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This isn't a new topic by any means.

So I've been thinking about how to optimally build workshops and place QS stockpiles that:

[list type=decimal]
[li]1. reduces foot traffic between input and output stockpiles (where the workshop takes form and gives to[/li]
[li]2. is expandable as the fortress grows[/li]
[list]3. Can be macroed or built into Quickfort blueprints[/li]
[/list]

Specifically, I am interested in layouts that use the QS stockpile technique involving 2x3 feeder/receiver stockpiles and 1x1 Qs filled by a minecart trackstop. This technique is explained in great detail by [url=https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/2kuvs1/mechanixms_guide_to_better_stockpiling_part_2_the/]Mechanixm[/url]

The benefit of course of QS is that much floor space can be saved. No more 50x50 stockpile floors.  The current idea I'm working off of (stole from Mech!) involves three levels.

[img alt=Example QS-Workshop Stack]http://i.imgur.com/Ccle32Z.png[/img]

Not pictured is a Finished Goods stockpile level at [code single]z-2 with the same layout as the Primary Materials.

This layout allows for 11 workshops that take Primary Materials as their inputs and produce Primary Materials as their outputs, and 11 Finished Goods workshops that take Primary Materials as an input and output Finished Goods.

Example Primary Materials Workshops

• Masonry - producing Blocks
• Smelter - producing Bars

Finished Goods Workshops

• Masonry - producing furniture
• Carpenter - beds

The problem:
Of course its not so simple, most workshops can produce Finished Goods and Primary Materials (using Mech's categorization system)

There are many more Finished Good workshops than there are Primary Materials Workshops. While 11 Primary Material Workshops is sufficient, 11 Finished Goods workshops is not enough for a midsized to large fort. Not to mention some workshops must be placed in certain locations (e.g., Jeweler's must go on the right as the 3 rightmost tiles are impassable), or the fact the some players like to wall off each workshop and add a door that can be forbidden in case of a strange mood gone-wrong.

Solution: I'm not sure yet. I'm considering recategorizing my stockpiles into more specific sets, and then use the Tier system to determine the placement of workshops.

Eventually I'd like to look at minecart systems, but not yet.

My main question now is: Is any of this worth it?!

While researching workshop flows on the wiki, it was about the time I ran across flowcharts like these that I realized how complicated the problem is.

The potential benefits of optimization are minimal, AFAICT.

Does anyone have some good ideas for segmenting their workshop industries that isn't totally OCD?

[§k]

I dont think it would be worthwhile to find the absolutely optimized solution, except for players who particularly enjoy arranging workshops.

But anything involving stone hauling deserves attention.

[Col_Jessep]

Does anyone have some good ideas for segmenting their workshop industries that isn't totally OCD?

I make a wood QSP, a stone QSP (no ores) and a bars QSP (with ores + flux) with matching workshops around them. One QSP is for everything I produce that I don't want to store in bins or that takes away lots of space: furniture, ammo, seeds, pots, tools...

Everything else is in regular stockpiles.

[Skullsploder]

You can optimize your fort to a ridiculous degree if you really get into it.

The most optimized you can get is to have a stockpile for each of the primary DF industries:

• WOOD: wood, tallow, ash, and lye, in a 1x2 minecart QSP surrounded by a carpenter's, a craftsdwarf's, a wood furnace, an ashery, a bowyer's, and a soapmaker's. This whole area should take up about 9x9 at the most, especially if you exclude the siege workshop.
• STONE AND METAL: all stone, bars, charcoal, gems, glass, clay, furniture, armour, weapons, crafts (and anything else you want decorated), bone and teeth surrounded by a kiln, glass furnace, mason's shop, mechanic's shop, craftsdwarf's, jewelers, forge, and smelter. This should also be 9x9, and would allow super easy decorating of items, since all the workshops that can provide decorations are 1 tile away from every unplaced piece of furniture in the fort. Optionally you could place a few more forges and smelters nearby to increase output, and make a separate QSP for sub-par metal items that you periodically designate for melting.
• FOOD: All food excluding tallow (and lye and poison, but I mean come on, that ain't food), thread, plants, cloth, and leather. Surrounded by a farmer's workshop, a kitchen, a still, a leatherworks, a dyer's, a clothesmakers, a butcher's, and a tanner's. You could also add in some millstones in the centre 3x3 space directly adjacent to the stockpile itself. With the "use only dyed cloth" command in the (o)rders menu, it's unnecessary to have a complex setup of stockpiles to ensure dyed cloth is used by your clothesmaker, so chucking everything in the same pile is a viable option. Again, this area is 9x9

