel like cheating and is even more easy to do than atom-smashing. Also I think it's fairly established that magma is the dwarven solution for everything anyway.

[kcwong]

Its believed that jobs look for dwarves to do them, rather then dwarves looking for jobs.  So there is speculation that each of your 76234897234879324 stones are looking for someone to haul them or stone stockpiles that need filling, or at least checking to see if they need to be looking for those things.  Its all very plausible, but to the best of my knowledge not a whole lot of actual science or code analysis has been done on the issue. 

IIRC back when job priorities is a common topic, it was said that Toady said jobs look for dwarves, and that's why implementing job priorities would be a bit difficult.

But I do not believe loose stones would cause job look ups - it doesn't make sense at all. The logical source of a hauling job would be an empty stockpile space that allows stone. Then a dwarf is selected, and a loose stone selected and claimed for the job. And I believe Toady made the same choice.

The worst a loose stone could do is causing a delay when you use the stone entry in stockpile screen, and a tiny tiny bit of memory used to store it, which is only accessed when used in some way and insignificant when compared to other things.

Personally, I think its very possible, but also possible that the empty space produced by mining causes lag (or more lag).  Mining out an area generally causes pathing to have to check that area when trying to get somewhere above, below, or near it, if I understood that epic A* thread properly.  Also since correlation =/= causation unless you're a politician it could just be that forts being big and old causes both lag and lots of mined out stone.  Maybe I'll mine out some z levels and test it tomorrow?

It really depends on where that empty space is. At the end of a mining shaft that no one other than miners and stone haulers go, not so much.

In other places, the pathfinding algorithm is already looking at all nearby spaces - at the very least, it has to check if they are accessible (wall? another level but no stairs? etc.) or not. A dug space should give the path finder another possible space to consider only if it's accessible.

How to measure the performance though? I'm thinking about this:
1. Have a fort with a high number of dwarves, as few kids, animals and nobles as possible.
2. Make one big room filled with stones.
3. Make another room of equal dimension, but this one should be empty. This room should not be directly connected to the first room.
4. Save and backup.
5. Connect the two rooms with the path(s) you want to test.
6. Move all dwarves inside the rock-filled room, and seal it so the only path to the empty room is the newly dug test path(s).
7. Give everyone nothing but stone hauling labor.
8. Make a stone stockpile, or designate a dump zone and dump all stones.
9. Check FPS and time taken, then reload and test another path.

[CppThis]

I use a combination of quantum dumping, dwarven atomsmasher and paving over a lot of cavern floors.  A nice side effect of the latter is it means a lot of my larger, non-residential rooms have a solid colored floor rather than lots of distracting rainbow veins running through it.

[Slackratchet]

Nearly 3/4 of my population are masons. I build up about as fast as I build down. Huge towers that nearly always reach the top z-level. I frequently run out of stone.

[tastypaste]

I only quantum dump the stones that are in my stockpiles areas at the beginning. After that I ignore it or build giant structures out of it. Once I dumped 30,000 stones and atom smashed them because I heard it improved framerates. It didn't. Basically I wasted 3 dwarf years dumping stone for no improvement in FPS.

[Hyndis]

Nearly 3/4 of my population are masons. I build up about as fast as I build down. Huge towers that nearly always reach the top z-level. I frequently run out of stone.

I frequently do this as well when I build an above ground fortress, but stone is easy to get if you have only a handful of legendary miners. Its the blocks I run out of continually.

I never, ever use rough stone for constructions. It must all be blocks. Crude stone walls are simply not dwarvenly.