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[madmenyo]

I usually put them on mason and stone detailing since i usually detail a lot of rooms and building walls above ground. With like 10 of each things get done very fast. Once i have a couple of magma furnaces set up i change a couple of them to furnace operation since i need a lot of bars. You could also specialize more, take off a couple of the lower skills from some expert brewer and let those jobs be done by these new useless migrants.

In my previous game i got floaded with farmers, more then 50% of my migrants where farmers but they all ended up being excelent masons, engavers and furnace/siege opperators. And whenever they had some points in combat i would throw them in the front line army.

[slink]

The game definitely has a twisted sense of humor, since it kept sending me handfuls of rangers and fisherfolk per migration, to a fortress besieged by rains of abhorant muck.  Like I'm going to let any Dwarf run around loose on the surface there, right?  Wave after wave of them ...

I use Dwarf Therapist to keep track of who is assigned to what job.  Anyone really good at a useful task gets to do that job if my fortress needs that job done.  I actually use lye makers and soap makers.  Clean is good.  If they aren't one of the best at anything my fortress needs done, they either get to do a job they do less well, or they get the custom profession RETRAIN.  RETRAIN Dwarves are the ones who fill government positions or do mass masonary projects, or learn to do something from scratch that no one else knows how to do.  Dwarves who are already parents get priority for peaceful civilian jobs.  Filling military positions has become a bit of a problem for me since so many migrants arrive already married, and/or related to others in the fortress.  I am, however, pleased by the better distribution of children across families.  With most people arriving married, every family gets to have at least one child.  In the older versions, the first two to get married often had 16 children while the last to get married had none because of the child cap.

[Tolisk]

You get diffrent job migrants based on what you have already.

So if you take away from fishys, you get more fishys next time.

[ScratchtasticZ]

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys!

Perhaps I should introduce class discrimination and confine the "lesser peoples" to the caverns? Have them farm, mine, or otherwise hunt all day. In other words, if you're not useful to me now... you will be later. After some "re-education" in the caverns. 

I do have that vampire locked in her room. I don't see any advantage to turning more of my populace, aside from ensured continuity of the fort.

I think it would be nice to have a bunch of soldiers, but I'm currently working on the equipment for the melee guys. I should turn a bunch of the bums in to wood burners (curse you, sneaky lignite/coal) and furnace operators to speed up bar production.

In fact, I could just have all of them do hauling / masonry / furnace operating / wood burning / etc / etc. That would probably work well. Essentially creating a peasant class... interesting...

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.

Those are really good ideas. I'll have to give them a try. Can't ever have enough haulers (CLEAN THOSE ROOMS OF STONE) and I'm pissed off waiting for my damn mason to build my crossbowdwarfs' tower/quarters. With some slave free labor...

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

Haha! No, there are very few things to hunt here. I think my original butcher and his migrant replacement have slaughtered two wild animals between the two of them. My hunter spends more time standing in the entryway than hunting things. I don't think we're quite far enough in to the extremes to have polar bears.

Use soap makers for your medical purposes.

Yes, but for right now I don't have any of that set up. I'm doing one thing at a time... current issue is dealing with freeloaders. Got some projects planned (a hospital level is one of them) for later.

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

Isn't it true, though?

[slink]

Wall over the door of your vampire's room.  That way building destroyers won't destroy the door and let her loose.  She can always deconstruct the wall if you want her out for some reason, but if she dies and she is the last one in the fort, you lose it.

[targetstar]

see i keep track of my 112 dwarvf pop (only been 3 years) useing Dwarf Therepist, and class set, thoguh i just got another huge migration wave (that cause the 80 to 112) and i have like 30 idlers, so what i do is this,
1) build a great wall (if you read my eariler post)
2) terreform my place (help the wall)
3) mine shiz up (pay for the wall)
4) make mor workshops to assine people (give me things faster... except trees)
5) send people i don't really need to the arena to see how well a few useless migrants are against around 20 or so badgers ><
6) use them for !!SCIENCE!!

your lucky you have a vampire, im still waiting for one, (cause i made a new world with  super little time 5 years) so not alot of vamps, vamps are good though, there immune to werewolf bite, and are freken hard to kill (make super soldier) and you don't even need food anymore ><

[Loud Whispers]

There are no useless migrants, only undirected resources.

[Beyondrepair]

I personally tend to institute a class society where I rank dwarves (excluding any obviously important ones) according to arrival wave. Wave 0 (the original 7) get highest priority for nice housing etc. The newest wave gets to sleep in the dorm (or on the floor muhaha).

Not the most efficient way of doing it but it helps maintaining roleplay because I seriously can't be bothered by more than 20 of them. I still haven't lowered the pop cap though since cheap labor does have its uses.

