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[LordPinkerton]

So, my problem is this. I'm trying to mill using the quern, but the Dwarf keeps insisting on pulling up a new empty bag each time he runs the job. This happens with either workflow or work orders and also settings links to specific stockpiles. I see that empty bag is a component of the job, but is there any way to get them to consolidate instead of wasting so many bag? Granted, I haven't let the process get to far out of frustration after I had 8 dimple dye in 5 separate bags, but will they eventually shore up the space?

The second part of my question is how exactly units organize bags and barrels. I set the contents not to mix to keep things simple, but I still notice that sometimes barrels will have partially filled bags along with loose produce as well. Are they supposed to eventually tidy up the stock by filling up those bags, or is storing bags in barrels just a waste of resources?

[Quietust]

1. No - "tidying up" (merging container contents or merging item stacks) is not part of the game yet.

2. If you enable "mix foods", then you can get a single barrel holding multiple types of items (meat, plants, cheese, prepared meals, mill powders, etc.). Storing bags in barrels is useful because it uses less stockpile space, but in the current version it also leads to annoying job cancellations because dwarves will always pick up the container in order to store items in it, during which all of the other contents become unavailable. Partially-filled bags will get filled, but only with items that aren't in any other containers, and it might only work if the bags aren't already in containers themselves.

[mikekchar]

Yeah, because of #2 I don't really use containers any more.  You can force dwarfs to "tidy up" by dumping the contents of bags and then reclaiming them, but that's a huge PITA.  My solution is simply to keep very small inventories.  At the beginning of the game, making bags is a bit of a priority, so embarking with a lot of thread, or a couple of llamas is useful (IIRC, a llama, when sheared, gives you 13 thread.  Embarked llamas are ready to be sheared, so this is an economical way of embarking with a reasonable amount of thread).  But your use of bags hits a steady state pretty quickly.  As your grower gains in skill, you get bigger stacks of plants which gives you bigger stacks of dye, for example.

The most useful way (IMHO) is to sit down and think about how much inventory you actually need.  How many cloth per month are you going to need?  Plants take about a month to mature [1], so you only need 1 month of inventory.  You need 1 bag per stack of plants.  If your stack averages about 4 plants, and you need 28 cloth per month, then you need 7 bags for the dye, 7 inventory tiles for the bags and 7 farm plot tiles for the dimple cups (dimple cups can be grown in every season).  That would allow you to fulfil a clothing job almost every day (which is quite a lot).   To generate the cloth, you will need 14 farm plot tiles for the pig tails (because they can only be grown in 2 seasons), and 14 storage tiles -- you want to process them on demand because the thread/cloth doesn't stack.   You need a few tiles for seeds and empty bags, so let's say a grand total of 60 tiles -- including the farm.  A 6X10 room to sustain a clothing job every day doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

I think where people tend to go wrong is by building a 6x10 farm plot and accumulating hundreds/thousands of plants.  Then it becomes a big problem to figure out what to do with it all.  Much better to spend a few minutes planning what you will need.

[1] - This is a lie.  Some crops take 25 days while others take about 40 days, but since the stack size is variable, it comes out in the wash.

[LordPinkerton]

Thank you for the replies. I think it's made me realize I need to take better care in my inventory instead of just going general piling.

So it is normal for the dwarves to pull an empty bag for each milling job, resulting in a bunch of nearly empty bags? There's no way to force them to grab the partially filled bag and simply add to it, short of the dump/reclaim method?

[PatrikLundell]

Dorfs are not capable of realizing that contents can be consolidated or, what's worse, that buckets with a little water left in it after use should be emptied and reused rather than dropped and never be touched again (unless the overseer intervenes to dump the contents or a DFHack script does).

[Another Cat]

In my experience they eventually start using partially filled bags, filling them more, may it be that you just have so many empty bags close to quern, whereas dye bags are far away? They usually pick nearest bag, at least in my experience.

[Quietust]

If you're concerned about bag usage for mill products, you should also consider fertilizing your farm plots with potash (as well as only allowing Legendary farmers to plant seeds) to increase the stack sizes of your harvests