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[StagnantSoul]

Another thing that annoys me, in a similar way to quantum stockpiles, is how much a workshop can clutter up. I don't bother with armour stockpiles, and I noticed I had well over five hundred weapons, pieces of armour, and trade goods piled up in their.

[GavJ]

Bins and barrels are actually the intended method for improving space density.

Says who? Both of these have uses still in a quantum stockpile world, which could instead be the main reasons they are in the game. Barrels store liquids, which packed stockpiles don't do. And bins allow huge numbers of items to be hauled all at once (such as to the trader), which packed stockpiles don't do. On top of this, having two ways of doing something does not prove anything about one of them being "cheating." I can kill a goblin with a sword or a crossbow bolt, is either of those cheating?

If you want to establish those stockpiles as "cheating" you additionally still need to explain why Toady put minecart dumping into the game, for instance, when nearly 100% of the time, it leads to quantum stockpiling, and virtually cannot be used any other way. Are you suggesting he is too stupid and lazy to have tested his new feature even one single time, or that he just didn't notice that it was piling in one tile? I'm not seeing any other justification for that feature being "cheating" when used in the only way it can be used...

Item volume isn't fully implemented yet

Yes it is. Volume is already used all the time and there are already algorithms in place for determining how many things fit in a given volume. Like you say, for bins and also for barrels and every other container in the game. Chests, backpacks, cabinets, etc. As well as the "cluttered" flag in workshops.

Also, you're simply wrong about the seeds, etc. Seeds currently take up 0.15% the volume of a statue. Seeds are 10, statues are 6,000. Socks are variable based on the race who made them's foot size, but are for dwarves very small compared to statues.

It's actually rather confusing whether these are the volumes in cm^3, or 10x these, it seems to use different units in different applications in the game. From common sense I think it's actually 10x those, because then a statue would be the same size as a dwarf (60,000) which makes sense. If not, it should be, whatever. 10 minute change at worst to add zome zeroes to stuff.

So if a tile is about 1.5x1.5x3 meters, according to Toady somewhere I think, then it has 6,750,000 volume units (cm^3) in it. If statues were amorphous solids that could fit with zero airspace, you could fit 100 of them in that space (same goes for dwarves themselves).  If we want to take into consideration that statues are shapes with air amongst them and don't stack on top of each other, then divide that by 10, let's say, and you could fit about 10 statues in a tile.

Or 600 seeds.  Both seem quite reasonable, actually. I'd be totally fine with something like that but no quantum stockpiles at all. That is realistic.

And if you build shelves (material-requiring stockpile upgrade), then you can fit twice as much per tile, say.

[Reelya]

I was talking about regular stockpiles. They only allow 1 item per cell without a container, whether it's a seed or a statue. Adding a container causes volume to matter. Without one, it doesn't.

And "says who"? The answer to that would be the designer. He put a complex system of storage restrictions in place, there are a couple of ways around that. Remember this is an alpha version. Things are expected to be broken, and a mere fraction of the planned systems are in place. To say that the brokeness of one particular system allowing you to bypass a clearly more complex and though out system (the bins, barrels, stockpiles system) is intentional isn't a good argument.

So your question why doesn't Toady just allow inifinite stockpiles to be placed, because there are some roundabout methods to make the same thing? I think the sheer obtuseness of the workarounds, the very thing that your complaining about indicates that the use we put those systems to wasn't his expected usage. It will get fixed one day, bot don't expect any convenient bandaid. Toady doesn't like to bandaid systems more than he needs to, rather than that he leaves the "barely working" system in place and saves up everything for a complete overhaul of the related systems - he hates to touch the same bit of code more than once if he doesn't have to.

So the appeal "please break the game even more, because it will be easier" doesn't sound like it's going to be a worthwhile thing to argue for. Argue for a proper overhaul of the storage system instead.

[GavJ]

I was talking about regular stockpiles. They only allow 1 item per cell without a container, whether it's a seed or a statue. Adding a container causes volume to matter. Without one, it doesn't.

I understand that, but the items already track their own volume, and the algorithms already exist in game for checking volume against toal capacity. This should be a simple copy/paste situation (or calling an existing modular function, ideally, either way).

Likely, it could be added in wherever the code already checks to see if a tile in a stockpile is available or not, pretty straightforward.

The quantum stockpile options that currently exist could be postponed being addressed until later if necessary, because being able to put several statues in one tile would probably be enough to stop nearly everybody from using quantum stockpiles anyway, since it is both realistic and compact and thus seems best of all.

