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[ScratchtasticZ]

I'm on my best fort so far. Stable food, ridiculous amount of booze, ridiculous amount of wealth sitting around, decent mineral luck (lots of gold but no iron or lignite/coal yet). This is also my first step outside of a warm or temperate biome. It's a cold coast/forest region where the sea itself is frozen nine months out of the year.

With success, however, come the legions of soap maker, spinners, beekeepers, and generally useless dorfs. Any ideas of something productive to do with them? With 99 dorfs, I don't like to see "Idlers: 60" a good portion of the time.

I've conscripted a bunch of them as miners and a few are on the military list (not activated just yet since I'm still making their gear). I've thought about "accidentally" losing a few of them, but I figure that's more trouble than it's worth.

Oh, I have a vampire locked in her room...

But no, seriously, I'm out of ideas. What should I do with the bums? Some dorfs just aren't useful.

[agertor]

Massive army, Test subjects *How does this lava feel? Burning you say? Hmm, interesting*, or baby making/party animal machines

[NecroRebel]

Turn hauling off on useful dwarves that can be constantly occupied with other, useful jobs, and just have your useless dwarves do all the hauling.

Use workshop profiles to make your main masons' shops accept only high-skill people, turn masonry on for all of them, and then use them to construct large-scale structures topside. No-skill masons make buildings just as fast as high-skill masons, so hordes of useless haulers are the mortar with which megaprojects are built! Literally, if you mix their blood into it.

Put them into the military and set them on active training; they'll get some useful skills, like dodger and fighter, even if they're unequipped, and as you get equipment you can have dwarves that are at least somewhat useful in a fight. Make wood or leather shields and training weapons for them and they'll boost useful weapon skills, too.

[MantisMan]

They could also make useful cavern explorers. Just drop a bit of food and booze down with them to extend their operating life. Remember to seal the cavern after you send them in, there could be dangerous creatures in there! 

[orius]

They have uses:

• Haulers.
• Conscripts.
• Permanant Spelunkers.
• Guinea pigs for !!SCIENCE!!
• Vampire Food.
• Megaproject Work Gangs.

[Delta Foxtrot]

Build an autobahn and then conscript a humongous army.

Having three or four good-for-nothings churning out stone blocks 24/7 will quickly give you an over abundance of blocks to build stuff with. With the 60 or so (minus the military recruits) idlers you will be able to build stuff fairly fast. For example majority of my forts have a significant surface fort full of traps, corridors and large arena spaces for my military to fight the besiegers. All that built with cheap peon labour, of course.

[kaijyuu]

You can build walls/floors/etc out of plain stone. Don't need to turn them into blocks first.


I only make blocks for wells and moods.

[Delta Foxtrot]

If you're minmaxing it, block things can be built faster than if using plain stones. Blocks can also be stored in smaller spaces than equivalent amount of stones. Neither is a critical function that you need to run an efficient fort, but they're there.

Blocks provide 'smooth wall/floor/whatever', or was it that rocks provide 'rough wall/floor' description? Using plain stones is definitely plausible and offers little to no detriment for your fort but I prefer to use blocks for smooth construction, it just feels like the 'proper' way of doing things. And having a few undesirables churning out blocks 24/7 is few idlers less, as per OP's request.

[knutor]

Turn any with 1000+ agility into Hunters.  Then start a robust leather industry.  Are there polar bears there?

[jaxy15]

Use soap makers for your medical purposes.

[ancistrus]

Xykon's theorem: Everything can be solved by sacrificing minions.

[Sus]

Build an autobahn and then conscript a humongous army.

Having three or four good-for-nothings churning out stone blocks 24/7 will quickly give you an over abundance of blocks to build stuff with. With the 60 or so (minus the military recruits) idlers you will be able to build stuff fairly fast. For example majority of my forts have a significant surface fort full of traps, corridors and large arena spaces for my military to fight the besiegers. All that built with cheap peon labour, of course.

This.

There's always something to build, even if you're not currently vying for any mega construction. Using blocks... well, it just has more "class" than rough stone constructions.

One way to turn the lazy louts into ‼profit‼ is to press gang them into craftsdwarfery, churning out heaping piles of microcline piccolos, *pitchblende mug*s (for the elves) and what-have-you. Also, if you have access to sweet, sweet MAGMA and sand or clay... one can never have too many glass or clay pots. If not, a rock pot is fine, too.

Should food be a major problem, well, send the useless runts to fish and forage. The ludicrous amounts of stone crafts can also be traded for food.

[Mushroo]

Actually high Idlers is a good thing; when I reach 100 (healthy) idlers I consider myself as having Won the game of Dwarf Fortress.

[vertinox]

Hrm.... I usually assign certain classes to actual useful jobs.

Say all my beekeepers get assign dedicated brewer tasks. Lye and soap makers get assigned to furnace operating.

Any fishing or fish dissector types get drafted into the army.

[Tolisk]

Same, though i use therapist to assign things to people like a template.