Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[kefkakrazy]

How do you manage labor for megaprojects? In a normal fort, if you try doing them with some sane balance of masons to normal dwarves, it'll take you twelve years to build a simple, unadorned ginormous water tower. So... how do you manage the labor?

Originally, I just had a large number of masons, and set most of the dwarves with certain labors (haulers, miners) to Masonry while having all the mason's workshops limited to skilled masons only. Lately, though, I've been playing with Dwarf Manager, and it's pretty nice. Every dwarf that is not performing a job where skill does anything other than change the speed (this includes things like block making, smelting, butchery, tanning...) gets shoved into a massive work gang. The only exceptions are miners, who get left alone entirely because they always have work, and woodcutters, for the same reason.

I use DM to control the labors of the work gangs (I usually cut them off at ten dwarves apiece) in bulk. If I need leather, or if there's a lot of stray kittens born recently, I have them all go on butchery/tanning, build five butcher's shops and five tanneries in the basement (immense open room used for drainage), and they can go through the full cat population in a month or two, it's awesome. If I need something smelted, well, there's a reason I have two forges and eight smelters. They rock for smoothing, too, though I leave engraving to the real masons.

And most importantly, it means I have a huge supply of dwarves who can turn on masonry and go churn out blocks, then haul those blocks up to make a gigantic representation of a doggie bone IN THE NAME OF ARMOK.

(If you haven't noticed, this isn't a "How do you?" thread, it's a "How do YOU!?" thread!

[Skorpion]

Simple; all non-useful dwarves (those that are neither in the starting seven, immigrants with skills, apprentices designated because I need more of a certain type of dorf, or have gone fey and become legendary) have masonry enabled. Workshop profiles keep all the random dorfs from making furniture I need to be valuable.

[inaluct]

I pretty much do that, too.

[Martin]

I have minimal set of dwarves that support the fortress - a grower, a brewer/cook, etc. If I'm doing a megaproject, I'm not cutting trees, mining, smelting, making crafts, etc. I generally don't start on the megaproject until the scheduled mining is done and I have enough trade items for the next year (gobbos usually take care of that for me). Woodcutting is done once every 3 years and only takes about a month for 9 embark tiles (everything else stops and everyone hauls wood while this happens).

The key, I've found, with megaprojects is to cut out all of the extraneous walking. If you are building, don't also have your masons making blocks or they'll spend time trading off jobs and walk across your fort. Move a food/booze pile right next to the construction site. Don't have your haulers moving blocks and cleaning up after a siege or they'll make trips without carrying anything. Forbid the siege junk, haul the blocks, turn off the 'take from pile' job, and go back to cleaning up after the siege, etc.

Mostly I try to keep the fortress focused on single tasks - clean up after a siege, build a project, dump stone, etc. When I don't have one of these things, then I'll turn on crafts, melt armor, make bins, and so on and everyone can break up and get all of that stuff done.

[Cheshire Cat]

i allways used to do everything in a horribly haphazard way. but martin is right, cutting down as much walking time as possible makes things go super fast.

i mostly use raw stone rather then blocks for my creations, and my latest one, a giant 30 z level dam built into a cliff face below a brook, had a huge stockpile of stone designated right above it. a quarter of my workforce was set to haul stone only, while the rest were masons. while that was going on i had a few hunters, fishers, farmers and butchers, who still managed to create far more food then i could eat, and around five dwarves going hard at a metal industry along with a few miners. i ended up turning sieges off, not because they were killing my dwarves, but because they were getting so large that it was taking all year to pack away the stuff they left out, and i didnt want the kobolts getting it because stealth kobolt bowmen attacks suck.

so yeah, reduce walking time, create food and booze stockpiles, near your construction site, preferably inside a little underground dirt room or small walled area with a pet forbidden door if you have racoons or similar wildlife, and as martin said switching the majority of your workforce to certain tasks is very efficient.

also, this manage thing needs some explaining. i only use it to create tonnes of clothes or coffins when i need lots of something but not an infinite amount. kefkacrazy, are you saying it can be used to designate groups of dwarves to go smooth things or build walls?