Print

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

[Milkymalk]

Quick question:

My farming plots are FAR away from my fortress due to biome reasons. I set up a track with a minecart in order to keep my farmers to running back and forth for every single plant they harvest. But instead of putting stuff into the input stockpile right next to the plots, they are still carrying each single plant back to the fortress' main stockpiles.

Can I tell them to not do that?

[IT 000]

Delete and recreate the food stockpiles just in case something was bumped on accident. Otherwise burrows may be your only option here.

[escondida]

You can set the destination stockpiles to take from links only. The catch is that if your main plant stockpile can take from links only, you'll need to create a separate stockpile for your other raw food (meat, etc.).

[anewaname]

Using the linked stockpiles method will work, but if you are planting underground dwarfy plants in the soil layer that is in the corner of the map because the rest of the embark map is mountain terrain, then you will find it easier to move your farm plot to a more central location, by muddying rock so you can build a farmplot there, using irrigation. This is easy if you have a water source and a few buckets.

[PatrikLundell]

Dwarven job logic is odd. I wouldn't be surprised if the stockpile targeted for plant delivery after harvest was selected at the time the harvest job was picked up. If that is the case, the dorf would probably have selected the stockpile closest (as the dwarf digs) to the dwarf's position at the job pickup time, not the harvest location.
Linked stockpiles would work, but I suspect your minecart solution is going to be rather inefficient:
- Unless you set harvesting to be performed by farmers only, harvesting jobs are taken up by the first dorf that happens to be free after the plant is ripe for harvest (with the exception of miners, who are intercepted on their way to their jobs and turned around to harvest). These dorfs will probably pick up the targeted plant, place it in your feeder stockpile, and then return to the fortress, passing by your target stockpile on their way to their next job.
- When the harvesting dorf has put the plant into the feeder stockpile a very low priority hauler job to move it into the mine cart is generated. Unless the harvester happens to be a dedicated hauler and you've got a fair bit of hauler unemployment, the harvester is likely to pick up a "real" job rather than the mine cart filler one, or a higher priority hauler one (mmm, old dry bones in the cavern: must haul to refuse stockpile immediately!).
- Unless you were lucky at the previous step, another dorf will trek to the feeder stockpile to move the plant to the mine cart. If you're lucky, that dorf may actually perform several plant move tasks while there (in particular if the only hauling jobs on offer are mine cart filling ones), but frequently it's going to be one plant being moved and then a trek back to take a higher priority hauling job.

Burrows might work (I've never tried to use them for things other than civilian alerts and procreation arrangements, but I fear cancellation spam).

Another alternative might be farmer only harvesting and have workshops close to the plots for the farmers to work in when not planting/harvesting. Workshops using the harvested plants might be an option. Of course, you'll then get a small number of dorfs trekking to the plant stockpile to pick up favorite food items, but that may be a better option (and you should be happy to get at least some dorfs who get something nice to eat).

[Fleeting Frames]

As far as cart multi-job hauling efficiency goes, I frequently notice that when I set a cart to be pushed so I may test something the same hauler who brought the cart to position will turn around in few tiles with ? and go push it. Though this may not necessarily occur for other situations or farm-stockpile-cart-cart cycle, granted, depending on fort.

However, you're correct about there+return trip being done anyway, unless the farms are big enough to have same dwarf collect multiple times per harvest.

A case where farms might be big enough...Well, if one is planting rope reeds in partially mountainous embark similarly to what anewaname said, it's possible that the other biome is closer to access if one builds stairs to farm on irrigated constructed floor in air biome.
May want to check with showbiomes first to confirm all air isn't ineligible biome, though.

[PatrikLundell]

Cart pushing is a much higher priority job than cart filling, unfortunately (and I believe it's a different job category as well). The question mark thing is the "new" job pickup delay kicking in, where dorfs always start to walk towards an unknown destination for a while before looking for a new job to find the cart pushing one and return to perform the conveniently nearby job (I get a similar behavior with dorfs ordered to pull an atom smashing lever: they tend to pull the lever, walk away, and then decide it's a good time to clean out blood platters inside the smasher. They frequently have time to get inside before it activates as well... [solved by constantly locking and unlocking doors]). I don't know why some jobs get question marks and some don't though. Returning books to shelves seem to display question marks all the way, for instance.

[Buckley]

You can set the destination stockpiles to take from links only. The catch is that if your main plant stockpile can take from links only, you'll need to create a separate stockpile for your other raw food (meat, etc.).

This.

Also, I've taken to using a system where I set up a large stockpile next to my farms, disable all containers, and call it "Threshing Floor."  I set it to will take from anywhere and it becomes basically a large floor that all harvested plants get stockpiled on.  My kitchen, still, and plant processing workshops then pull from the Threshing Floor.  That way I can set the workshop stockpiles to 'take from links only' and disable the pull request from the Threshing Floor while I am processing in order to avoid job cancellations b/c some dwarf takes the barrel of plump helmets that my still is using to make booze.  Meanwhile, the Threshing Floor continues to receive harvested plants.  Whenever I'm done processing plants with my workshops I simply re-enable the pull request to the Threshing Floor and food haulers replenish workshop stockpile stocks.  I think that may be a perfect solution for you actually - with the distance it would give you control over waiting for a decent size batch of plants that need to be gathered and will keep your harvesters simply moving back and forth between the farm plots and the Threshing Floor.