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[9tails]

I'm having a somewhat (to me) inexplicable problem in my current fortress.  I designated a custom stockpile by turning on refuse and then turning off all the refuse types except bones and shells, to create a stockpile for those resources.  Nothing ever shows up there.  A refuse stockpile with no restrictions does seem to accumulate bones and shells for me.  Similarly, I have a custom stockpile that should be accepting all the random copper nuggets I have laying around my dining hall.  But the dwarves seem unaware of my desires in this regard.

I've checked the settings on the stockpiles repeatedly and they seem to be right.  What might I be missing?

[Jim Groovester]

Custom stockpiles sometimes have trouble gathering items. I have no idea what causes this.

What usually works for me is placing a regular stockpile, and then editing its settings once it's set where I want it.

[9tails]

Your suggestion of setting a basic stockpile and then editing the settings once it's in place is working out really well for me.

It's nice to know that it's really a bug and not some newbie mistake I'm making.

Thanks a lot.

[SimRobert2001]

maybe you did make a mistake. did you remember to tell all of the other refuse piles to NOT accept shells and bones?

They could be heading to one of the other piles.

[Jurph]

I find that placing-then-changing works well.  I also like the filtering method where a large and all-encompassing refuse pile is placed somewhere, then build more selective piles like a skull pile and a bone pile and two different unusable-armor piles (one for iron, one for cloth) and tell all the subordinate piles to "take from".  This lets stinky trash get aired out before it gets hauled.  If a certain type of stuff starts accumulating in my "inbox" pile, I know that I have a steady supply of it and I should figure out a way to turn it into weapons or money and then make an "outbox" pile for it.

[9tails]

I find that placing-then-changing works well.  I also like the filtering method where a large and all-encompassing refuse pile is placed somewhere, then build more selective piles like a skull pile and a bone pile and two different unusable-armor piles (one for iron, one for cloth) and tell all the subordinate piles to "take from".  This lets stinky trash get aired out before it gets hauled.  If a certain type of stuff starts accumulating in my "inbox" pile, I know that I have a steady supply of it and I should figure out a way to turn it into weapons or money and then make an "outbox" pile for it.

Actually, my experience is that this doesn't quite work.  That is,given a generic furniture stockpile A and then a barrel stockpile B and a bed stockpile C, if you set B to Take From A, and then set C to Take From A, B's Take From orders get reset.  That is to say, you can't have two different stockpiles taking from the same source stockpile.  This is really annoying for me, because I can't have a central food repository near my kitchens with multiple drink / prepared food stockpiles taking from it.

[Sangi]

Yeah kind of annoying to me also.  What I have started doing is looking at the size of the new stockpile and cutting out and rezoning a sub section of the main stockpile.  Then I take from this sub section. 

So I have a 2x3 section down by my dining hall.  I cut out a 2x3 section in my main stockpile.  Then a rezone a 2x3 section in my main.  I then have my dining room take from this one.  It is a little clunky but seems to work ok.

[Stravitch]

I, too, have been having problems with stockpile micromanagement.  As someone else already brought up, having one main stockpile for, say, cooked meals then having them divvied out to smaller stockpiles doesn't seem to want to work for me either.  I wanted to stock each of my houses with a bit of food and booze so it seemed more homely.  My solution to the problem was

House A takes from the main stockpile.
House B takes from House A
House C takes from House B

and so on.  What really is a pain is, if I ever forget and assign another place to take from from the mail stockpile, all the other house stockpile relations get reset...

[Bricks]

I've never had trouble with custom stockpiles not working at all, though I have to say that the stockpile interface is the most convoluted mess of buttons in the game, and that's saying a lot.  It could easily be managed with enter, arrows, and space bar, but nooo...

[9tails]

Yeah kind of annoying to me also.  What I have started doing is looking at the size of the new stockpile and cutting out and rezoning a sub section of the main stockpile.  Then I take from this sub section. 

So I have a 2x3 section down by my dining hall.  I cut out a 2x3 section in my main stockpile.  Then a rezone a 2x3 section in my main.  I then have my dining room take from this one.  It is a little clunky but seems to work ok.

This should work, and it's what I try to do with my food logistics chain, but it's more than just a little clunky.  And as Stravich notes, it's quite fragile, and involves a lot of work to re-construct if, heaven forbid, you need to relayout your main kitchen stockpiles.

[Shoku]

Note: the wording makes it sound kind of like you're scrolling through the list turning every option off one by one except your goal and with the way enable/disable works it probably feels like you have to do it that way-
but the permit/forbid column still lets you access the particulars while something is grayed.

So for copper nuggets you should enable stones but quickly gray out all three stone categories then navigate in to copper and toggle that on, unless you like carpeltunnel.

[Jurph]

Actually, my experience is that this doesn't quite work. 

Of course you're right - forking is still not implemented.  I use chaining like everyone else has mentioned.

[Stravitch]

Now if only we could get them to start eating the legendary meals we've prepared over the plump helmets that have just sprouted we would be even better off!