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[Tamren]

Plant gathering zones are great for efficiency because dwarves will gather several plants at a time. But they won't actually carry those plants back, instead dumping them on the ground for haulers to take care of one at a time. This seems silly to me and there are various ways we could make this more realistic.

1. Picker baskets

If you've ever seen people working on a plantation or orchard you will likely recognize this idea. It's basically a large wicker basket about the size of a wine barrel that you wear on your shoulders. When picking fruits such as melons or pineapples you just toss them over your shoulder into the basket and keep going until it is full, then return to a central location to drop it off, typically a truck on modern farms. In game terms this would work like a backpack but be a separate item that doesn't get used by soldiers, instead it is a specialized harvesting tool like a stepladder that gets stored in furniture piles when not in use. Picker baskets can be made out of wood, cloth or leather and contain the same volume as a barrel. Instead of dropping harvested plants when there are too many to carry, a dwarf with a full picker basket will stop gathering and first look for an empty barrel to dump the plants into, or failing than simply place the basket into the nearest food stockpile where it acts like a barrel with a built in "give" order that causes dwarves to empty it into other containers.

2. Plant stacking

When dwarves gather plants from a zone they should try to gather all of a single type first before moving on to the next. So for instance a dwarf gathering mangoes will continue to gather mangoes until there are no more, or they run out of carrying capacity. This reduces the amount of hauling jobs created down the line. When combined with other tools like picker baskets you could have a dwarf pick an entire basket of mangoes and then empty it into a barrel creating a barrel full of mangoes in one fell swoop, which eliminates "sorting" hauling tasks entirely.

3. Gathering with wheelbarrows

In the zone options there could be a toggle for gathering with wheelbarrows. When this is enabled dwarves will no longer carry plants back to a stockpile by hand, instead they drop all of the plants on the ground creating a "bushel". This creates a special hauling task where a dwarf will find a wheelbarrow and pick up that bushel of plants. The dwarf manning the wheelbarrow will continue to gather bushels of plants until there are no more jobs, or the wheelbarrow is full. Then they will cart the whole thing back to the nearest food stockpile.

4. Assign wheelbarrows, picker baskets and stepladders to plant gathering zones

Gathering zones could have a configurable number of tools to keep in stock that are bound to that specific gathering zone. This is configured the same way you control how many supplies are kept stored in a hospital zone. Tools assigned to a zone are stored there instead of in furniture stockpiles and will not be used for other tasks.

5. Option to cap the number of pickers working in a zone.

Having a cap would be helpful to control how many dwarves will gather plants at the same time, without actually disabling that labor on your dwarves until there are only a small number.

6. Cap the number of plant gathering assignments and clear all gathering jobs when a zone is deleted.

There is a longstanding bug where plant gathering zones will queue up EVERY possible gathering job in the entire zone all at once. These jobs persist even after you delete or pause the gathering zone and cannot be removed even if the plants they refer to no longer exist! Zones should not assign a job until the moment a dwarf is active in the zone and you should be able to cancel this task like any other job. This bug dates all the way back to 2015 and really needs to be fixed because if you make the mistake of designating a large zone you can potentially softlock your fort if plant gathering is enabled for every dwarf.

[Onidotmoe]

Plant gathering zones are great for efficiency because dwarves will gather several plants at a time. But they won't actually carry those plants back, instead dumping them on the ground for haulers to take care of one at a time. This seems silly to me and there are various ways we could make this more realistic.

1. Picker baskets

If you've ever seen people working on a plantation or orchard you will likely recognize this idea. It's basically a large wicker basket about the size of a wine barrel that you wear on your shoulders. When picking fruits such as melons or pineapples you just toss them over your shoulder into the basket and keep going until it is full, then return to a central location to drop it off, typically a truck on modern farms. In game terms this would work like a backpack but be a separate item that doesn't get used by soldiers, instead it is a specialized harvesting tool like a stepladder that gets stored in furniture piles when not in use. Picker baskets can be made out of wood, cloth or leather and contain the same volume as a barrel. Instead of dropping harvested plants when there are too many to carry, a dwarf with a full picker basket will stop gathering and first look for an empty barrel to dump the plants into, or failing than simply place the basket into the nearest food stockpile where it acts like a barrel with a built in "give" order that causes dwarves to empty it into other containers.

2. Plant stacking

When dwarves gather plants from a zone they should try to gather all of a single type first before moving on to the next. So for instance a dwarf gathering mangoes will continue to gather mangoes until there are no more, or they run out of carrying capacity. This reduces the amount of hauling jobs created down the line. When combined with other tools like picker baskets you could have a dwarf pick an entire basket of mangoes and then empty it into a barrel creating a barrel full of mangoes in one fell swoop, which eliminates "sorting" hauling tasks entirely.

3. Gathering with wheelbarrows

In the zone options there could be a toggle for gathering with wheelbarrows. When this is enabled dwarves will no longer carry plants back to a stockpile by hand, instead they drop all of the plants on the ground creating a "bushel". This creates a special hauling task where a dwarf will find a wheelbarrow and pick up that bushel of plants. The dwarf manning the wheelbarrow will continue to gather bushels of plants until there are no more jobs, or the wheelbarrow is full. Then they will cart the whole thing back to the nearest food stockpile.

4. Assign wheelbarrows, picker baskets and stepladders to plant gathering zones

Gathering zones could have a configurable number of tools to keep in stock that are bound to that specific gathering zone. This is configured the same way you control how many supplies are kept stored in a hospital zone. Tools assigned to a zone are stored there instead of in furniture stockpiles and will not be used for other tasks.

5. Option to cap the number of pickers working in a zone.

Having a cap would be helpful to control how many dwarves will gather plants at the same time, without actually disabling that labor on your dwarves until there are only a small number.

6. Cap the number of plant gathering assignments and clear all gathering jobs when a zone is deleted.

There is a longstanding bug where plant gathering zones will queue up EVERY possible gathering job in the entire zone all at once. These jobs persist even after you delete or pause the gathering zone and cannot be removed even if the plants they refer to no longer exist! Zones should not assign a job until the moment a dwarf is active in the zone and you should be able to cancel this task like any other job. This bug dates all the way back to 2015 and really needs to be fixed because if you make the mistake of designating a large zone you can potentially softlock your fort if plant gathering is enabled for every dwarf.

The picker basket could just be buckets.

[Tamren]

Buckets aren't big enough though. Legendary herbalists can easily pick up and carry several dozen stacks of 5 plants, often to the point that they can barely walk. That doesn't make much sense, but it WOULD make sense if they had a tool like a picker basket they could use to carry everything. I think it makes the most sense to limit dwarves to a realistic carry capacity and then allow them to increase that back up using tools like baskets and wheelbarrows.