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[indyofcomo]

What are the cons, assuming there are some, to just assigning every dwarf every job he has a good role for(higher than x% in Therapist)? I am guessing that's going to make dwarves with no clear RL professional bent("I'm a smith." "I'm a farmer."), but is there anything wrong with that? Is there anything wrong with having 4x the dwarves assigned than the available workshops?

[itg]

If you care about the quality of a particular type of item produced, it's better to have only one or two dwarves do that job, so you don't spread the XP around too much. If you're short on workforce, it's usually more efficient to have each dwarf do only the job they're best at, so each dwarf works as fast as he can.

I find it's pretty effective to have a set of workshops reserved for the most skilled dwarves, who only do their chosen craft and maybe a few odd jobs, and a set for the plebs (possibly with multiples for some industries), who have a lot of labors enabled. When quality counts, I assign the job to the masters, and when it doesn't it's first come, first serve.

[klefenz]

When you set up a hospital assign everyone to every medical profession. Real doctors are assholes, they always claim to be too busy with something (idling) to attend Urist McBrokenArms. Lack of skill in medical professions means they take longer to complete, but it still a lot faster than waiting for a doc to haul his ass to the hospital.

[backora900]

In the last forts I actually preferred doing so. Everyone is doing everything except for military, farmers (3 legendary could supply fort of 120 dwarves) and nobles (because they are too busy making those silly demands ).

This way I am sure that the work will be done (yay for party . The quality of the work is just not that important.
Farmers are special because the better they are the more (and faster) they produce.

When some dwarf starts to be somewhat skilled in a certain profession and there is a lot of other peasants then I will make him specialist (a master of the profession/guild .

pros:
- Work will be done - every dwarf is replaceable
- Easy to organize - Did I assign someone to the brewery? I can't remember.
- Farmer or smith - they all die the same

cons:
- It may drag a specialist from their work - Master smith is still making potash.
- Some profession needs tools - miner/woodcutter - only 1 tool allowed for a dwarf
- No legendary engraver/crafter/... - not so many masterwork items -> not many happy thoughts (also less value = less thieves, I think)
- Also I think that those who decorate something incorporate their preferences (what they (dis)like) into the craft. (not sure about this one though)

[klefenz]

Mass miners is entirely possible and practical, just order a lot of picks (and slabs).

[ancistrus]

additional pros:
your fortress is less likely to give you a seizure

[kingubu]

The autolabor plugin for dfhack is useful if you don't want to mess with labor settings.

Just 'autolabor 1' in the console and fogetaboutit.

[Blastbeard]

In my experience, you actually get less done with having every dwarf do every thing than you would with specializing them. I typically start out with large buidling projects on the surface, and when I commit every person to them, vital things take longer to get done.
For instance, if I designate a large mass of walls and floors to be built into a tower along with other things such as workshops and various necessary items, everyone tries to finish building the tower before they move on to other tasks. It's as if the individuals prefer to work on whatever the largest number of laborers is dedicated to.
It's good in that that one thing will get done faster, but when your megaproject is going to take at least half a year to finish, and nobody's going to tend crops or brew alcohol before it's finished... well, then problems arise.

In short, if the project can get done near instantly if you assign enough workers to it, do so. If not, and the project will take time, you can still assign a large number of workers to it but you should make sure to reserve some people to do all the other little tasks too.

[Shoku]

I've gone with the specialist workers versus peasant class labor system* in therapist for a long time. My broker gets to sit around a ton just because I want him at the gorram depot NOW. Various smiths get the same workflow except when I actually have lots of raw material for them to shape into furniture.

*When you have time you let each peasant snag a single experience in, say, weaponsmithing, to influence the moods and legendary skills you'll get.

I split it down moodable skills. All of the other skills get enabled on everyone. I adjust this a bit if I want to build a lot of walls, profiling the mason's workshop to the skilled dwarves while everyone else gets to install the walls and things. I tweak it a bit for keeping things look food and drink going while everyone else obsesses over the building project.