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[Chimerat]

Can a bit of stone be smoothed or detailed after something is build on it? (Like a table or bed?)

If not, does it count as "destroying" the carving if you build over it?

I seem to remember in past games that I could look at a table and see the carving beneath, but if I removed a bit of furniture from the floor the ground was smoothed and not detailed. That may be my memory being faulty, though...

I'm trying to see if I can build my Queen's room any faster without cutting corners on quality. If the details remain if you do them first but you can't do them after, then the delay to ensure my engraver can get the whole place done before she moves in might be worth it. If the carvings are destroyed then doing it that way would actually cause the engraver to get unhappy thoughts.

[StagnantSoul]

It doesn't work with furniture or a building present, but doing it beforehand is perfectly fine.

[Larix]

That's not correct: smoothing, track carving and detailing are all possible when there's a "passable" piece of furniture installed - beds, cabinets, gear assemblies, axles, doors, everything a dwarf can walk through/over. Building or removing furniture on top of engravings doesn't hurt them.

It's not possible to smooth etc. under "unpassable" furniture - statues, windows, closed floodgates, gear-operated/locked doors and hatches. The same holds for constructions, and building a construction will remove engravings underneath.

Pending engraving jobs often get cancelled when a piece of furniture is installed; in that case, you'll just have to order the job again. As long as the dwarf can reach the floor, it can be engraved.

[Chimerat]

Cool. Thanks for the information, guys or gals. I'll likely deconstruct one workshop at a time to let the details go in to increase the Fort's worth and then build them back when the time comes.

I'm currently trying to move the Fort indoors, but none of my seven seem interested in doing any hauling... Is there a distance limit?

[PatrikLundell]

Well, workshops are not furniture but buildings, although they have both passable and non passable tiles. I would probably try it out by smoothing one passable and one non passable tile, place a workshop on top of it, and then remove the workshop. Even better if you engrave the test areas. If so, use the most unsuitable dwarf you can find to reduce the risk of getting a masterwork. I THINK you can get a completely masterworks covered room by smooting all the non masterworks engravings and start anew, and I THINK they only get mad at having masterworks destroyed.

Don't think there is any distance limit, but dwarves can be very slow to get jobs allocated at times. With only seven you shouldn't suffer from the strange overload case where too many pending jobs in one category somehow crams out scheduling of jobs in other categories, leaving dwarves with no job even if there are ones available.
Other possible causes could be burrows and lack of suitable stockpiles (or presence of stockpiles at the source), as well as lack of a suitable hauling labor on the dwarves, and I assume they are not busy doing other stuff. All of these I think you know already, however.

If the distance in very large, you can try to define a midway stockpile to see if they get going then.

[Chimerat]

Hmm... Well, a few of them are working (my miner mainly) but some others are on "No Job" from time to time, despite the fact that they all have hauling.

I have multiple stockpiles of three squares with three wheelbarrows and mine stops at the end (trying to make a quantum pile) but I've only seen my Dwarves move anything into the rock pile and not the others... I've removed all item permissions from my other stockpiles and hope the food won't rot if it's in an "incorrect" stockpile...

[PatrikLundell]

I think I've finally managed to get quantum stockpiles to work fairly regularly, but there were a lot of initial troubles. I have a theory that wheelbarrows actually might block hauling of item to their own tiles (no proof), so my wheelbarrow equipped feeder stockpiles are now six tiles. It very easy to forget the dump direction of the Stop, as well, and no way to tell afterwards, but that shouldn't affect hauling to the feeders. I assume you have "no bins" set on the feeder stockpiles?
Also, I tend not to set up the feeder stockpile (or have it disabled with "take from links only") until I have a mine cart in place, but my latest stockpile worked without that restriction, so it might just be superstition. I DO create the target quantum stockpile at the same time as I designate the building of the Stop, as that means I don't have to remember which direction the Stop was supposed to chuck stuff in when it's finally built and the mine cart is in place.
Another thought: 7 dwarves, some of which are probably doing stuff full time (like mining), and multiple three wheelbarrow stockpiles MIGHT result in a job saturation issue (I definitely have no proof). You could experiment by reducing the number of wheelbarrows for each stockpile to 1 (meaning at most one hauling job was allocated for that stockpile), to see if things start to arrive at the other stockpiles.

The way I started my fortress was to define a stockpile for everything except wood, stone and refuse in the entrance corridor as soon as it was built, and then further stockpiles further in. The purpose of that was to get as much stuff as possible indoors quickly to reduce the risk of theft by local wildlife (previous experiences). Also, I created a moving meeting area on top of it to get non grazing animals indoors as well. It gets messy and cluttered, and you may get stuff in the way of your starting farm plot that way, though. However, initially a number of dwarves don't have anything useful to do since the space for their workshops hasn't been dug out yet (if I manage to get the stuff inside quickly, I might have them gather plants for a while).

I haven't seen rampant rotting from food in pots that's ended up in the furniture stockpile...

Hm, wait a minute: 7 dwarves, 3 wheelbarrow rock stockpile, two miners, one woodcutter, one farmer. Only 3 haulers left, and they all have all hauling labors enabled, I guess. I'd try to deassign rock and wood hauling from one of the "free" dwarves to see if it gets moving, as all 3 of them might allocate themselves to rock hauling, possibly without any rocks to haul, and too stupid/lazy to look further for work.

[Chimerat]

Hm, wait a minute: 7 dwarves, 3 wheelbarrow rock stockpile, two miners, one woodcutter, one farmer. Only 3 haulers left, and they all have all hauling labors enabled, I guess. I'd try to deassign rock and wood hauling from one of the "free" dwarves to see if it gets moving, as all 3 of them might allocate themselves to rock hauling, possibly without any rocks to haul, and too stupid/lazy to look further for work.

Actually, I only have one miner, though the Queen tends to like to make her bone crafts all the time and there's another cooking regularly (though I have suspended hunting, fishing and butchering due to too much waste from rot...), so the numbers are about right.

Once I get my PC back in order after yesterday's reinstall of Windows, I'll see if extending the stockpiles helps things.

[PatrikLundell]

I think rot mainly sets in if the food is unprotected or is attacked by vermin, so you should probably ramp up the large pot production, but you probably don't need a huge food production anyway.