Bay 12 Games Forum

I've always had FPS issues, so every fort I try new things so I can play longer before having to abandon.  In reading the forums, I came across a theory that due to the way items are created in DF in list-form, even when they are destroyed/consumed/traded, they still exist in memory and eventually everything becomes bogged down.  I *always* use stonecrafting to create trade fodder because it can be done as soon as you embark and it gets rid of unsightly (in my opinion) stone.  So I decided in my new fort that I wouldn't use stonecrafting.  In fact, why trade at all?  I had magnetite and flux stone.  The only thing I trade for is gypsum powder.  I've noticed that my FPS has stayed up around 100 indefinitely (I'm at least 15 years into my fortress, which is probably 4-5 years longer than any other fort I've ever had).  Here are the things I've done differently in this fortress:

• No Stone crafts
• Minimal Trading
• I use the manager for ALL crafting

I'm still creating lots of items just for general use in the fortress.  I would expect that I would have started experiencing FPS death by now, just from creating barrels and bins and arms and armor, etc.  If it were just a simple matter of number of items created, then it should be going downhill by now, but it isn't.  Could the exclusive use of the manager for jobs have anything to do with it?  I have no theories, just wanted to put this out there.

I don't think Toady is going to do anything that makes the game more generic.  This is a very detail-oriented game, and a lot of people really love the geological accuracy of all the different types of stone, minerals, etc.  FPS is an issue for me, but I'm playing on a laptop (albeit a high-end one).  For many people it doesn't seem to be that big of a cause for concern.  I don't even know if simplifying stone would really cause any difference in performance.  I think it's more the amount of items in your fortress that causes FPS death.  What methods have you tried in order to keep your FPS healthy?

Mechanisms have value, liaisons do not.  That's why it's cheaper to send a dwarf rather than spend a couple mechanisms creating an ansible between the mountainhome and every outpost.  See, even the dwarves don't value dwarves!

So how do I get to adamantine that is surrounded by magma, other than by tunneling down through it?  Magma casting?  Pump out ALL the magma?  What other options am I missing?

I don't think Toady cares about making it hard, otherwise he would lock us out of worldgen parameters.  I think it just has to do with the complicated system he uses for seeding the layers with "goodies".  If you say you want a lot of metal, there just isn't room for flux.

I had a hard time getting any training going, until I realized I was setting up my training schedule for the Active/Training alert, when my fort was set to the Inactive alert.  Now my fortress is a dwarven-steel-powered goblin bone factory.

You might as well go put it on the wiki now.  Even if it's poorly formatted, it could help 100 other users.  And maybe someone with more advanced wiki-fu will see your one line "animals aren't trained at kennels anymore, you use the animal menu" and decide to update it right proper.

I just got a cavern that most certainly was not the "right" cavern.  It was moss-less.  Even after introducing water to it, fungus refused to grow there.  I had to hunt out another cavern to get my underground forests going.