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[gilrad]

So its been almost a year since I struck adamantine, yet I haven't had a single completed job yet, despite the fact my workshop is almost always occupied with somebody extracting strands.

It looks like what is happening is, the person who is currently doing the job will sit there for what feels like ages, then he will put the task down to eat/sleep/drink. When he picks it up again, does he start from scratch or what?

[Lord Shonus]

Are you absoultely sure that you have no strands? Unskilled strand extraction taks long enough that the tands might get stockpiled without you noticing.

[gilrad]

Nope, didn't have any strands at all.

Frustrated, I took my dwarf with the highest agility, disabled all his other tasks and put him in strand extraction. I'm getting them now.

[darkflagrance]

I've also noticed this happening with tasks that require large amounts of ingredients, such as modded smelter reactions that require ten pieces of metal and one piece of flux. It seems that when the tasked dwarf puts his work aside to take a break, someone tends to go into the smelter and return the formerly tasked bars to the stockpile, thus forcing the task to begin again anew. Perhaps a similar process is occurring with your unskilled, slow extractors?

[Derakon]

Any non-construction job has no indication of how far it has progressed, so if it gets canceled for any reason, then when it's picked up again, the dwarf has to start over from scratch. So, yes, jobs that take a long time are significantly harder to do than jobs that are fast, just because the dwarves get hungry/thirsty/tired and quit.

I seem to recall reading a few months back that Toady had changed that for the next version so that dwarves would try to finish their current task before heading off to satisfy bodily needs. Don't quote me on that though.

[piesquared]

Put a stone stockpile accepting only the relevant stone next to the workshop where you want to do the extracting, and in your normal workshop area (which shouldn't be too far from beds/food/booze). That way you maximize the time a dwarf can spend on the job before it gets canceled (and has to start over). It also means unskilled dwarves can do some of the labor, even if it's just moving the stones to the workshop, while skilled (and therefore faster) dwarves do the difficult/slow part.

Personally, putting a stockpile accepting the raw materials for any given workshop in the tiles immediately surrounding the workshop (and stone stockpiles near any major construction) is one of the first things I do once I have rooms carved out. That way all those "peasants" and "cheesemakers" can do something useful even after my military is full.

[Malicus]

Another thing you can do is to lock the dwarf in once he's gathered things and started working, so that the only thing he can get to is the workshop.   He won't cancel to eat or drink on a whim if he can't access those things.  Just make sure to let him back out after he's done.