Would disabling the production counters provide a measurable benefit?

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int_ua
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Would disabling the production counters provide a measurable benefit?

Post by int_ua »

The built-in counters on each machine must consume some memory and CPU cycles. Are they a byproduct of something else that is required or can they be removed for getting the game consume a bit less resources?

Edit: I mean the products-finished counters, yes.
Last edited by int_ua on Wed Jul 01, 2026 8:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Stargateur
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Re: Would disabling the production counters provide a measurable benefit?

Post by Stargateur »

without it the game is unplayable
Tertius
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Re: Would disabling the production counters provide a measurable benefit?

Post by Tertius »

If you never looked at the numbers and found it essential info, you didn't probably design a production line yet.
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Re: Would disabling the production counters provide a measurable benefit?

Post by waterBear »

int_ua wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2026 2:31 pm The built-in counters on each machine must consume some memory and CPU cycles. Are they a byproduct of something else that is required or can they be removed for getting the game costume a bit less resources?
Edit: Let me just clean up this post to avoid confusion.

If you mean the "products finished" counters, yes, they cost a tiny bit of ALU to update.

If you meant the rate calculation tool tips:

They probably consume 0 cycles, on average. That's exactly the kind of thing for which you can use this logic:

1) only when something happens that would change this number, you place a pointer to this machine into a dynamically sized list
2) once every 30 frames or something, you go through that list and update the numbers for any machine then clear the list back out

With the exception of global productivity research, you can check for whether you've affected a machine only when you do something that changes the local game state like place a beacon or insert a module etc. In that moment, you have a little tiny bit of code that checks to see if this machine should be added to the list.

So, for a typical machine that's been sitting there unmodified for 200 hours, it probably costs literally nothing. Not even a few cycles to loop through each machine and check.

The devs read these forums; I'm sure they could explain how it's actually done.
Rseding91
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Re: Would disabling the production counters provide a measurable benefit?

Post by Rseding91 »

Tooltip contents aren't calculated unless you're actively holding the mouse over something.

Production statistics (the P GUI) are tracked as something happens. They aren't "expensive" but they aren't free. If they were simply disabled/removed it would have some small but non-zero speedup.

The counter of products-finished on a given crafting machine is essentially free and I don't believe you would ever be able to measure it existing vs not.
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int_ua
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Re: Would disabling the production counters provide a measurable benefit?

Post by int_ua »

Thank you! I meant the products-finished counters, yes. Next question is whether it is possible to disable via a mod or requires an option / API implementation. I understand that it's low priority👌
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Re: Would disabling the production counters provide a measurable benefit?

Post by DoubleThought »

It would cost more performance to make it able to be disabled by a mod than it would to keep it enabled
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Re: Would disabling the production counters provide a measurable benefit?

Post by meganothing »

int_ua wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2026 8:42 pm Thank you! I meant the products-finished counters, yes. Next question is whether it is possible to disable via a mod or requires an option / API implementation. I understand that it's low priority👌
Since Rseding91 said these counters are essentially free why would you still want an option or mod to disable it? You wanted it for performance but it does not help with that.
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Re: Would disabling the production counters provide a measurable benefit?

Post by waterBear »

Rseding91 wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2026 5:20 pm Tooltip contents aren't calculated unless you're actively holding the mouse over something.

Production statistics (the P GUI) are tracked as something happens. They aren't "expensive" but they aren't free. If they were simply disabled/removed it would have some small but non-zero speedup.

The counter of products-finished on a given crafting machine is essentially free and I don't believe you would ever be able to measure it existing vs not.
Neat. Thanks for sharing!
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