I think DF may be the closest thing there is to a perfect game, but I am constantly running into a problem that brings the progress of my fortress to a crawl.
What just happened is a perfect example: I've been tasking my idlers to mining for the last few IG months, and have started putting in the first screw pumps. One pump had only one access point. No one was building it for a while so I had my architect stop mining. He goes to the pump, starts building it, then puts his pick down at the construction site and suspends the build because there's now an item blocking the site.
I have a lot of extra picks and no way to get rid of that particular one, even though I've had five dwarves walk right past it. I'd drown the useless slobs in magma, but that would require the screw pump to be finished first.
And then there's the wall I can't finish at the surface because of the pair of socks dropped by the very first goblin to die at my fort, which should probably have decomposed into soil by now.
Please, for the love of God or Armok or whatever, can there be some way to deal with this problem? Soon?
I've noticed that dwarves will happily move stone out of the way of workshops they're building unless someone is coming to get it already. If they can move unused stone, why not unused clothing or tools? Or could there be an additional command in the Look Around interface that works like "Claim" but gives the job a very high priority? Perhaps call it "Move" or something? If you want to make a fun solution (in the DF sense of the word), would it be possible to simply have the item be destroyed if it's built over?