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[iyaerP]

I have been working on my fort for seven in game years now, and for the past four of them, I have been at the point where normally a player would give up and consign a fort to its demise via lag. However, with some innovation, I have had the past two years in game take less real time to play then the preceding season. The solution is that I leave dwarf fortress running all the time. In the shower, at work, while asleep, where I am does not matter as DF chugs away. Sure it may sit idle for eight of the twelve hours that I am at work due to an auto-pause, but that is four more hours of progress than I would have had otherwise. Even now while I sit at my desk at work, my dorfs labour away.

Any event that is auto-pause worthy is in need of micromanagement usually anyway (except newborns), so I don't really miss anything important. Don't really need to worry about running out of food or anything equally vital as my fortress is long since an automated machine, completely self sufficient. Were it not, I wouldn't very well be in lag-death FPS to begin with anyway. Megaprojects and other Dorfy things requiring much micromanagement to prevent cave-ins and base-jumping carpenters take longer in Dorf years, but less real life time as they can get a lot of work done with me not bothering them as they chug along at 7 fps.

So tell me bay12. Did I just make the greatest breakthrough ever, or was I just shouting off about the newest thing that people have already been doing since the dawn of time?

[brucemo]

It's kind of like suggesting cannibalization of self as a solution to hunger.

[profit]

Dawn of time.

I also know that it is possible to stop most autopauses.

IE I have one that does not stop work when a warm tile is hit * invaluable for working over magma lakes*

However you should be real careful with designation, and if your room is dug oddly, double check it for magma around it.

This goes double for wet tiles but a godsend when you created a large farm above room your trying to dig out and every tile is "Damp"

For babies just change [BIRTH_CITIZEN:A_D:D_D:P:R] in announcement.txt to[BIRTH_CITIZEN:A_D:D_D] I believe.   You can also do the same for migrants.

BTW... Just wait till you hit zero FPS.   THAT was a test of patience.

To be fair I did have a minor tower cap operation going on at the time.....

Took 3 days.... real time.

[Jacob/Lee]

No, you've just stated the worst possible solution to an age old problem (DF age that is)

[PLANKS]

i just overclocked my pc to squeeze more fps out of DF

[iyaerP]

No, you've just stated the worst possible solution to an age old problem (DF age that is)

its not like I haven't done everything I can to atom smash cats, rocks and any other source of lag. It is just that once you

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

breach hell

, your FPS goes down the drain anyway. I sit at 7 fps on average. Yet since I have started leaving it going almost 24/7 have gotten more out of my fortress than I had the previous week.

[Ze Spy]

Just another fortress , there's a bunch of massive , old fortresses dating to 60 ingame years or more that's still alive right now

Wait until you get 0 FPS

[Aspgren]

I don't mind lag, I spend lots of time doing other things by the side so if the dwarves move slowly that means more time for my books or writings or whatever i'm up to

Something that helps though is to take scattered and near-useless equipment (like used ammunition) and just atomsmash it.

[Nivim]

 Who was that person that made the longest existing fort by this method at a decent FPS? I recall being amazed at the autonomy (without burrows), but I can't seem to recall any keywords for it.

[Marlen]

Check out the bottom two tips here: http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Maximizing_framerate

I can vouch for those. I went from 5 to the 30's just by putting a couple 2/7 ponds in hallways that my dwarves had to path through.

[celem]

I forget the longest running fort too.

However if you dig through the first few pages of community games and stories you can probably find it.  Theres a community fort in there that still updates occasionally and is into its 3rd century.  260+ rings a bell.

Leaving the fort running is probably the only way to reliably do this kinda thing.  You gut the announcements that will actually pause to include only those that will need it.  I usually switch off thieves and ambushes along with dwarven births. 

In a properly established and automated fort you can axe a whole lot more.  If supplies are good then caravans become useless, you can just ignore em.  You can switch off pause on mood/claim/artifact construction too.  Infact theres so little that pauses my game these days that i sometimes come home from work to find those conditions never arose and the game is either still running or the fort died somehow.

Deactivating digging damp/warm stone pauses is as mentioned awesome for mining above the magma sea or under a large body of water somewhere....just....be careful.

If you've really gone to the lengths to recover fps in every other way imaginable then fully automating your fort for unattended running is probably your last option, but by no means a bad one.  One piece of advice though, make an auto-save yearly (but remember to deactivate the pause after it).  Several times after running free for 12+ hours my forts have crumbled to unusual seiges or titans.  Sods law says this happens within the half-hour before you return to the keyboard

[Schmlok]

I don't find 5 10 fps to be that bad.  I get to plan ahead and inspect stuff while they work.

On the other hand I seem to have a problem with it locking up for up to 10 seconds for a 1-5 second burst of 5 fps

Blood washing+dfcleanmap seemed to help.  Walling off did not.