So these three 9x9 areas would cover every workshop you can have. What remains, efficiency-wise, is just ensuring that there is an easy flow of raw materials into these locations, and making sure the relevant professionals live nearby. A big boost to efficiency is getting magma up to your fort so that the you don't need to be burning wood constantly to keep the forges and smelters running. Also good is if you make a QSP that dumps directly into an atomsmasher for all discarded clothing, unmeltable sub-par furniture (use stockpile quality settings), and unusable refuse.

I tried this once. The fort was incredibly efficient. So efficient that I got bored, but hey, that's just me - If you want to use this, it's pretty much as efficient as you can possibly get in terms of workshop and stockpile organisation.

[rmblr]

A big boost to efficiency is getting magma up to your fort so that the you don't need to be burning wood constantly to keep the forges and smelters running

Is building pump stacks for a 100+ z levels really the best way to get magma? Wouldn't using a minecart system or something be better?

I tend to have my metal industry at the magma sea with burrows, food, etc.

[Max™]

(and lye and poison, but I mean come on, that ain't food)

You telling me you've never had a craving for a big bowl of soap and arsenic soup before?

[Skullsploder]

A big boost to efficiency is getting magma up to your fort so that the you don't need to be burning wood constantly to keep the forges and smelters running

Is building pump stacks for a 100+ z levels really the best way to get magma? Wouldn't using a minecart system or something be better?

I tend to have my metal industry at the magma sea with burrows, food, etc.

I didn't say anything about a pump stack? I personally have yet to build a working magma pump stack but I have used minecarts to bring magma up. You don't need a lot, just 4/7 per forge/smelter/glass furnace/kiln. Minecart magma transport ftw. Having your metal industry using magma and at the surface frees up a crazy amount of dwarf labour, especially if you have a particularly large smelting operation going on.  I mean, otherwise you'd either need like 5 wood furnaces running constantly with more dwarves constantly chopping wood and others constantly hauling the wood and charcoal around, or you'd need to find a safe and efficient way of bringing ore (all the good metal is shallow, besides candy), goblinite, flux and charcoal (for steel), sand, and clay (for your glass and pottery industries) all down to the the magma sea. Either way, you're freeing up something like 20 unskilled labouring and hauling dwarves for military service or some other useful job.

(and lye and poison, but I mean come on, that ain't food)

You telling me you've never had a craving for a big bowl of soap and arsenic soup before?

Haha yes of course. It's great for adding flavour to rattlesnake venom biscuits.

[rmblr]

Oh minecarts bringing magma up? Interesting! Do you have it automated or are they guided carts? Do the magma tiles need to be refilled every so often?

Could you share some screenshots of a design you have with this working?

[Meneth]

See Minimalist magma moving on the wiki.

[Skullsploder]

Oh minecarts bringing magma up? Interesting! Do you have it automated or are they guided carts? Do the magma tiles need to be refilled every so often?

Could you share some screenshots of a design you have with this working?

What Meneth said. I don't have the save anymore for the last fort of mine that had a minecart elevator, but it was automated (and pretty exploity). My design is a bit different to the wiki's, but it was fast and high capacity. Basically, the thing looked like this:

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ooooo
o^^oo
o..oo
o.ooo
ooooo

Just rotated and repeated all the way down to the magma sea. The top left ramp is an impulse ramp connected to the north wall and ejecting east and the other ramp is a normal ramp connecting west-south, which leads up to the next layer's impulse ramp, and so on. The central open space is a shaft going all the way down to the filling station at the bottom.

