The glow sprites chris suggested I put in made it a lot more expensive when staring into the fire from 1m away, so there may be issues inside some buildings like the VF. Basically, just avoid the fire and you won't lag. How is turret smoke, may I ask?
I don't notice the sparks on turrets, since I'm 50m away mortaring the hell out of them. Though now that you mention it, I might have vaguely seen something sparking. Will investigate. (And take hideous 800x600 screenshots!) And what do you mean, 'glow sprites'?
Save to empires/particles. basicly, Copy-a-paste. It's not an installation or anything fancy, it's just a raplacement for a file, so it won't execute or do anything when you clicky clicky.
50% of why people make art is because they like when others say it looks good/is a great acceavement, 40% is because it makes them get laid more (proven fact by many researches, people prefer artistic mates over non-artistic mates), 10% is because they seek a medium to express there feelings/other random stuff