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[sketchesofpayne]

I've finally tackled decorating items these past few months.  By default items are decorated based on proximity to the workshop.  While assigning stockpiles to workshops basically works it is a hassle to set up and manage.

Pondering this issue I figured the best solution, aside from a more detailed decoration job order, would be to mark items for decoration in the same way items are marked for melting, dumping, and forbidding.

For instance, go into the stocks screen and mark a dozen steel helmets for decoration.  Set a job for 'Stud with gold' 12/12.

Mark a bunch of furniture for decoration.  Jeweler's Shop 'encrust furniture with green zircon' 'r'epeat.  The shop will go until you get the message that the job has been canceled for lack of an item to be decorated.

[voliol]

Having to mark items all the time seems less-than optimal for an automated system. I’m still for this, along with a more detailed specifying system (or one regarding the item to be decorated at all), but instead of restricting the decorating to only selected items, it should prioritize selected items, with an additional option to only do selected items.

[sketchesofpayne]

Having to mark items all the time seems less-than optimal for an automated system. I’m still for this, along with a more detailed specifying system (or one regarding the item to be decorated at all), but instead of restricting the decorating to only selected items, it should prioritize selected items, with an additional option to only do selected items.

(Real Question) How much of your produced goods and furniture do you decorate?

I know that some players encrust and stud just about everything to up its value.

I myself only decorate items of high quality, or items specifically set aside for projects.  For instance: I commissioned 30 silver tables for a dining hall.  Of these 16 were superior quality or better.  I then had to disable tables from all furniture stockpiles and make a stockpile for good quality silver tables that was linked to a jeweler's shop along with a cut gems stockpile, and then also a furniture stockpile to accept all other tables.  Then I could, with a little patience, get the best twelve tables encrusted with the green zircons I wanted.  So at last, twelve silver tables with green gems for the dining hall.

Now in this case I had around 40 green zircons, so I wasn't encrusting just anything and everything with them.  I had further plans for coordinated furniture made of silver with green gems.

In this example it would be easier to go into the stocks and mark the twelve tables for decoration and then go into the job manager and make a job to encrust 12 furniture with green zircon.  I wouldn't have to link or rearrange any stockpiles.

[voliol]

I usually cut pretty much every gems I get my hands on +encrust furniture with them. The fancier gems I usually reserve for whenever I get something like a gold statue industry (for decorating throne halls) running, at which point I like to have a semi-automated system for encrusting, using work orders and macros to set the cutting and encrusting on repeat. Having to mark every item for encrusting would be a hassle, and to me a regression gameplay-wise. A system for forcing priority isn’t something I’d mind though.

[sketchesofpayne]

Having to mark every item for encrusting would be a hassle, and to me a regression gameplay-wise.

In the stocks screen you can mark and entire category at once.  Just as now you can mark, say, all statues for melting or dumping with one key press.

Unless you are AFK mass-manufacturing and have a backstock of hundreds of gems I don't see how it is a big deal to mark things in the stocks screen.  It's far less of a hassle than, say, the caravan trading screen.

In a pinch, there is currently a DFhack script that marks everything that gets put in a selected stockpile for melting automatically.

As it stands right now, if I want to stud one masterwork sword with a particular gem it's a massive pain.  Or if I want to sew an image onto only superior+ emerald cloaks and hoods.  Or if I want to stud all copper barrels with zinc bands.  It either requires messing with the settings of stockpiles, or making a dozen Jeweler's shops with different linked stockpiles. 

Or just do what we do now and just say "encrust stuff" and just let the dwarves grab whatever random junk they find and encrust it, often multiple times.  Often bypassing objects you want decorated to go grab something else.  Stud'em all and let Armok sort it out!
 

Let's do the example of studding copper barrels with zinc bands.  Metalsmith's forge produces the barrels.  All furniture stock piles need to be set to either disallow barrels or disallow copper items.  Need to have a copper barrel stockpile and a zinc bar stockpile linked to a metalsmiths shop that has non-decoration labors disallowed.  The zinc bar stockpile needs to be set to take from your main metal bar stockpile, because you need to make the bars available to the decorator without making the rest of your bars unavailable to other workers.  Need to have an output stockpile allowing copper barrels linked to the workshop.  And don't forget to set the output stockpile to 'take only from links' otherwise it will quickly fill up with undecorated copper barrels.  Sometimes you have to unlink and then relink everything to get it to work.  Also set the max bins in each stockpile to zero otherwise the decorator might now see the zinc bars inside the bin, as bins are buggy lately.

Then, if you want to stud something different you have to change the settings on all the stockpiles and make sure the workshop has had all the items in it hauled away.  Or just build another workshop with another set of linked stockpiles and alter the settings on you main stockpiles again.


It would be nice to be able to go to stocks, move the cursor over the copper barrels, hit 'e' (or something) to flag them for decoration.  Then set a job to stud with zinc bands on repeat.  It will then do so until it says the job was canceled because no item was marked for decoration.

[voliol]

...with an additional option to only do selected items.

I’m for your idea, I just think that added complexity in the interface should be optional, just as you don’t have to select the exact motif of all art created since the possibility for that was added.

[Starver]

Perhaps an extension to the Work Order system. Upon <user-defined criteria>, (un)mark items for {Dump/Melt/Forbid/?Decorate?} independent of current manual requirements.

It'd be useful for things other than the proposed Mark For Decoration of this thread. It'd mean manual intervention in the early game (before Work Ordering becomes the viable automation process that it becomes later), but that's true of everything else, and its usefulness goes into auto-melting identifiable scrap (the lowest qualities of armour produced, orevery melt-to-gain item), hatchery management (forbid from cooking any new eggs laid from currently rare breeders) and encouraging the clearing of butcher's shops (of rottable things you want to move promptly to the midden by being  auto-dumped).

Decoration markup and maybe even further things like "Cook This!" (work order preferences to require/prefer/ignore such markings, per category?) can be added onto this, without reducing the capability to automate.



For my part, I rarely decorate at all (having far too many other OCD/value-adding tricks that you'd only appreciate if you knew where to look - at least as complicated as the current ways of laser-pinpointing specific decorative targets), but think I might add more decoration to my repertoire if it was part of a more holistic approach.