it seems lucee is slower than CF when it comes to initialising objects and / or templates, even when they're pre-compiled, not a real complaint, though it does make me wonder if there is anything I can do to improve things, or if there is any work in this space in lucee 6 ?

That's really interesting. I thought - traditionally - Lucee was substantially faster than CF? Has there been some sort of regression in this area? @Gareth got any stats / tests to demonstrate?

And your machine specs, too, please

I'll do my best to put together some details when I can

also, out of curiosity, which version of acf were you comparing to? maybe adobe has made significant gains since the last time i used?

CF 2021