Abandoned conveyor belts and performance

[XistenZ]

After you progress some conveyors are left unused either by merging into more effective ones or completely replaced by trains.

I have quite a few conveyor spaghetti monsters in the world now that's not used at all, meaning no items are ever transported on them.

My question is if I should remove them to save any performance hit, or if no calculations are really made since they're not transporting items?

[LazerRay]

I say dismantle anything that is no longer being used both to help with performance and to reclaim materials for other projects (or to toss them into an AWESOME Sink for points).

[XistenZ]

Originally posted by LazerRay:

I say dismantle anything that is no longer being used both to help with performance and to reclaim materials for other projects (or to toss them into an AWESOME Sink for points).

The materials are very negligable, there's no real reason to dismantle them for that. I will dismantle them at one point, I just consider it a useless activity for now. However if it "hurts" my game that's an incentive to begin dismantling right away

[T-Bone Biggins]

If you are worried about performance remember that cutting and removing plants such as bushes and trees actually makes your performance worse. The game remembers and loads each plant in it's default state, then it has to load the ones you removed and update their state. This means that is you removed 50% of the plants in the game they are taking up 150% of your PC's resources compared to not removing any of them.

Don't freak out over it too bad. Lots of places you need to remove bushes just to see where you can lay an outpost down at, and in the beginning it makes sense to use some bushes you had to remove for power to get a small starting factory going. If you try to get to coal without using any plants it means you will have to manually do everything to get the MAM and try researching the animal parts to turn into fuel. Fuel is needed since smart plates need to be made in an assembler, so no matter what to get to tier 3+4 you will require at least some power.

[XistenZ]

I'm not that worried that I have to save on every point of performance, I havn't experienced any (noticable) lag so far, but I heard conveyors is problematic for the game so just wondering if they actually are while not being used. They are still animated so of course there's some calculations going on at least when they're in viewing distance

[Vectorspace]

Unused empty conveyors would have an impact. How big an impact, I don't know

[T-Bone Biggins]

Originally posted by XistenZ:

I'm not that worried that I have to save on every point of performance, I havn't experienced any (noticable) lag so far, but I heard conveyors is problematic for the game so just wondering if they actually are while not being used. They are still animated so of course there's some calculations going on at least when they're in viewing distance

Dismantle whatever you won't use, leave them in place if you think you might retrofit or re-use them at a later time. It's easy to upgrade belts compared to laying them down.

[FlangEG]

Dismantle whatever becomes useless the moment they become useless.

[umop-apisdn]

From what I understand, the conveyors that are actively being used would have a larger impact than anything not in use. I have seen it said in multiple places that the objects on the conveyor belts are tracked individually by the physics engine.

However: knowing a bit about game design, the conveyors themselves appear to be static bodies with an animated texture, and should have minimal physics impact, if any at all... even a few dozen should have very little impact, and I suspect even hundreds of unused belts would have little discernible effect on performance unless one were looking directly at them from a relatively short distance.

[Lil Puppy]

Transporting ZERO items is still being processed by the engine. Dismantle everything you don't use.

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by Lil Puppy:

Transporting ZERO items is still being processed by the engine. Dismantle everything you don't use.

Aye, in the same way that firing zero bullets out of your gun is still being processed by the engine, or walking zero meters per second. Asking "Do I need to pay attention to this?" one time is a minuscule amount of processing, compared to asking "Do I need to pay attention to this? Okay, what objects are involved? How fast are they moving, and in what direction(s)? What's in the way? Did I trigger a collision with any of them? What shape do I need to render for each of them? What texture does this particular shape have? What is each object's facing? Can the player even still see it? Has it reached its destination?" and a dozen other questions I haven't even thought of... for each of the 5,000 objects on a 5km belt.

Empty belts have minimal performance impact, and can be safely ignored for most intents and purposes. They're more likely to trigger one's OCD than a frame drop.

[Samtana]

Nice to see someone use "intents and purposes" in the proper context and spelling. Humans are not getting smarter. As time goes on, I see more and more people say "intense" or other words instead of "intents." Side rant/praise over. :-p

[Namaride]

Once i passed tier 8 i sort of restarted my game. Everything i ever made before tier 8 got demolished. Now im making phase 4 with a complete new huge world wide factory using as less conveyor as possible. Trains, drone, trucks now instead. Crazy how many hours in this game can be pumped.

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by Samtana:

Nice to see someone use "intents and purposes" in the proper context and spelling. Humans are not getting smarter. As time goes on, I see more and more people say "intense" or other words instead of "intents." Side rant/praise over. :-p

Sorry, let me switch back to "American English".

I usually say "intensive porpoises", because that pacific usage makes some people absolutely loose they're mines. Like, get a life, you know what I mean so just get over urself. English is the only language Im for million with, so its my right to speak it how I want to. I mean, if you wanna get mad because I appear to have the intellectual capacity of a rabid toddler, than you can just pitch you're little hissy fit some we're else. This stuff just makes me coma toast.

[Samtana]

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

Originally posted by Samtana:

Nice to see someone use "intents and purposes" in the proper context and spelling. Humans are not getting smarter. As time goes on, I see more and more people say "intense" or other words instead of "intents." Side rant/praise over. :-p

Sorry, let me switch back to "American English".

I usually say "intensive porpoises", because that pacific usage makes some people absolutely loose they're mines. Like, get a life, you know what I mean so just get over urself. English is the only language Im for million with, so its my right to speak it how I want to. I mean, if you wanna get mad because I appear to have the intellectual capacity of a rabid toddler, than you can just pitch you're little hissy fit some we're else. This stuff just makes me coma toast.

haha mmmm toast...now I'm hungry

[Seedling]

Originally posted by XistenZ:

After you progress some conveyors are left unused either by merging into more effective ones or completely replaced by trains.

I have quite a few conveyor spaghetti monsters in the world now that's not used at all, meaning no items are ever transported on them.

My question is if I should remove them to save any performance hit, or if no calculations are really made since they're not transporting items?

Your spaghetti monsters are ants compared to what Josh from Let's Game It Out did to the game...
https://youtu.be/m_PEIFKPPoE

So don't worry about performance... clean them up for esthetic purposes, or leave them and run into them 2 years later flying a hovercar and chuckling at your noobish belts :D