Performance: Instantiate or Pre-place?

Unity Engine
1

I’m creating a scroller-style game. I will have 100-200 objects as the player moves through the level. The level technically doesn’t move (think 1942 - the game). Is it better, performance-wise, to have these items laid out beforehand or instantiate them as the level progresses? If I need to instantiate, what is a good method for storing the when/where variables?

Thanks in advance.

2

If they are basically the same object, the best for performance would be to instantiate a pool of the max amount that would be on the screen at one time, then re-use those instances over and over. Creating and destroying instances can cause the garbage collector to kick in and give you pauses.