My current fort has some (temporary) problems with finding a spot for everything. The Trade Depot is littered with empty animal cages & lumps of fire clay that have been there for years (I'll excavate the Pottery wing soon, I swear), and I just had some cheese start reeking miasma in the Farmer's Workshop because all of my food stockpiles were full. I know I'm probably not alone in these sorts of difficulties, but I'm not sure how many people consider them to be a significant problem.
Anyway, my suggestion is this: Add a new screen, accessible from the Stocks screen, which is solely for listing "overflow" items: items which cannot be put away because there is no (open tile in a) stockpile coded to accept them. Items which are either {forbidden}, marked for (D)umping, or claimed as a dwarf's personal property would not appear on this screen, but those that would would be listed in sections:
1) Perishable food items
2) Items in the Trade Depot
3) Items for which a walkable path to the edge of the map exists, without passing through any traps / locked doors*
4) Items for which a flyable exit path exists, without traps/locks*
5) All other non-stockpiled items.
Each section would be ordered by value, from the most to the least expensive. Scrolling through the list of items gives the usual options to either (v)iew the item itself or (z)oom to its location, but for each item, the Overflow screen would also display what type of stockpile (including sub-settings) would be necessary to store that item. This would be a big help in managing some of the less-explored industries; for example, I doubt many newbie players would expect that their Textile wing would need a Food stockpile, for storing bags of dye. It would also be helpful if, when showing the type of stockpile required, the game also displayed how large that stockpile needed to be: How many other Overflow items would find a home in that same type of stockpile.
* Yes, running the pathfinding calculations for every item on the Overflow screen could indeed be a significant CPU drain, so sections 3 & 4 might be considered optional, even though they'd be helpful in protecting the hoard from potential thieves. Then again, if this screen is only accessible from the Stocks screen--the game's paused anyway, FPS isn't really an issue.
In the event that the overflow "problem" isn't judged to be worth making a whole new screen for, a halfway step might be considered: The Stocks screen already has a Detail mode that writes items in different colors based on if they're forbidden, or currently used in constructions, etc. Just choose a new color, and display overflow items that way.
Author
Topic: "Overflow" item management (Read 256 times)