At the top you have a receiving station like this:

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++++T+
++++P+
ooooDo
oo.^^oo
o╔HoT#o
o╚══╝oo
oooooo

Now this does look a bit complicated I'll admit, but it's really not that bad. The topmost T is a track stop where dwarves push carts south - you can accomplish this by making a (h)auling (r)oute, with just the one (s)top on that track stop, set to push south immediately. Assign an iron minecart (v)ehicle to the route and then forbid it as soon as the dwarf pushes it. Assign another one and forbid it once it's pushed, and so on. The P is a pressure plate linked to the door that activates only for minecarts of any weight, but NOT citizens. The two ramps are impulse ramps to provide the incoming carts with the power to get round the little circuit. The bottom T is a track stop with minimum friction set to dump east. The # is a grate or hole or whatever where the magma goes. The H is a hatch linked to a nearby lever which will let you stop the system once it's going. The rest is just flat track, or impulse ramps if you're feeling dangerous - I say that because if you ever want to stop the system, the carts should come to a rest on that flat section, and if there are impulse ramps there, dwarves may be injured when they remove one cart from in front of another. The hatch opens onto the shaft I mentioned earlier, so that carts can simply free fall back down to the magma.

Spoiler: Advanced stopping of the minecarts (click to show/hide)

If you have space on the z-levels under your receiving station, you can remove the hatch on the main level and instead place it 2  levels below, like so:

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ooooo
ooooo
o^Hoo
o^..o
ooooo
Because of a possible bug, minecarts falling and landing on top of another minecart will stack infinitely in the tile above the first minecart, so by placing the hatch two levels down, you can stack an unlimited amount of minecarts safely. This is very useful if you want 100 minecarts running simultaneously, but also want to be able to stop them at some point.

Now the filling station is the really tricky bit:

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z+0

ooooo
MG^oo
oo^oo
ooooo
ooooo

z+1
ooooo
PG.^o
oo.oo
ooooo

The ramps on z+0 both have highest-speed rollers on them (rollers made from iron/steel chains and magma-safe mechanisms), and are both impulse ramps as well. They both connect north-east. The bootom roller pushes north and the top one pushes east. G represents gear assemblies, made of magma-proof mechanisms (obviously). M represents your magma source, in my case a pump pulling directly from the magma sea. If you build the pump so that its solid tile is where the M is in this diagram, it will be powered by the gear assemblies. P represents a connection to any power source you see fit, be it a conveniently placed water reactor or a 150z tall vertical axle connecting to your windmill farm. Finally the ramp on z+1 is an impulse ramp connected east-south, which will spit carts up the south path to connect to the rest of your elevator.

Put the three bits together and you have a very decent magma transport system which is WAY less work and requires WAY less power than an actual pump stack, even if it is a little bit slower. At the top, make sure any cistern you make for the magma is tall and thin rather than wide and shallow, because evaporation is hectic. Also, once you've filled the channels under your forges and smelters to 4/7 or more, you won't ever need to refill it because at that depth it won't evaporate and it's not actually used up by the forges/smelters.

Note that this entire design needs dwarves off the tracks. Dwarves on the tracks is guaranteed to equal disaster, because minecarts filled with magma are heavy and getting hit by one every three seconds is fairly lethal, so you should make sure any maintenance doors on the actual shaft are kept sealed when the thing is running, that all such doors are kept tightly closed with (o) as well as forbidden (because pets can still open forbidden doors), and that your power supply does not provide foot access to the filling station. The whole thing is fairly self-equalising though - by that I mean you can just chuck as many minecarts in as you want, and the filling station at the bottom will dispense them evenly enough that they won't crash on the way up and spill their contents.