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[ragincajun]

Yes or No?

I've always used them but then it seems my haulers are always moving stone and wood instead of other more important things...and then once I have stockpiles my workshops will no longer go get it on their own if the stockpile runs out. 

So I lean towards YES, but wondered if there might be some inherent benefit to NOT doing stockpiles...at least for these two items.

[LMeire]

I don't bother unless it's a specific pile for smelting ore, or giving each workshop a tiny, unlinked pile full of valuable economic stones when I want beef up artifact values. Metal production is far more important than wood or stone, and I don't need everyone wasting their time dragging slate boulders around when they could be dragging hematite boulders.

[Sirbug]

I have them. In the end, you will gain more since you don't make your workers stop tasks to haul material across the map.

[Two]

It is a good idea to have some amount of wood/stone inside your fortress in case of a siege, and then your workshops need a small buffer, so crafters are not spending the majority of time with hauling themselves.

I usually make a 9x9 area for wood and another for stone, and then surround my workshops with a 1 block wide buffer stockpile, setting the large on to give to the buffer stockpile.

[Kneenibble]

I like all my furniture to be made out of the same stone, so absolutely I use stone stockpiles.  And likewise for differently coloured woods once I get to the caverns.  Colour co-ordination is so very important.

I don't understand the problem with haulers, though.  There is never a shortage of layabout grunts to drag stuff around.

[Geoclasm]

One trick I like to use for this sort of thing is, rather than a stockpile, I would designate a 1 by 1 dumping area, flag all stone/wood I want there to be dumped, let the dwarfs hall it there, and then claim it once they finish. Saves space (Kind of exploity I know).

[wuphonsreach]

The best way to do it is with a minecart parked on a track stop (no track needed).

Code: [Select]

AAA
ASA
 X

A = input stockpile, take from anywhere, is limited to only the types of stone or wood that you want to gather.  In the case of a stone stockpile, give it (3) wheelbarrows to make things go faster.

S = Track stop, set to dump to the South during construction

X = Output stockpile, should be set to zero bins, zero wheelbarrows, zero barrels, and only take from links.  The filter on the stockpile does not need to be terribly picky ("all non-economic stone" and "all wood" filters are just fine).

Once the stockpile is built, use the 'h' menu to define a route and a stop that pulls from the input stockpile (with the right filter, which can be rather broad).  Assign a minecart, and watch the magic.

Because there are only (3) wheelbarrows allow on the input stockpile, only up to 3 haulers at a time will be tied up feeding that QSP (quantum stockpile).  That is better then the "dump" method because it is self-limiting and you won't tie up 100% of your stone/wood haulers.

[fractalman]

Last time I played dwarf fortress, I cleared out a 15x15 area, set the outer area as a stone stockpile, the next ring in was workshop space, and then the center was staircase space. 

However, this was primarily because I was mass-producing blocks out the wazoo under time constraints, which required a large chunk of the fort's dwarfpower: efficiency actually mattered at that point.    Normally I'll just leave a stonemason on repeat and let the legendary mason haul his own stones, or move the workshop to the stones. 

Minecart Quantum Dumps outperform most other solutions in the long run, but I've had a rather low success rate at setting them up: about 1/3rd of my attempts actually worked.

[wuphonsreach]

Clutter on the initial tiles is a killer... any stones / debris laying around needs to be moved out of the way or dumped in order for wheelbarrows and the minecart stop to work properly.

[Nikow]

I am always starting with block production, and i am making some tracks. On ground i have usualy have system, who is droping my wood 20z down. Dwarws are getthering logs to pre-stockpile, then packing minecart (made of wood!), who is hauled to dump shaft. Then whole amount of wood is droped to hole and blocked by hatch. When i am ready, i am locking doors to dumping zone and then opening hatch using laver and whole wood is droped into 1x1 stockpile, from which my main wood stockpile is feeding using 2 wheelbarrows (because i do not want use my whole hauling power for wood).

Stone is using similar, but more complicated system. Just courple of wagons on courple of levels. I do not use one track for whole route, because i still doesn't know how to speed up my mine cards in safe way, without loosing FPS, like when i am using dwarven water reactor. So one dwarf is pulling cart by whole mine level, then leaving load, then other one is packing his cart, and draging it to next stop.

There is usualy food route too, who is actualy using two separated tracks to push food down, and one for pulling it up. Miners needs food and booze, so they are offten living in templorary dining rooms and dormitories (burrowed down).