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[crossmr]

I noticed someone mention this in another thread.
After some time, my dwarves stop hauling stone to stockpiles.
I've got stockpiles, with wheelbarrows that have been sitting empty for a long time.

I designate stone to be dumped, even with 40 idlers..and it just sits there..

It's like I've got dwarves who are allergic to stone. In the meantime I've got craftsdwarves and masons who have to trek all over the fort bringing in far off chalk for their task.

[MonkeyHead]

Items marked as for dumping will be dumped at a garbage zone ("i" menu for zones), not in a stockpile.

[crossmr]

Items marked as for dumping will be dumped at a garbage zone ("i" menu for zones), not in a stockpile.

I'm aware of that. I also have a dump zone. one that has actually been used quite a bit, but they suddenly don't want to dump stone there.
In addition, I've got stock piles with and without wheelbarrows just sitting there waiting for stone to be put on them (and yes available stone is selected as allowed) and no one wants to haul it there.

In the past when I've made stockpiles available for things, the dwarves have basically just dropped everything and gone to fill them. Which they still do for other stock piles, things like clothes, etc. At the beginning they were also keen to fill stone stock piles, but now, after however many years I've been playing, they just don't seem interested in filling stone stock piles anymore. Is there a distance limit they'll travel to fill stock piles?
Even still, why wouldn't they take the existing stones from the dump? (i've claimed them)

[MonkeyHead]

Assuming the stone stockpile isnt full, you might have accidentally either set it to take form a specific location or accidentally deactivated the stockpile... either that or some kind of burrow enforcement is preventing the jobs getting done, or no valid paths exist for the dwarves to take.

[rudhcairiel]

You haven't accidentally toggled it to 'take from links only', have you? That has happened to me waaaaay too often.

[crossmr]

Assuming the stone stockpile isnt full, you might have accidentally either set it to take form a specific location or accidentally deactivated the stockpile... either that or some kind of burrow enforcement is preventing the jobs getting done, or no valid paths exist for the dwarves to take.

Nope, because they sometimes will actually bring a stone to it. Once in a blue moon.
So they're perfectly capable, they just seem to have no motivation to actually do it.
About 10 minutes after I posted that, they finally got around to filling the 3 slots. Right now I have 3 stones on it, I'll make some blocks, but no one will try to fill it right away. There is stone available. and over 50 idlers right now.

It almost seems like the wheelbarrows are causing issues. With 3 slots and 3 wheelbarrows, no one tries to take them to get stone and bring them to the stockpile. With no wheelbarrows, they fill them, but not right away. Only after they sit awhile.

[Garath]

how many stone stockpiles do you have and how many wheelbarrows for them? If you have just one stockpile, set with 1 wheelbarrow, 1 dwarfs will be hauling, which will definately make it seem like nothing is happening. Even with 3, over long distances, they might take so long it seems like nothing is happening.

Another possibility:
You mentioned the masons and such are walking a long way. Are they also going down z-levels? they should prefer the closest stone in distance as the ghost flows, so regardless of where stairs actually are and going down a z-level counts as 1 step. If they keep themself on a limited number of levels, you might have broken the path to get there. This happens even to quite experience players and is too easy to do, so always worth checking

[crossmr]

how many stone stockpiles do you have and how many wheelbarrows for them? If you have just one stockpile, set with 1 wheelbarrow, 1 dwarfs will be hauling, which will definately make it seem like nothing is happening. Even with 3, over long distances, they might take so long it seems like nothing is happening.

Another possibility:
You mentioned the masons and such are walking a long way. Are they also going down z-levels? they should prefer the closest stone in distance as the ghost flows, so regardless of where stairs actually are and going down a z-level counts as 1 step. If they keep themself on a limited number of levels, you might have broken the path to get there. This happens even to quite experience players and is too easy to do, so always worth checking

I've actually got 2 stockpiles there a 1x1 and a 1x2, just for testing purposes (trying one with wheelbarrows, one without) I've also got two more stone stockpiles near my catapult (again with wheelbarrow and without)
They are all suffering issues.

