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[Lozzymandias]

Old player, returning to the game after 42.05, I started a fortress and, as with all fortresses, immediately began setting up my pigtail powered clothing industry.

It wasn't till the 2nd year that a substantial amount of pigtail cloth was abundant, so i was expecting a big bottleneck, where some of the first fort members would be instantly claiming all new clothing. In practise though, i found that many dwarves were claiming new clothing regardless of whether their current clothing was worn or not (presumably satisfying aquisition needs)

This is a problem i seem to remember facing before but never really dealing with. I just had to hope that if enough clothing was created everyone would have enough for both replacing worn clothing and filling their cabinets with excess clothing. DFhack cleanowned helped, to some extent (usually causing a month long shutdown while we emptied the cabinets back into the common stockpile.)

Did anyone ever find a fix for this? some way of prioritising the replacement of worn clothing over aquisitions? is it less of an issue in newer versions?

[PatrikLundell]

I'm not aware of any changes to clothing usage. They acquire and hoard. On the other hand, I keep a tight control of immigration, so by year 2 I don't have a huge number of "new" citizens fighting for the clothing production that starts up (everything before that went into bags).

I don't think there is any reasonable possible solution to the problem, as the current system is to check regularly when there's some kind of need and claim when there's something matching the requirements available. You'd basically need a heavy handed "no luxury claims while there's a single unsatisfied basic need outstanding" implementation, which will have its own issues.

The excessive hoarding might be easier to deal with, by implementing a logic for releasing the ownership of "inferior" stuff, e.g. by having a maximum number of slots per layer, and anything acquired beyond that pushing the "worst" one out (which might be the just claimed item for some super hoarders if the logic allows for acquisition of things worse than what's currently used).

Regardless, the current (long standing) implementation is far from a good one.

[Lozzymandias]

I'm not aware of any changes to clothing usage. They acquire and hoard. On the other hand, I keep a tight control of immigration, so by year 2 I don't have a huge number of "new" citizens fighting for the clothing production that starts up (everything before that went into bags).

I don't think there is any reasonable possible solution to the problem, as the current system is to check regularly when there's some kind of need and claim when there's something matching the requirements available. You'd basically need a heavy handed "no luxury claims while there's a single unsatisfied basic need outstanding" implementation, which will have its own issues.

The excessive hoarding might be easier to deal with, by implementing a logic for releasing the ownership of "inferior" stuff, e.g. by having a maximum number of slots per layer, and anything acquired beyond that pushing the "worst" one out (which might be the just claimed item for some super hoarders if the logic allows for acquisition of things worse than what's currently used).

Regardless, the current (long standing) implementation is far from a good one.

Thats pretty much what i expected, thanks all the same patrik. its part of my routine every time i come back to this game, not only to check whats changed and whats been fixed but what minor issue hasn't been fixed all this time (I see large predators still don't hunt dwarves).

I seem to remember i had some minor success with the manager as a way to make sure that 20 or so new mittens a month were being produced. If i can budget for how many clothing items will be consumed in total (wear+hoarding) per season, then that should be an adequate way to avoid just endless clothes production. I'm just tired of cleaning up after the little bearded sock magpies

[Nilsolm]

You don't necessarily have to calculate exact numbers for clothing items. You can sort of automate the clothing industry with manager orders, although with some caveats. For instance, you can create an order to make a shirt, and then specify as an order condition that the number of available shirts is less than two. That will assign the relevant job to the clothier's shop when there are less than two shirts available in stockpiles. You can create similar orders for other types of clothing and for different materials (wool, silk, cloth).

One caveat is that you have to be careful with bins in clothing stockpiles. When a bin is tasked–for instance because someone wants to take a piece of clothing out of it–, its contents become unavailable as far as the manager order is concerned. Which means that it will create a job at the workshop, even if there would have been the right number of items in the bin. I ran into this problem when I first experimented with setting up clothing automation. The clothiers kept churning out socks ad nauseam, because dwarves were constantly tasking the bin that contained them. You can work around this either by not using any bins, or by making a more complicated stockpile set-up with links, but that might not work reliably.

The second caveat is that occasionally clothing items with some degree of wear will end up in the stockpile. These will count toward the available number of items, I think. So you would have to regularly check the clothing stockpile(s) and dump any damaged items from them.

There is also a DFHack plug-in that automates the clothing industry, if you feel like making it easier, although I haven't tried it myself, so I don't know how it works exactly.

[PatrikLundell]

As long as you're content with having a sufficient volume produced, the manager can probably handle it (I never use it). However, as far as I know it can't handle quality, nor differences in creature size size (20 ogre sized socks is 20 socks, as far as the manager is concerned), and DF doesn't provide much help with handling wear at all (no stockpile settings for either creature size or wear level, although we'll see whether, and if so, how much, the Premium UI rework will improve stockpiles).

