This page covers how to keep the factory planner and map running smoothly, especially with large factories and save files.

Performance profiles

Ferrumium includes four performance profiles under Settings > Factory Planner. Each profile controls how aggressively the app reduces visual detail to maintain responsiveness. The default is Balanced.

When auto-performance mode activates, it applies the optimizations for that profile automatically. You do not need to toggle anything yourself unless you want manual control.

What auto-performance mode does

When the number of machines and connections in your factory crosses the threshold for your profile, auto-performance mode:

• Turns off the flowing animations on connections between machines
• Shrinks or hides the rate numbers shown on connections
• Adds a short delay before recalculating production rates, so the app spends less time updating while you work
• Hides background dots (Performance and Ultra profiles only)

What to do when the planner feels slow

Start with the simplest changes and work down.

• Check your profile. Open Settings > Factory Planner and switch from Quality or Balanced to Performance. This is the single biggest improvement for most users.
• Turn off connection animations. If you want to stay on Balanced, toggle Belt & Pipe Animations off manually. The flowing animations on connections are the heaviest visual effect in the planner.
• Shrink or hide connection labels. Open Connection Labels and select Compact or Hidden. Showing full rate numbers on every connection adds up quickly in large factories.
• Hide background dots. Toggle Show Background Dots off. In large factories this removes a lot of drawing work.
• Force performance mode on. Set the Performance Mode dropdown to Always On to keep optimizations active regardless of factory size.
• Turn off snap to grid. Disabling Snap To Grid makes dragging slightly smoother.

If your factory has 400 or more machines and connections, consider switching to Ultra mode. At large scales the warnings panel is also hidden (the exact threshold depends on your profile: 700 for Quality, 550 for Balanced, 420 for Performance, 260 for Ultra) to keep the interface responsive.

Rough slowdown thresholds

• 50 to 80 machines and connections: first noticeable drag delays on slower hardware
• 100+: auto-performance activates on Balanced
• 200+: background dots hidden and calculation delay increases on Performance profile
• 400+: consider Ultra mode

Large save files

Ferrumium accepts save files up to 100 MB and blueprints up to 50 MB. The full data is stored, but the preview is sampled to keep the UI responsive:

• Machine positions are limited to 25,000 for the map preview.
• Belt and pipe routes are limited to 12,000 per type.

If your save is close to the upload limit or the map preview feels sluggish, these sampling limits are already in effect. The underlying data is not lost.

Map visualization

The map view adjusts its level of detail as you zoom in and out:

• When you zoom out far enough, nearby buildings are grouped into clusters instead of drawn individually.
• Buildings outside the visible area are skipped entirely to save resources.
• Building names only appear when you zoom in close enough to read them.

The planner supports a zoom range of 0.05x to 2.0x.

Browser tips

• Chrome gives the best performance in Ferrumium. Edge, Firefox, and Safari also work but may have slower rendering in large factories.
• Make sure hardware acceleration is enabled in your browser settings. Hardware acceleration helps the browser render smoothly.
• If you suspect stale assets, a hard refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R) clears the browser cache.