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[feorh]

I'm enjoying a stable fort for a change. Forgotten beasts are defeated and invaders repelled.
On the other hand I'm overwhelmed with clutter.
I have one major stockpile holding all nonspecified stuff (everything but ammo, clothing, stones, wood, food, booze).
Most of my workshops have huge piles of stuff on the ground while the major stockpile is dominated by charcoal and wheelbarrows.
Can I do something about it?

[Maolagin]

Yes. You can easily solve this problem by having less stuff.

Step one, stop making more stuff. Try to figure out how much stuff your fort actually consumes, and make that much. Or just shut down production for a while, since you probably have a giant surplus of everything.

Step two, get rid of extra stuff. Caravans and atom smashers are helpful in this regard.

Longer term, setting up a more sophisticated network of stockpiles will both make things more efficient, and also give you a quick visual way to see what you have too much/too little of. Also look into learning about work order conditions. You can tell the manager that stuff should only be made when you have less than a certain amount.

[Mungrul]

I've had a couple of otherwise successful fortresses grind to a halt thanks to clutter so far. Framerates are still playable, but dwarves eventually end up not doing any of the jobs I assign (track stops seem to be the first things they stop building or deconstructing). And tinkering with them using the fledgling 50.xx DFHack has just broken them even further.

So I've been experimenting with quantum stockpiling, and after a couple of false starts, I have a fortress that feels promising, and has zero clutter, with everything tidied away in to the relevant quantum stockpile. It's barely a year old, and has yet to weather a siege, but things just feel more efficient.
I think this is also helped by the fact that my Orders list isn't anywhere near as overzealous as it previously was, producing just 10-20 of items rather than 200 a time.

[rhavviepoodle]

Depending on how much you like to automate your fort, you will want more stockpiles. I like to have a rock stockpile, at least one wood stockpile, a cloth stockpile, and a designated furniture stockpile. Furniture shouldn't be too far from the (jeweler/mason/carpenter) workshops. The nice thing is that as soon as you have a stockpile for one or two specific items, any general stockpiles you have no longer need to accept that item, so they should be less cluttered. In practice, start with a general stockpile and begin specializing them out as you build your infrastructure.

You can also use stockpiles to customize some of the agricultural jobs. For example, create a stockpile for empty pots, a stockpile for pig tails, a still, and a farmer's workshop. Link the two workshops to the stockpiles as necessary, and create a work order for each one (disable general work orders). You can set the still to brew 8 plants once you have 12 pig tails, and the farmer's workshop to process 4 plants (or whatever ratio you wanted). Since you can't designate material for these jobs like you can with the mason workshop, I find this to help some. Admittedly it means a bit more micro, but it's invaluable if you're on an embark without above ground crops (such as a glacier) and want to maximize the return from the crops that you do have. A good compromise would be "this is my mill stockpile, this is my brew stockpile, this is my process to thread stockpile." Although if you do give this a shot, rename your stockpiles and workshops.

[Maolagin]

So I've been experimenting with quantum stockpiling, and after a couple of false starts, I have a fortress that feels promising, and has zero clutter, with everything tidied away in to the relevant quantum stockpile. It's barely a year old, and has yet to weather a siege, but things just feel more efficient.

I think this is also helped by the fact that my Orders list isn't anywhere near as overzealous as it previously was, producing just 10-20 of items rather than 200 a time.

You can even be more conservative than that. I've eventually come around to a policy of doing most of my steady state production via work orders of 1-2 units at a time, set to repeat daily until the goal amount is reached. Do most of your production on a just-in-tine basis and you don't even need quantum stockpiles (except maybe for stone and logs of course).

[se5a]

My problem is less over production and more goblinite/cavern invader...nite... and respective corpse bits. my military seem to prefer to sever all the limbs of enemies before finally dispatching them.

[Mungrul]

Also, note to self:
Stop buying the bins that cloth and leather come in, just buy the cloth and leather.

[Blue_Dwarf]

Also, note to self:
Stop buying the bins that cloth and leather come in, just buy the cloth and leather.

Unfortunately that means clicking on each individual cloth and leather.

It's easier to buy the bins, dump al cloth and leather, and atom-smash the bins.

[Maolagin]

Also, note to self:
Stop buying the bins that cloth and leather come in, just buy the cloth and leather.

Unfortunately that means clicking on each individual cloth and leather.

It's easier to buy the bins, dump al cloth and leather, and atom-smash the bins.

Even easier still to buy the bins, use however much cloth and leather you use, let the empty bins go into use in stockpiles that aren't yet at their bin limit, and then sell any remaining empty bins back to the next caravan.

The trick here is to *actually set a bin limit* to some reasonable number when you make a new stockpile. They save a lot of labor when used judiciously, since one dwarf will haul dozens of socks or what have you as part of a "store in bin" job, but each item is hauled separately for "store in stockpile".

[anewaname]

When you are doing any of the things others have suggested here, you may want to get rid of the worst stuff and keep the best. For that, set up stockpiles that restrict based on quality.

Like a stockpile near the depot that only takes clothing that is of the lowest quality level.

[Panando]

My problem is less over production and more goblinite/cavern invader...nite... and respective corpse bits. my military seem to prefer to sever all the limbs of enemies before finally dispatching them.

Solutions:

1. Lure enemies down into a chamber that can be flooded with magma for convenient incineration.
2. Build a pumpstack that permits flooding the surface with magma (only practical with certain map topologies).
3. Build a network of minecarts on the surface that bring refuse to a central location then dump it into a new stockpile, or dump it on the ground but making sure the final destination for the stuff - which should be infinite like a quantum stockpile or a magma chute - is closer than the "collector" stockpiles.

That last one seems like a lot of work, but if you understand minecarts it actually pays off really fast in terms of labor savings.

[feorh]

I'm working on my workorder/stockpile mastery:D
It'll take awhile...
Meanwhile, I've made a stockpile for bars. And added a bunch of bins.
Mostly it's done to organise charcoal.
Now, I have some charcoal in bins, most of it still just lying on the ground in units of 1, and some empty space...
How come? AFAIK I still have some odd charcoal (and other bars) lying around.

[Stormfeather]

Generally if things aren't getting hauled (but you know they CAN be hauled), and you know there are spaces in the stockpile, it's the fact that your dwarfs are busy doing other, higher-priority things. Like boozing. Or praying. Or listening to music. Or boozing. Or, you know, other jobs. Also boozing.

Or if you mean they're lying in the stockpile and not being put in the bins, again it could be job-related, or you might just not have enough empty bins.

[Skorpion]

 just-in-time basis

RL experience has taught me that 'just in time' is never in time, and that you need stockpiles.

[feorh]

Dang, the more I try to "optimise" the less fps i got.
I'm now down to 4 fps.
My mega project of digging out a couple of z levels and filling them with water does not help ;/