Things are expected to be broken

No, features are not expected to be 100% broken in a way that must have been knowingly coded and would have been noticed the very first time he tested them. If he thought it was broken but didn't have time to fix it, he simply wouldn't have introduced the 100% broken feature at all yet... because it would have no redeeming value.

But whatever, that line of argument seems kind of pointless now that there's a great compromise solution that should make everybody happy and is probably even easier than either other solution: using volume realistically to pack several items into each tile. In fact, updating OP now.

[StagnantSoul]

Using the same logic you argue in favour of quantum stockpiles for, we should've always had dead birds falling from the sky, because he saw it, but found it trivial enough to not fix right away, or we should've kept the ballistae shooting of randomly, doing blunt damage, because he left it there as a placeholder until it was fixed. It's quite obvious that we are meant to use real stockpiles, the minecart dumping is supposed to be a delivery system, dropping materials near workshops for use, not permanent storage along with hundreds of other objects.

[GavJ]

As above, I don't think it matters anyway, since there's a much better sounding compromise solution that doesn't depend on any of that logic.

[pisskop]

Your new tittle sounds like rubble mechanics.

As in, a (non)stockpile will hold xx weight (because mass is more abstract atp than weight despite) before 'spillover', or penalties are applied to units (much like crowded hallways/workshops)? 

So where does the lverglow go?  What about.units in the tile contributing their mass? Mined rubble?  no more butterfly corpses in doors?!

---

This sounds like a longterm bit . . .

[GavJ]

Your new tittle sounds like rubble mechanics.

As in, a (non)stockpile will hold xx weight (because mass is more abstract atp than weight despite) before 'spillover', or penalties are applied to units (much like crowded hallways/workshops)? 

So where does the lverglow go?  What about.units in the tile contributing their mass? Mined rubble?  no more butterfly corpses in doors?!

If Toady wants to tackle all that, then great, but I think this would be a significant improvement even if only applied to stockpiles being manually loaded by dwarves, at first. You could leave everything else alone.

That would be plenty of motivation to probably stop most everyone from using quantum stockpiles unless they really needed them for a computer or some craziness, because it offers more satisfying realism and also is plenty good enough to cut down on the insane sprawl and FPS lag of one-item stockpiles. Plus, you could do it in one click, instead of 5 minutes setting up each minecart route with the UI from hell. So the threshold for being willing to do quantum stuff rises precipitously.

Later on, sure, spillover for things that go beyond volume maximums, etc. (not mass, that doesn't make any sense, unless you want floors to collapse. We're a long way from that...).

Rubble is an entirely separate issue, and can continue to be abstracted away without impacting any of this.

[Max™]

...I just realized nobody in the dorf world has yet invented the shelf, but yeah, that is an amazingly awesome sounding idea now. Use normal dump on the ground stockpiles until you get the time and materials to add in shelving, letting you condense your sprawl into them. Would be neat if they had weight limits as well of course, especially since that should lead to all sorts of fun using them as improvised traps.

[Icefire2314]

Before we get there, tiles need to actually have volume. Unless they do currently and I misunderstand, but a giant sperm whale and a dwarf both take up equal space currently.

[GavJ]

Before we get there, tiles need to actually have volume. Unless they do currently and I misunderstand, but a giant sperm whale and a dwarf both take up equal space currently.

I believe Toady has stated that a tile is about 1.5m x 1.5m x 3m. I.e. the sperm whale is the illogical thing, not the tile.

...which is another issue but one that could be addressed separately. Living animals can just get an exception to the rule. As well as their death products perhaps (more meat than the tile's volume can drop there, but when you move it elsewhere you have to respect the tile volumes. Also that tile is full now, if it's a butchers shop you can't use it again till you clear it down far enough).

Unsatisfying, but totally workable, and not open to exploits, temporarily until/if he feels like thinking about multitile creatures.

[Reelya]

It would be pretty funny if volume was implemented like that, and butchering a sperm whale caused an instant space-filling meatsplosion, and dwarves had to dig their way out. That's a good observation, and something the system would have to take into account.

One way to make it all hang together would be a kind of invisible container that holds the animal products together until they're picked up for stockpiling. The pretend container (not an actual container, just coded like one for simplicity) could have a set volume (or like a percentage of the volume of the remains, so e.g. the space would be used up by butchering 1 whale, but not 1 rabbit), but hold however much is needed. Either that or have them attached to the butcher's workshop, but then it'd have a meatsplosion issue if the butcher's shop was deconstructed.