Gases kill performance.

[Grossout]

I was about 300 cycles in and there was chlorine all around the map. I destroyed stuff with sandbox mode to see what caused the performance problems. Nothing that I destroyed made the game run more smooth until I destroyed all the gases making them vacuum. Instantly improved performance.

Has anyone else noticed this? Might someone even have found a solution for it? Chlorine seemed to be the worst performance killer since my whole world was taken over by it. Does it come from chlorine geysirs or is there something else creating it?

[sgargoyle]

actually critters large amounts pipes and vent are usually far worse. the more of the map you see the more tiles the game has to calculate the gasses floating free take less power then one with a critter or pipe in it its less math. this is why going into sandbox/debug has huge effects on running the game and why the game seams to slowly slow down.
although removing some of the things floating around would help in the short hand as the space fills up with any gas you will have the same problem

[mikek]

a lot of gas floating around is a killer.
but also mixed gasses take processing power.

[sgargoyle]

Originally posted by mikek:

a lot of gas floating around is a killer.
but also mixed gasses take processing power.

gasses dont mix they move but that never enhabit the same space they cant even enhabit the same space as any amount even 0.00000001g of water. only structures and critters can exist in the same space and only certain ones allow gasses or fluids to pass them

[sgargoyle]

other things that slow your game are long paths for too many dupes trying to fight over the same jobs. they have to stop and recalculate each time adds to the total calculations your asking from your cpu

[Daeburon]

I suppose there are a couple ways you could try to reduce the performance hit from gases.

try converting them to liquids or even solids if possible?

an interesting test for sandbox mode would be to make a new map, add a bunch of ice, test performance, convert it to water, test again. convert that to hydrogen/oxygen, and test again. then perhaps try methods for converting back to ice and do more tests.

keep in mind that as gargoyle said, pipes can reduce performance, too, so you would need to make sure the pipes from conversion systems are not creating a net loss in performance to do the conversions. though I wonder if pipes are only a hit if they are operating. may need to be tested also.

another possibility would be to reduce the number of tiles the gas takes up, by collecting it, and dumping it into a dedicated storage chamber, where it would be more compressed. 10 tiles with gas at 1000 pressure is possibly less CPU load than 100 tiles at 100 pressure. if its correct that tiles really need to be a vacuum to save on performance, you might need to limit the non-vacuum areas. i.e. find gas chambers, install pumps, then seal them off, and drain them to create vacuums. that might help.

[neo5apien]

I suppose you could warehouse a bunch of gas canisters, or vent it into the space biome, then fill in the voids with tile. Progressively pave over the whole map into blocks with gas existing only in rooms where you want it instead of freely floating everywhere.