[slothen]

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.

true buuuuut...  1) skills up your dwarves, improving attributes and mood 2)Cleans up stone  3) higher value constructions/workshops, which is further improved by architecture quality modifiers.  4) blocks can be stored in bins and hauled in bins closer to the building project  5) constructions with blocks are built faster.

[Dunamisdeos]

Yea mine get drafted to

1: Mason Duty (for megaprojects)

2: Farming duty (for the foods)

3: !!SCIENCE!! duty (for the lulz)

Seriously, if you have a volcano, drop one of those super valuable LEGANDARY POTASH MAKER / GLAZER in through the top. I've discovered candy that way.

[Buttery_Mess]

Migrants are usually much more skilled than your starting seven, often have useful medical, social or military skills, and in cases where they don't have any skills that you need, are easily trained with ones that you do need. You always have too much stone, and not enough smoothed walls. It's always worth having a backup legendary dwarf for any skill. You can never have too many dwarves.

Migrants aren't useless; that's not what's irritating about them. What's irritating is that you have to let them in your fort, leaving you vulnerable, and if you don't you end up with ghosts. You also have to take them time to go through them and reassign their stupid labours, which is just a chore.

[ScratchtasticZ]

Migrants are usually much more skilled than your starting seven, often have useful medical, social or military skills, and in cases where they don't have any skills that you need, are easily trained with ones that you do need. You always have too much stone, and not enough smoothed walls. It's always worth having a backup legendary dwarf for any skill. You can never have too many dwarves.

Migrants aren't useless; that's not what's irritating about them. What's irritating is that you have to let them in your fort, leaving you vulnerable, and if you don't you end up with ghosts. You also have to take them time to go through them and reassign their stupid labours, which is just a chore.

Right, but life would be easier if dorfs didn't show up with silly jobs enabled and a bunch of unnecessary skills. I'm digging the peasant crew idea. People to farm huge fields; build walls, floors, and stairs; etc. is pretty awesome.

Not going to have time to play over the next few days but when I'm finally able to sit down, the peasantry will rise to be a (somewhat) productive part of society!

[Tolisk]

Meh, i just assign them to a class where they do loads of crafts and a few of the other things i cant make full time people do, like smoothing stone.

so they all go into a class where they are jacks of all but the few other trades.

[Buttery_Mess]

It wouldn't be better if they turned up without 'unnecessary' skills, because those skills arenecessary for obscure or seldom used industries. The industries all have their place; you might for example only create soap occasionally, but when you do, having an already highly skilled lye maker or soap maker will greatly speed up the process, freeing up your dwarves for other tasks. You probably don't notice this, because you likely will have one master dwarf migrant for that industry, but when you set a dwarf with no skill to undertake these tasks it takes a painfully long time to get the job done. Not having enough soap when you need it (and you will need it), and not having anyone any good at making it could kill your fort within a year.

I don't know why I'm defending migrants. I really couldn't give a hoot.

It would be nice to be able to turn off migration waves, but the fact is that migrants actually add an important play dynamic. Migrant waves and sieges often coincide, forcing you to open your gates to prevent ghosts. If you could just wall yourself in and ignore sieges, a significant challenge to the game and an element of efficient fort design would be lost. I'd go as far as to say that figuring out a way to open your main gates while still retaining defensibility is the main element of fort design finesse.

[ScratchtasticZ]

It wouldn't be better if they turned up without 'unnecessary' skills, because those skills arenecessary for obscure or seldom used industries. The industries all have their place; you might for example only create soap occasionally, but when you do, having an already highly skilled lye maker or soap maker will greatly speed up the process, freeing up your dwarves for other tasks. You probably don't notice this, because you likely will have one master dwarf migrant for that industry, but when you set a dwarf with no skill to undertake these tasks it takes a painfully long time to get the job done. Not having enough soap when you need it (and you will need it), and not having anyone any good at making it could kill your fort within a year.

I don't know why I'm defending migrants. I really couldn't give a hoot.

It would be nice to be able to turn off migration waves, but the fact is that migrants actually add an important play dynamic. Migrant waves and sieges often coincide, forcing you to open your gates to prevent ghosts. If you could just wall yourself in and ignore sieges, a significant challenge to the game and an element of efficient fort design would be lost. I'd go as far as to say that figuring out a way to open your main gates while still retaining defensibility is the main element of fort design finesse.

I agree on migrants adding an interesting dynamic to the game. What I meant by "unnecessary" was the dorfs who show up with like 50 jobs enabled. Without Dwarf Therapist, that would be a nightmare.

I do intend to get soap production up but I'm currently working on the military end of things. Soap will be done along with the hospital level, which is going to be the next project I work on. I don't want to have to turtle helplessly in my fort, so the soldiers come first. :p