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[UncleTumble]

Been playing for a little while now and for the first time, my dwarves are not using the bins I make to store items like bars, blocks, gems and crafts. They did when I first started the fortress, and in fact still use the two bins they originally used. However, I have made another 20 bins, and they won't use a single one.

Usually I have the opposite problem -- they grab bins so fast I don't have the time to get them to where I really want them   But this fortress won't use them at all.

Another strange behavior -- on the stockpile menu, I am now unable to adjust the number of reserved bins and barrels. Again, I was able to do this at the beginning, but now the interface seems to be locked.

These oddities seemed weird enough to me to warrant a bug report. If anyone has an idea of what the problem might be, I'd be grateful for the help.

[Toady One]

Those keys don't work?  Can you scroll on any of the /*+- screens?  It's the same group of key bindings, and there are no conditions for them to function.

[UncleTumble]

Thanks for your reply Toady  

Yes, the keys work on the other screens. I am on a laptop with no numerical keypad, so I have  the scrolls keys bound a bit different:

Secondarary move up and down are set to - and =
Secondary page up and down are set to [ and ]

They work with every other menu.

The stockpile menu looks like this:

Notice reserve barrels are on 8.

If I hit the '-' key, it goes down to 7. If I hit it again, nothing happens. Furthermore, if I try to increase it back to 8 right away, again nothing happens.

But if I wait several seconds, it seems to reset itself, and I can move the reserve barrels back to 8.

The reserve bins I can't move at all.

I'm not sure if this is related to my dwarves not using bins or not.

Is there anything I can do to help demonstrate the problem better?

[Toady One]

I really don't know what's going on.  The variable for reserved barrels only occurs 9 places in the code, and it's very straightforward -- pressing one key makes the value go down if it is greater than zero, and another key makes it go up if it is less than 100.  The variable is not set or influenced by anything else.  Anybody else seeing anything like this?

[ktrey]

The only oddness I've noticed occurs occasionally when I've created custom stockpiles that contain both barrel-able and bin-able items. If I modify the contents of the stockpile later to, say, prohibit the barrel-able items, a barrel or two may get stuck on the pile until I un-designate that part of the pile. But then, that may just be a hauling task that has been queued but not fulfilled.

If it's ever been custom stockpile with both types, I believe you can still modify both of the reserved containers though. My vote is for the problem
being related to keypresses registering.

[FU]

I've been looking for workarounds for this bins-not-being-used problem for a few days now and still haven't found anything that works 100% of the time.  I saw somewhere (maybe these forums) that if you reduce max bins to 0 for most stockpiles, bins will start to get used.

I've tried it and suddenly the 50 bins I had sitting around started being put into stockpiles and used to store things, but it's spotty. Especially my finished goods (of which I have hundreds and hundreds lying around in single-item stacks).. I erased all their stockpiles and tried putting a small one, and one bin got used and then no more.

[ March 23, 2007: Message edited by: FU ]

[Chthon]

Catching up on barrels and bins is pretty spotty, espcecially if the stockpile is full to begin with.  They won't move a container in since there is no room, and since the container isn't queued to move into that stockpile, noone will put anything in it from the stockpile to make room.