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[Aquillion]

It would be nice if players could manually place and designate individual barrels with 'b'; such a designated barrel would be constantly kept fill by the dwarves, and they'd grab a barrel that is already designated for that task if possible when placing it.  A placed barrel wouldn't block a hall, so the player could just drop them anywhere near the point where they want them.

This idea came to me when thinking about the problem of carrying individual seeds to the farm.  There are many tasks like that where the player really wants to transport a large amount of some material someplace, but wouldn't want to transport the entire stockpile or risk having a single item placed there, and only wants it there on a temporary basis.  Using the barrel system for this would give players an easy way to control the location of items on a more fine-grained level when necessary.  For the seeds problem, for instance, I could just put a seed barrel next to my farm before planting, then order it removed after the planting's done, so it can go back near my eating area to quickly collect seeds.  I could even manually place a seed barrel in the eating area, and move it around at planting time...

There's already a containers option in the build menu, even, but it doesn't seem to let you place already-designated bins and barrels, or place bins and barrels at all for that matter...  this might be because my bins and barrels are getting designated for something as soon as they're built, though.

[ August 13, 2006: Message edited by: Aquillion ]

[Toady One]

The containers option is just for room containers like chests/coffers.

All storage was original done with placed containers.  The interface for that was a nightmare of choices, so we went over to the bins/barrels fluid system where things are slow sometimes, but they also mostly happen by themselves in general categories.  Now, as for what it actually should be, I think adding little options like this is a good thing.  Having a pile menu with specific options is good, a better pile mastery interface, normally empty transport piles as way stations for long hauls of particular goods, wheelbarrow and other multi-item collection tools, things to do with the barrels/bins like what you described, and the burrows idea about grouping sections of the fortress and allocating bins/barrels/etc to them should all help.  I also need a weapon pile...  if you ever manage to repulse a full scale equipped invasion you'll see why...  It's really a disgusting scene, and there are some 200 haul jobs that come out of the pieces and tools of the dead and wounded.

Anyway, somehow out of all the transport/job priority ideas, there's some kind of coherent system waiting to be put into place...  and hopefully all the additional checks required aren't too CPU stressful.

[ August 13, 2006: Message edited by: Toady One ]

[Aquillion]

Oh, a related suggestion!  There should be an option to go around the 'b' command when placing something that is normally placed with 'b', like a chair, door, or statue, and instead select 'place item' from, say, that item's details-view screen.

This would let players direct the dwarves to put a specific chair, door, or (with the above suggestion) barrel in a particular spot, as an alternative to the sort of shot-in-the-dark way that the 'b' key works now.  Of course, players would still use 'b' for placing most things; manually choosing an item and placing it from its details screen would just be useful for when you have a specific item you want placed, or when you happen to have that item in front of you or something.

[JT]

Here's an idea: You know that big yellow "X" that appears when you're trying to link a floodgate to a lever?

Maybe that big yellow X should appear for all of the other object selection menus too, and snap back to the last screen position once you hit Enter (to get the placement cursor).

But that might cause vertigo for some people.

[Aquillion]

That'd probably cover it, but it would still be useful to be able to just grab an item when you have it in front of you and order it put to use rather than having to dig through the 'b' menu every time.

[Captain Mayday]

Actually, it would be nice to be able to do what Aquillion says with constructing materials. Be far easier if I could source rock from the area I have just dug out instead of having dwarves haul it in from my stockpile.

Also nice would be being able to choose what you'd like to encrust with jewels specifically. Can't tell you how many times they've encrusted a bucket, twice, when I wanted to encrust something better.

[LordNagash]

That's nothing. I encrusted a *rope* with gems.

Now that's what I call being restrained in style.

[bbb]

quote:if you ever manage to repulse a full scale equipped invasion you'll see why

... yeah, try cheating on points right at the beginning and you'll see a wagon spam.. some might even be partially submerged in a river!

not to mention the billions of mules and horses.. and one's attempt to fit them into 1 single cage (set as giant room with billions other cages) will flood that room with all the wandering animals

[Janne Joensuu]

Another related suggestion:

It'd be nice if I could reserve a barrel or a bin. It's sometimes hard to make beer when you HAVE to have a barrel empty, and all the new barrels will get one piece of fish or few pieces of roast... If the dwarves didn't spend so much of their time on moving things around already, I'd suggest that they try to minimize the amount of containers used.

[Beowulf]

You can try deactivating all the haul jobs pertaining to stuff that can be put into barrels temporally in 'o' or wherever it was until the new barrel is used in the brewing job. Should be a workaround.