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[Urist McPenguin]

Sometimes I like to leave my workshop dwarves idle instead of reassigning labours when I don't need their industry at the time. This means they're free to work as soon as I need them, instead of having to wait for them to finish the 200 tile journey they just started to pick up some dumped stone. What I tend to do once my main dwarf is at legendary is turn off their labour and train another (at least 1, perhaps more) dwarf up to the same skill level, so I have someone to replace immediately should some fun happen.

I've never really seen the need to have more then one legendary mason, carpenter or woodcutter active at any given time, as they can make a huge load of high quality goods in very little time, or chop a hell of a lot of trees.


My strategy for setting up my dwarves is simple, I blank them ALL in Therapist, sort by the labours I want on setting the highest dwarf at each one (using my head to solve the issue of one dwarf being the best at multiple jobs), and then sorting by assigned labours. Everyone that has 0 (meaning they're not the highest skill) either becomes a second in a field (mainly planting/mining), or has hauling labours turned on.

[Hyndis]

All of my dwarves are general purpose farmers and haulers unless they have special skills.

If they have special skills they can be promoted to the elite. In most of my fortress I may only have 15-20 dwarves that produce goods. These are the blacksmiths, craftsdwarves, jewelers, carpenters, etc. They perform no hauling tasks at all. Their entire lives are devoted to their crafts. They are also not expendable.

My military recruits are drawn from the ranks of my farmers. They're pretty much interchangeable and fully expendable.

[AtomicPaperclip]

I usually have about 80/218 dwarves idle. About 80 of the "working" dwarves are partying.

There just really isn't that much for my dwarves to being doing.

[Shade-o]

I keep as many dwarves working as possible, usually through dumping stone.

It keeps them from making friends, you see.

[Niloc]

I've had a fort that had 200 dwarfs with an 85% idle rate at times, others with a 2% idle rate. 

For the 85% idle time, I was under siege with a poorly defended tower project above ground.  It was just easier to close the doors after everyone got in and just have food production going.  Oh, and my only good weaponsmith churning out adamantine serrated blades for my tunnel of goblin "love".

I was rather proud of the 2% time, I had 5-10 dwarves training stonework, detailing, mining, metalwork, etc, at a time.  Whole chains of "Make, break, remake" going on on an epic scale.  I think I had 120 pieces of copper in flight at any given time for the furnaces.  Due to an epic barrel shortage, I had started work on a 3 z tall edge to edge muddied plot for trees.  It's still playable at a reasonable FPS, but I haven't the time to get back to work.

[Absentia]

I'm not organized enough to keep the idlers employed either. I don't mind the potentially deadly friendships, but I sure get sick of breaking up parties at the green glass table so the miners will get back to work. One of these forts I'm going to mass produce crossbows, assign them all Hunting, and let natural selection run its course.

[fanatic]

I try to have less than 5 idlers in a ~100 pop fort most of the time.

For emergency leverpulling there are always 4 professional idlers that dont show up in the counter anyway. if too many are idling it means that the obsidian farm needs a speedup/extenstion, and that all metal crap from the next human/dwarf caravan will be bought out for melting with glass-decorated obsidian trash and glass-decorated goblin socks. And yeah, when's the next goblin convoy for the meatgrinder? 

[Shiv]

oh god, the logistics of getting 190 dwarves all working at the same time....

Pave the WORLD!

[Psieye]

Usually my forts die of FPS death before I have a bunch of long-term idlers. According to Dwarf Therapist, my custom profession of "Drone" has 30 labours enabled - every skill that only affects speed as there is no quality. These interchangeable drones (soldiers are picked out before the drone assignments) form the backbone of my fortress as they're the ones that prevent workshops from getting cluttered, as well as acquiring and bringing the raw materials to the workshops' vicinity. There is Always more stone to dump, more plants to haul, more worthless trash to throw into the atom-smasher, etc etc.

Such dedication to maximum industry isn't necessarily a good thing, as my forts all die of FPS death from having so many items to keep track of... Having idle dwarves is a sign you aren't running head-first into FPS death.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Workhouses.
All dwarves who have no real profession, and who are impractical to train, should either be drafted or sent to work the pumps.

[ShadeJS]

I've always had the 10% rule. Whenever about 10% of the population is regularly idle I audit the idlers and adjust their labours to slow workshops / projects, or draft them. I wait a bit, the do the same again. This catches the sleeping / otherwise busy idlers that I missed the first time. Then it's just a matter of waiting for that idle number to creep back up. The exception to this was good old 40D legendaries who have their hauling off. But they were seldom idle.

[gane green]

Had something like this but they were going around in circles. I dont know if they fixed it yet but it come down to linking a stockpile from one to the other. Quite some time later I was wondering why everyone was starving. If you run into this unlink the two stockpiles and they go back to there buisness.

[Psieye]

DF2010 broke linked stockpiles.

[Jude]

What's "linking stockpiles?" Never even heard of it - and I was playing 40d (haven't got a chance to play 2010 since I went overseas and only have a netbook)

[Hyndis]

What's "linking stockpiles?" Never even heard of it - and I was playing 40d (haven't got a chance to play 2010 since I went overseas and only have a netbook)

Setting up stockpiles with a take from command.

I find them highly overrated myself. Never used them and I don't see any point to using them.