Nilsolm touched on some of the above while I typed.

[Sarmatian123]

How I do it:
I limit clothing in my fortress to only hoods, dresses, cloaks, gloves, trousers and socks.
You can mark unwanted clothing in z-menu, but that doesn't work on clothing, which is on Dwarves.
Though you can form military squad with uniform of civilian cloths with "replace" and "exact match".
Then you station the squad for 1 month and issue solved.
It helps, when you limit your production to just 6 types of cloths.
You can buy from caravan hides from domesticated animals. Not so popular for acquisition and all your Dwarves will get extra protection in combat.
Also your military equip stuff, you assign them without any issues. Including extra cloak. So this is also a fix for the military cloths.
You need a receiver stockpile (accepting from links only), which takes cloths directly from clothiers and leather shops.
From that receiver stockpile, you do 5 quantum stockpiles (armor, headwear, handwear, footwear and legwear).
Then you see if your stockpile of cloths is still fresh, xx or already empty. Do not overproduce.
Then you set up a general stockpile to collect all other clothing and quantum stockpile them.
Sell what you can to caravan, when it gets there.
Also, you can from time to time combine the used cloths quantum stockpile with refuse.
It will remove even masterworks without any penalty.
To periodically remove used or additional cloths from Dwarven rooms, use just d-b-d and mark all cabinets in their rooms.
After 1 month all those cloths will be dumped. Later unmark and use for trade and surplus dispose in your used cloths quantum stockpile.

[Lozzymandias]

Though you can form military squad with uniform of civilian cloths with "replace" and "exact match".
Then you station the squad for 1 month and issue solved.

Wouldn't you get clashes between civilian (miner and woodcutter) and military uniforms that way?
Furthermore, i've never had much success getting dwarves to replace xwornx uniforms (certainly in old fortresses before armor could xwearx, military dwarves with leather cloaks would wear them until they rot, even with replacement cloaks in the pile). I imagine with armor xwearx this has become more of a problem. Do dwarves now replace xwornx armor?

i've used the link system before, and its mostly successful (barring dwarves just dropping their clothing on the pile) although you need to get rid of the stuff in the worn clothing stockpile quickly if you want the manager system to carry on producing fresh clothing

[PatrikLundell]

Yes, the uniform clash for "uniformed" civilian jobs is still present. As far as I know dorfs should replace worn armor/weapons, although I don't think I've seen that myself (I try to keep my dorfs out of harm's way).

[Sarmatian123]

Though you can form military squad with uniform of civilian cloths with "replace" and "exact match".
Then you station the squad for 1 month and issue solved.

Wouldn't you get clashes between civilian (miner and woodcutter) and military uniforms that way?
[...]

You have to assign specific piece of armor, weapon and shield to each military Dwarf. It is a little tedious, but when you see your Dwarf changing the "leather dress" for "leather armor", you get some *hint* why there are miss-matches with military uniforms and civilian cloths all the time.

I tend to add medics to my miners and engineers. Woodcutting I leave on bowyers and carpenters. So I do not use them in military.
However I do mix hunters with my fortress guards squad, formed upon sheriff. When you eliminated all conflicting civilian cloths (shoes, mittens, caps, robes, vests, tunics) from your fortress and when you assign specific piece of armor, then the hunter-military will drop their military equipment upon going civilian. You need large receiver stockpile for those if you train whole squads or, like I do, train those xbows Dwarves monthly only in pairs. Upon going back military they will pick exactly their stuff from stockpile. No conflicts. No issues. I never had any issues with my military Dwarves going into battle in incomplete equipment. Just make sure all stuff they use is of master quality. That adds to their effectiveness.

Though I found out steel equipment vs FUN! is not working so well (steel vs adamantine + skills?). Adamantine equipment on mission of conquest against Dark Tower's devil is also a fail (leadership skill and wrestler skills and not weapon combat skills?).

[Moeteru]

How I usually set it up is to create two quantum stockpiles. One is set to take from the clothiers shops and only accepts masterwork/artifact clothing. The other accepts items of any quality from anywhere, and is also configured to be a refuse stockpile so that clothes placed in it rot away faster. I then use the manager to keep at least ~20 of each type of clothing in stock at all times.
Keeping only masterwork quality clothing avoids most of the size-related issues, since invaders normally only bring low-quality items. The down-side is that you need highly skilled clothesmakers and a good supply of thread for your weavers (I usually just use a GCS/FB silk farm).
If you've got an atom-smasher or magma incinerator attached to your main refuse stockpile you should make sure it doesn't accept any kind of clothing, otherwise you'll get unhappy thoughts related to art defacement whenever a worn-out masterwork gets disposed of.

I can't say I've ever noticed any dwarves replacing clothing before it starts showing signs of wear. I usually produce so much that that isn't a problem, but I'll keep an eye out for it in future.