They are going down Z levels, but they have to go quite far to get stone. It's not directly down it's quite far off to the side, and the dump with claimed stone, is only about 8 squares away. They're going much further when they do decide to actually get stone.

Can wheelbarrows go down Z levels? Could that be causing an issue?

[Larix]

Wherever a dwarf can go, a wheelbarrow can go as well. Stairs, doors, hatches, ramps, they can navigate it all.

Dwarfs seem to prefer moving stone in the order it's been generated (through mining); it also seems like after an initial rush, the game tends to be fairly conservative about generating fresh hauling jobs: directly after e.g. ordering a few pages worth of junk carried to the depot, i always see a long list of 'bring item to depot' jobs in the inactive queue. But after that first batch is finished, there are very few such jobs generated again, apparently limited by the number of idle dwarfs. I suspect there are similar limits to other hauling tasks. Relocating stockpiles (and maybe workshops supplied by them) can help.

[Sutremaine]

It almost seems like the wheelbarrows are causing issues. With 3 slots and 3 wheelbarrows, no one tries to take them to get stone and bring them to the stockpile.

Wheelbarrows take up tiles in the stockpile they're in. If your 3-tile stockpile has 3 wheelbarrows on each tile, there are no tiles free to create hauling jobs.

But yes, I've had this problem with stone hauling. After an initial rush, the dwarves are rather slow to pick up the rest of the jobs for that stockpile.

[crossmr]

It almost seems like the wheelbarrows are causing issues. With 3 slots and 3 wheelbarrows, no one tries to take them to get stone and bring them to the stockpile.

Wheelbarrows take up tiles in the stockpile they're in. If your 3-tile stockpile has 3 wheelbarrows on each tile, there are no tiles free to create hauling jobs.

But yes, I've had this problem with stone hauling. After an initial rush, the dwarves are rather slow to pick up the rest of the jobs for that stockpile.

I've got stone and wheelbarrows sharing a spot on my stockpile right now. I deleted those stock piles and made a 2x3 and assigned 3 wheelbarrows to it, they filled up three spots, but filled up the wheelbarrow again and came back and dropped off the stone and barrow in the same spot

[clockwork]

Perhaps the wiki shall have your answer? - http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Burrow

[crossmr]

Perhaps the wiki shall have your answer? - http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Burrow

It's not a burrow issue.
There is only one burrow and it's an emergency burrow. If the dwarves were confined to that, they wouldn't be able to leave the dorm/kitchen/dining room, which they are perfectly capable of doing.
The point is they sometimes fill the stockpile, but plenty of times leave it sitting there empty for long stretches. Even with tons of idlers with labour enabled available.

[Sutremaine]

It almost seems like the wheelbarrows are causing issues. With 3 slots and 3 wheelbarrows, no one tries to take them to get stone and bring them to the stockpile.

Wheelbarrows take up tiles in the stockpile they're in. If your 3-tile stockpile has 3 wheelbarrows on each tile, there are no tiles free to create hauling jobs.

I've got stone and wheelbarrows sharing a spot on my stockpile right now. I deleted those stock piles and made a 2x3 and assigned 3 wheelbarrows to it, they filled up three spots, but filled up the wheelbarrow again and came back and dropped off the stone and barrow in the same spot

Assuming that a slot is equivalent to a tile...

2x3 is fine with three wheelbarrows, because a dwarf can't take all the stone off the stockpile without creating an empty stockpile tile. 1x3 with three wheelbarrows doesn't work so well. A dwarf can take all the stones off the stockpile, leaving it full of wheelbarrows and without any empty slots to create a hauling job.

[enizer]

have had this happen several times, and every instance, was that i had accidentally toggled "take from links only"

i hear weelbarrows can also cause this, if you have too few, then sometimes stockpiles wait for weelbarrows, and hold all tasks waiting on that weelbarrow

it's also possible that the dumping area might be disabled, it's another issue that's just one typo away