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[GavJ]

Ok you freaks, who cares about z-levels here.

Here's the reason you need highest precision. Zooming to items. Especially, corpses, but also when you want your new lasher to start using the silver whip but you can't figure out why the hell he can't get it even though it's not forbidden (it's on the body of the dead goblin at the bottom of the waterfall, or locked in a storage room with the roaming FB). I hate not being able to zoom to particular items when I want to.

I really hope you dont have more than 100 corpses at a time in your fort very often... (such that higher than "low" precision would stop you from zooming)

[Anathema]

This all sounds rather fishy to me, and I'm still not convinced there is any real benefit outside of OCD-ness.

Forbidding things in stocks is a terribly inefficient and clumsy way to control what your workshops make.  I find it a bit shocking that everybody seems to do this, actually.  You can do the same thing with two actions per workshop only with a really simple fort layout, in a more intuitive and much more productive way...

Ok, this post wins the thread. Seriously, why would you waste part of a single dwarf's time so that in seconds you can control what your dwarves build with, what they keep, what they dump/melt, etc? Instead you could .. [page-long description of an overcomplicated and extraordinarily player time-consuming and dwarf labor-intensive method to control item production follows]

Edit: not to disrespect GavJ's method, I can see how it has some advantages over mass forbidding via stocks; it does allow much more fine control over what each individual workshop uses. But in a thread that started with "why would I waste one dwarf's time keeping records?", it's hilarious that your solution would consume a lot more dwarf labor, e.g. hauling rocks to stockpiles and building this contraption. Not to mention the crucial part (for me at least), it'd take far more of the player's time to setup and constantly micromanage, and my time is more valuable than the time of my many useless haulers.

[Naryar]

I think low precision is enough for the first year, then go up to medium, then high.

Highest is rarely needed, but it's not useless as well.

[slink]

Ok you freaks, who cares about z-levels here.

Here's the reason you need highest precision. Zooming to items. Especially, corpses, but also when you want your new lasher to start using the silver whip but you can't figure out why the hell he can't get it even though it's not forbidden (it's on the body of the dead goblin at the bottom of the waterfall, or locked in a storage room with the roaming FB). I hate not being able to zoom to particular items when I want to.

I really hope you dont have more than 100 corpses at a time in your fort very often... (such that higher than "low" precision would stop you from zooming)

I often have a refuse pile, omitting skulls, bones, shells, horn, and hair, that is the maximum size for a stockpile.  That is, what, 30 x 30?  At sites where necromancers meet vile forces of darkness in front of my gate, that stockpile may fill before I have them dump it to magma at the bottom of the fortress.  While that includes body parts as well as butchering by-products, I am fairly sure that I have more than 100 corpses at a time in my fort.  That doesn't even count the dead Dwarves in their coffins.  If you've had a tantrum spiral in a fortress of 200+, you don't even need refuse pile to bring the corpse count to over 100.   

[slink]

That is true.

Unrelated: Is that you in your avatar?

Yep.   

[kaenneth]

I have my trader and bookkeeper be the same dwarf; so I can always interrupt him to make him trade.

[Rose]

That is true.

Unrelated: Is that you in your avatar?

Yep.   

Awesome.

[NecroRebel]

Edit: not to disrespect GavJ's method, I can see how it has some advantages over mass forbidding via stocks; it does allow much more fine control over what each individual workshop uses. But in a thread that started with "why would I waste one dwarf's time keeping records?", it's hilarious that your solution would consume a lot more dwarf labor, e.g. hauling rocks to stockpiles and building this contraption. Not to mention the crucial part (for me at least), it'd take far more of the player's time to setup and constantly micromanage, and my time is more valuable than the time of my many useless haulers.

Not to mention that the way he has it set up in those pictures doesn't actually prevent the dwarf from using the items in the central stockpile while he's supposedly limiting them to only the peripheral piles. The fact that the walking distance is longer doesn't matter, only the absolute distance. Not to mention that if he happens to have more stones above or below those, too, could be considered closer than any of his specific-stone piles.

Anyway, I use higher precision because I routinely make all of my furniture out of one type of stone, usually a layer stone, until I can replace it with metal. As a result of that, all of the useless large cluster and vein stones go unused entirely, so I prefer to dump them. Since those stones are widely-dispersed and not in convenient rectangles for dumping designations, it's far more work for me to mark them for dumping with the designations cursor than it is to simply do it through the stocks screen, and I routinely have too many stones to see them all unless the bookkeeper is at high precision, and once I start carving out wasted space (I like having large, multi-z-level open spaces for aesthetic reasons), even that is insufficient.

[GavJ]

This all sounds rather fishy to me, and I'm still not convinced there is any real benefit outside of OCD-ness.

Forbidding things in stocks is a terribly inefficient and clumsy way to control what your workshops make.  I find it a bit shocking that everybody seems to do this, actually.  You can do the same thing with two actions per workshop only with a really simple fort layout, in a more intuitive and much more productive way...

Ok, this post wins the thread. Seriously, why would you waste part of a single dwarf's time so that in seconds you can control what your dwarves build with, what they keep, what they dump/melt, etc? Instead you could .. [page-long description of an overcomplicated and extraordinarily player time-consuming and dwarf labor-intensive method to control item production follows]

Edit: not to disrespect GavJ's method, I can see how it has some advantages over mass forbidding via stocks; it does allow much more fine control over what each individual workshop uses. But in a thread that started with "why would I waste one dwarf's time keeping records?", it's hilarious that your solution would consume a lot more dwarf labor, e.g. hauling rocks to stockpiles and building this contraption. Not to mention the crucial part (for me at least), it'd take far more of the player's time to setup and constantly micromanage, and my time is more valuable than the time of my many useless haulers.

