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[omglazers]

I have seen tons of threads and helpful ideas on how to deal with pathing and such to reduce FPS lag, but a gigantic amount of these seem to be conflicting or seem to not work.

Right now I use the following:
Z 0

.UUU.__________________________.UUU.
.....__________________________.....
.DDD.__________________________.DDD.


Z +/- 1

.DDD.__________________________.DDD.
.....__________________________.....
.UUU.__________________________.UUU.


D= down stair, U = up stair, ____ 3-square wide hallways

I just have two or three major staircases in thie manner and the entire fort built up and down z-levels with the rooms in-between the staircases.

But I want to optimize pathing! Perhaps 5-square wide hallways, and more stairs? Help !

[Vulcanius]

Most people seem to agree it's better to use a spiral ramp instead of stairs.

[omglazers]

Most people seem to agree it's better to use a spiral ramp instead of stairs.

Can you provide a diagram or perhaps a link to a picture/map?

[Vulcanius]

R = Downward ramp (Channeled tile)
U = Upward ramp (where an above tile was channeled)
. = Mined tile (or empty ground at Z +- 0)
W = Unmined tile

You can mine out almost all of the W tiles, but not those which I've highlighted in red. If you do, your upward ramps will be broken and your dwarves will be stuck.


Z +- 0
.....
.....
...RR
.....
.....

Z +- 1
WWR..
WWR..
WWWUU
WWWWW
WWWWW

Z +- 2
..UWW
..UWW
RRWWW
WWWWW
WWWWW

Z +- 3
WWWWW
WWWWW
UUWWW
..RWW
..RWW

Z +- 4
WWWWW
WWWWW
WWWRR
WWU..
WWU..

[omglazers]

I wish I could see this on a map depot file.

Its hard for me to visualize it. Ill have to give it a shot.

Anyone else have any other info for this thread?

[Vulcanius]

I wish I could see this on a map depot file.

Its hard for me to visualize it. Ill have to give it a shot.

Anyone else have any other info for this thread?

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-9412-topshadow-drowfort

This is one someone did with a 5 tile wide spiral ramp.

[omglazers]

I wish I could see this on a map depot file.

Its hard for me to visualize it. Ill have to give it a shot.

Anyone else have any other info for this thread?

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-9412-topshadow-drowfort

This is one someone did with a 5 tile wide spiral ramp.

Cool!

The biggest problem I see is that when you do the ramp down it doesn't lead well to symmetry and having lots of exits from the ramp column. I'll have to experiment with it.

What about traffic settings? Anything you use in particular?

[Vulcanius]

Nope, I only ever use traffic patterns on dense areas of my fortress on the same Z-level. On the rare occasion that I build multiple spiral ramps I may designate one for higher traffic.

[intently]

Why would spiral ramps be better than banks of up/down stairs?  How do you even verify this?

[Vastin]

I have a very well optimized workshop/storage pattern I use in my more modern fortresses.

They involve stacked sets of 7 3x3 rooms laid out in a hexagonal pattern, with stairways running up the center. 4 of these patterns are laid out around a 3x3 central transit shaft, and every 4 levels or so I have a regular 4-way corridor that allows movement between the 4 outer shafts and the central transit shaft which runs down through the entire fortress like those shafts in the death star.

This lets me lay out a huge number of enclosed workshops/small storage rooms in a very dense pattern, with very short paths between them. In each cluster there are 24 rooms with no two further than 10 steps apart, and across the entire structure there are 96 rooms with no two rooms more than about 20 spaces apart. Also, there are very few corridor spaces and very little in the way of traffic choke points.

I designed this after realizing that dwarves go up and down a flight of stairs in about the same time it takes them to walk a single space horizontally, and that my fortresses were way too two-dimensional. This design is far more three dimensional than my previous ones.

Now, I don't know how optimal this layout for the path finding system to calculate paths - but it certainly allows my dwarves to get materials where they need to be very, very fast, so it results in highly productive industries.

[omglazers]

Vastin, can you upload your map or take screenshots?

Sounds great.

[Vastin]

Hmm. Haven't done much image posting before. I'll give it a spin.

In any case, you just stack several copies of this pattern on top of each other (I usually use them in stacks of 4 with simple 4-way transit corridor levels placed every 5th level. The transit corridor levels are also used for any rooms that need more space, such as meeting halls, hospitals, throne rooms, dining halls and the like. I mostly use these for basic workshops, intermediate production storage, and housing.



Generally I alternate layers of workshops with storage rooms. The room(s) directly under each workshop generally stores the common raw materials that workshop needs, so that the craftsdwaft can collect raw materials needed in just a few steps, which dramatically speeds up most production.

The travel distance for a workshop's output isn't nearly as important, because haulers take care of that, but this layout generally keeps those trips short as well.

[omglazers]

Do you know about the map archive? http://mkv25.net/dfma/

Just export the images from the game and you can compile and upload them easily

Or just take a normal screenshot.

[Abaddon]

I used to optimize my pathing more in 40d, now I just think it's a bit of a wank for how much it's really worth, I'd rather have my fortress pretty and the way I like it than ramps everywhere.  I hate ramps.

[Shakkara]

I do this with my corridors, to avoid dwarves bumping into eachother. Which really makes a world of difference to me:

WW.WWWWW.WWWWWWWWWW
W..........................................W
W............................................
............................................W
W............................................
W.........................................W
WW.WWWWWWWWW.WWWWWW

Everything that wants to go to the side corridors will go to lane 1 or 5, everything that wants to go left takes lane 3, and everything that wants to go right takes lane 2 and 4.