Print

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

[Hannibal Barcalounger]

I've never had much of a textiles setup in past games. But this fort has survived long enough that some of my original 7 are walking around in tattered rags and I guess I ought to do something about it. I'm not really sure where to start though.

Should I trade with caravans to get some sheep or other shearable animals? How big of a pig tail plot would I need to keep my 100 or so colonists fully attired in the latest fashions? Do people ignore shearing and plants and just operate on what the caravans bring?

Also, when do dwarfs pick up new clothes? Once something becomes tattered, or when there's a higher-quality item available? Is there a way to encourage dwarves to discard tattered items in a particular place to make disposing of it easier on me?

If my military uniforms only specify leather and metal pieces, will militia dwarves fill in with cloth pieces as they see fit, or discard the cloth when it's tattered?

[Jacob/Lee]

Making new clothing is basically useless right now as far as I know. Dwarves never really put the clothes on I think, they just drop it in their room when they get one.

[cdrcjsn]

There's a work around where you assign everyone to military squads and create a cloth uniform.

Actually, it's a good idea to do that anyway so you can give everyone a bone helm or some other cheap headgear.

[Thatdude]

To answer your questions, you only need a smallish plot of pig tails to grow enough for a large amount. Especially if you supplement it with the occasional box of cloth from the odd caravan. Getting shearable animals in my opinion isn't as efficient as just farming because farming is MUCH faster and MUCH more productive, especially with legendary farmers. You can just use cloth from the caravans, especially if you encourage the elves as their sissy hippy minds think it's their most valuable trade good, and so if you actually pay them anything, the amount they bring will increase exponentially.

As others have said, dwarves never pick up new clothes. That might be something in the next version if not, it'll be coming "soon^tm". All dwarves do throw away old clothes though, so any fort living more than 10 years ends up as a nudist fort.

If military only specify leather or metal armour, even if they are set to 'partial matches' they will only pick up proper armour. So wont pick up clothes.

[Girlinhat]

I usually do a 10x10 plot of rope reed and another 10x10 of blade weed, because these can be grown year-round without interruption.  Then forbid both of these from your main food stockpile to avoid clogging.  Start with a few dozen/hundred bags and one quern, farmer's shop, loom, and craft shop.  Set plant processing, milling, dying, looming, and crafts on repeat, and very soon you'll have a fort overflowing with valuable cloth crafts.

This can, obviously, be modified to allow mass tunic and shoe production, so that any dwarf with the related military uniform will wear them.  To avoid the issue of clothing being claimed but never worn, I usually just periodically magma purge the clothier's shop.  You lose some value, but meh, it's not like the stuff isn't infinite!

This is also very fun because you can have caravans that take 2 years to load every individual cloth craft that you sold them!

[Hannibal Barcalounger]

10x10 farm plot? Good lord. I've been feeding my whole fortress on less than 40 tiles of plump helmets and the like. (Well, that, and a LOT of Forgotten Beast meat/tallow.)

If I go ahead and give everyone a "uniform" of basic leather armor and leftover metal stuff, is there any actual benefit to supplying them with cloth or silk garments as well? Can you get happy thoughts from silk garments, or from high-quality ones (regardless of type)?

[Girlinhat]

Yeah, it's overkill, but a bit of stockpile control and it means that you always have enough stuff.  Plus I usually end up splitting them into strawberries and prickle berries and other stuff once I've got raw plants stocked.

[peskyninja]

Something very very very strange happened to me yesterday, I just finished of dispatching the liason and he said he would pay a lot for shoes, so i ordered 60 shoes to be made, after they were finished and the caravan arrived I ordered the bins to be brought to the depot but I've noticed 1 problem
there were only 12 shoes, and my mandate was finished, so I proceed to take a look on a kid (v) and i discover she's wearing:
 +<<+pig tail shoes+>>+.
After taking a look on the entire fort I reached a  conclusion: dwarfs claimed the shoes and weared them.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I have a very bad english sorry.

[IT 000]

Pics? I'd love to see this 

[peskyninja]

Sorry just checked again,they're all in   the middle of the childs room.(40 shoes)

[Sutremaine]

DFhack is your friend. You'll need to confiscate everything to get rid of owned clothes that are still new, which might or might not cause problems with military food (so far they're still just carrying the stuff in their backpacks. I don't know if I'll need to do anything about that).

[ASCIt]

10x10 farm plot? Good lord. I've been feeding my whole fortress on less than 40 tiles of plump helmets and the like. (Well, that, and a LOT of Forgotten Beast meat/tallow.)

If I go ahead and give everyone a "uniform" of basic leather armor and leftover metal stuff, is there any actual benefit to supplying them with cloth or silk garments as well? Can you get happy thoughts from silk garments, or from high-quality ones (regardless of type)?

Wait, does that make me weird, even by DF standards? I always dig out 6 10x10 farm plots on embark and set each to a different underground plant... Then I usually end up setting one for each above-ground crop and channeling out above them to expose them to the light.

[Prixel]

I usually try that, as  run out of food after a year of having a 12x12 farm plots.

?_?

[Gizogin]

I have never needed more than a 4x4 plot for each type of plant...
I used to go with 10x10, but my current fort with just 4x4 plots has OVER FIVE THOUSAAAAAAAAAAND surplus plants, so I shut them all down for a while.

[Girlinhat]

One slightly odd way to solve the clothing claiming issue is to make everything into armor via modding.  It never decays and cannot be claimed.  I've also found dwarves without private rooms claim things far less frequently.