So at the moment I'm playing on a somewhat underpowered laptop, and I was really starting to run into steadily increasing performance problems, even though the number of characters in my game is quite low and not much else was changing.
Then I noticed meaningful changes whenever one of my characters picked something up off the map, visible speed up, then dropped it, visible slowdown.
Then the light-bulb went off and I forbid the entire giant pile of silver stacks that has been gradually accumulating in my underground vault, and game performance instantly went back to normal.
So, while forbidding certainly works, it isn't exactly an intuitive solution for the vast majority of players who know nothing about search and sorting algorithms - perhaps it would be worth it to give players a means of 'virtualizing' some of the things they are likely to collect very large amounts of - particularly money - or otherwise disposing of it or discouraging its collection naturally before it becomes an undue CPU burden?
Keep in mind that the game fairly unoptimized atm.
So maybe wait for the next alpha as performance most likely will increase.
I don't doubt that. Nevertheless, almost any optimization scheme can be overwhelmed by a sufficient pile of objects to sort through. Often the best optimization is not to make the pile in the first place, if you can help it.
Playing Dwarf Fortress required a fairly in-depth knowledge of how not only to forbid, but also to limit pathmap sprawl by sealing or denying large abandoned mine networks and the like.
Luckily Rimworld doesn't have a 3D grid to concern itself with, so its pathmap doesn't dramatically enlarge as the game proceeds - but object counts will probably always be a concern, particular as the AI becomes more complex and concerns itself with more things.
More to the point perhaps, it can get a little weird in your futuristic sci-fi game when one of your colony's most substantial concerns is storing and hauling the sheer bulk of their money supply. I mean, trade goods are one thing, but shouldn't I be trading this stuff off for credits, or bitcoin or something? I'm gonna have to hollow out most of this mountain just to put silver in at this rate.
You can trade off your goods.
But alot of content still needs to come. This is just alpha1
be patient (-:
Atm I also have problems with performance but I can still play the game fine when theres not much going on. Also when I was derping around in the newest version I spawned 8-10 raiders troops all 1000pt and still the game runned good not fast but good but yeah I would like to see more optimization options to get the game faster.