I'm not sure you really understand how the method works...

If you mass forbid everything except microcline, to make some microcline cabinets, it requires:
PLAYER EFFORT) clicking "forbid" on every non-economic stone in the list on the z menu (which, incidentally, you can do without any bookkeeper), or going to stocks and forbidding all stone (three keyboard actions), and then scrolling to microcline in the non-alphabetical list and allowing it (fourth).
DWARF EFFORT) your skilled mason then  has to walk across your entire fort to wherever you happen to have a dump with microcline and haul every piece of microcline over to his workshop.  Unless you have set up one nearby stock area with a whole bunch of stockpiles for every type of stone (which equals or exceeds my method's setup time)
SETUP) negligible digging wise, same as other method.  As far as stockpiles, if you don't want your mason running halfway across your entire fort for every stone, you will have to set up your stockpiles custom-made for different stones anyway, thus same as other method.

If you use workshops with 3 doors, it requires:
PLAYER EFFORT) forbidding one door and unforbidding another (2 keyboard actions, and no menus).  Faster and also more visually intuitive since you can just look at the room with the color you want and click that door.
DWARF EFFORT) Same exact amount of hauling has to get done, except this time, it is UNSKILLED dwarves hauling microcline from wherever it is to the spot right next to your mason, and the more valuable skilled dwarf spends more of his time (easily 4x more of his time if he is legendary and makes things nearly instantly) actually using his valuable skill.
SETUP TIME) I made that example i posted as an image in like 30 seconds of designations + 6 one-time stockpile designations, same as mass forbidding.

Plus the MASSIVE benefit of being able to produce multiple material-specific things in different workshops in different materials, which there is no way to do at all with mass-forbid.  This benefit comes at zero extra cost to players or dwarves.

My method either equals or exceeds mass forbidding in every way: setup time, player effort per job, dwarf effort per job, flexibility, and skill efficiency.

Not to mention that the way he has it set up in those pictures doesn't actually prevent the dwarf from using the items in the central stockpile while he's supposedly limiting them to only the peripheral piles. The fact that the walking distance is longer doesn't matter, only the absolute distance. Not to mention that if he happens to have more stones above or below those, too, could be considered closer than any of his specific-stone piles.

I use it and it works... occasionally the dwarves will grab some random stone on their way from somewhere for the first item in the queue, but everything after that comes from the intended stockpile.

Perhaps absolute distance is used for the first one or something?

Either way, if you don't believe me, then it is trivial to make it absolute distance closest, too.  Just build one of the custom material type stockpiles in the 3x3 directly above the workshop and one below, instead of right behind it like in the example with the doors on the stairwells. shrug.

[Masta Crouton]

that's one less vomit-encrusted bastard starting parties and letting invaders inside.


plus exact numbers make me happy.

[Anathema]

You're assuming, however, that one would want to have to ability to make say a microcline cabinet at one workshop, an olivine door at another, and oh, granite blocks somewhere else. If your needs are that specific, then I admit, your method is the ideal way to go about it - I certainly would not try to accomplish anything so specific through the stocks screen.

My needs are more basic: I never want to see anything made of olivine ever again (i.e. dump it all), I want to melt all copper armor/weapons so I can make them into bronze, I want to forbid the steel bolts so my training marksdwarves will use up the lesser metals instead, I want to know exactly how many pig iron bars I have for converting into steel. For these purposes, an accurate stock screen is ideal.

[GavJ]

You're assuming, however, that one would want to have to ability to make say a microcline cabinet at one workshop, an olivine door at another, and oh, granite blocks somewhere else. If your needs are that specific, then I admit, your method is the ideal way to go about it - I certainly would not try to accomplish anything so specific through the stocks screen.

My needs are more basic: I never want to see anything made of olivine ever again (i.e. dump it all), I want to melt all copper armor/weapons so I can make them into bronze, I want to forbid the steel bolts so my training marksdwarves will use up the lesser metals instead, I want to know exactly how many pig iron bars I have for converting into steel. For these purposes, an accurate stock screen is ideal.

For the olivine thing, mass-forbidding routinely is way too much effort.  All you have to do is go to z-stones-and hit tab until you get to the generic stone types, then select olivine as an "economic restricted stone" and nobody will ever build anything out of it again, whether individual olivine boulders are forbidden or not.  One-time thing, and I don't believe it even requires having a bookkeeper assigned at all.

Bolts can be assigned by individual material type in the military screen, also one-time thing per squad.  You can specify which materials are okay for training versus battle by squad.

Steel production, as I conceded earlier, is a good reason for a pretty detailed stock screen.  But you probably don't have 100 bars of metal until you have some expendable dwarves anyway who aren't doing anything.  I'm mostly concerned about bookkeeping using up a useful dwarf during the first 0-2 waves.

[Anathema]

I don't think I'm communicating clearly: I never meant to imply there was anything you had to have an accurate stocks screen for, just that there are things that are much easier with it, even if there are viable alternatives. I am aware of the alternatives and use them on occasion, I'm just saying I find the stocks screen to be easier most of the time.

To continue those examples: I could deny use of olivine through the stones menu, but if I want the olivine I never plan to use to stop cluttering up the fort, the easiest way to dump it all is through stocks. If I want my military dwarves to train with wood, bone, copper, bronze, iron, whatever bolts, just not the steel ones, far easier to forbid them through the stocks menu. And I'm not using a dwarf from the first 0-2 waves for it - it's for after the first half-year or so when you actually have enough items stockpiled to make it worthwhile, and enough spare dwarf labor that there's effectively no cost.

[GavJ]

Oh... yeah sending all the siltstone to an atomsmasher would be very useful.  I think you may have converted me right there.