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[koruth]

I love each and every single one of the changes so far, but my dorfs are definitely having some issues figuring out the proper use of wheelbarrows.

Like, my herbalist will:

• Go out and pick a plant
• Leave the plant on the ground
• Run back to the food stockpile and get the barrel associated with that plant (or a new barrel)
• Run back to the plant with the barrel, and put the plant in the barrel
• Leave the barrel on the ground
• Run back to the food stockpile again and get a wheelbarrow
• Finally go back to the plant barrel and bring it to the stockpile

Wouldn't it just be easier to pick the plant and cart that in, putting it in the barrel that's there?  Or even better, if the herbalist brought a wheelbarrow with them in the first place and loaded it with a couple of stacks of plants before carting them all back.

What about you dorfs out there?  Noticed any other oddities?

[Viking]

I have not yet but oh dear

[The_Countess]

i agree that that is not the way it should work.

but as with woodcutters, its best to turn off the hauling job associated with what their job creates (this goes for most jobs not associated with a workshop that involve any sort of distance between stockpile and gathering area).

so for woodcutters you turn off wood hauling, miners you turn off stone hauling and for herbalists you turn off i think food hauling.

then the system should work reasonably well. as then another dwarf gets the barrel, puts in the plant, gets a wheelbarrow, and then picks up the other plants the herbalist has gathered in the meantime.

edit:
its hard to get right the balance between getting or not getting a barrel or just hauling the single object.
if many simular object are created quickly after the other somewhere then i think this system will work just as intended. but for single objects its probably going to involve more work then it use to.
the only way of knowing if more simular objects are going to be created simular the one the dwarf is about the haul is if he sees they are already made and lying close by, or by having to predict the future. I dont envy toady the task of trying to program that into the game.

[Jake]

Eh, it was always going to need a bit of fine-tuning after the first release.

[Friendstrange]

Havent tried it yet but I shudder to think about all those dump stone, bring item to depot, and butcher animal jobs if this is the behaviour for all of them.
It already takes my dwarfs several years to clear the stone of all the fortress.

Or even better, if the herbalist brought a wheelbarrow with them in the first place and loaded it with a couple of stacks of plants before carting them all back.

This seems the way it should be, like a mobile stockpile that only one dwarf can place items in (otherwise we would get other dwarfs following the other dwarf endlessly trying to place items from other jobs in the wheelbarrow(minecarts). And of course you could have the wheelbarrow as an equipped item so that theyll carry it around.

And it would be extremely useful if the wheelbarrows could be stuffed with barrels before a job to increase their capacity.

What I am most interested in is this:

Can create/assign to squads from v-p

Im not sure what this means.

Squads can be given nicknames from v-p or the military screen

Finally no more rerolling endless "The Soils of Wetting", "The Turnips of Construction" etc.

[Syndic]

What I am most interested in is this:

Can create/assign to squads from v-p

Im not sure what this means.

It means that in the v-p menu of a dwarf (where you can set his labour with "l" and war dogs with "e") there's now an option to assign this dwarf to a squad (or create a new squad with him). Very handy IMO

[Friendstrange]

It means that in the v-p menu of a dwarf (where you can set his labour with "l" and war dogs with "e") there's now an option to assign this dwarf to a squad (or create a new squad with him). Very handy IMO

Oh.
I thought it was to assign items to squads so thing like your woodcutters using your <<+steel Battle Axe+>> while your militia commander has to charge the siege with a (copper battle axe) or so that your marksdwarf squad is using the masterwork steel armor while the melee squad uses regular (steel armor) armor doesnt happen.
Or like having a dwarf have a =steel left gaunlet= and a +steel right gaunlet+, drives me crazy.

Still, handy.

[MasterMorality]

Holy crap, I laughed loudly at this.

[slink]

So far I have found that some stockpiles are best set to not use wheelbarrows.  Wood piles, for instance.  Or the food stockpile that you use to empty your wagon just after debarking.  Dwarves move just as fast with individual logs as they do with a log in a wheelbarrows.  The same holds true for barrels of food.  More importantly, in my mind, is that if you assign wheelbarrows to a stockpile, then the only three Dwarves at most can haul to that stockpile.  Three being the maximum number of wheelbarrows that can be assigned to one stockpile.  When you are trying to empty the wagon as quickly as possible, or gather the results of clear-cutting a forest, you don't want to limit the number of haulers.

I did eventually get to watch a Dwarf struggling out to a distant meadow with an empty barrel, to carry back a single fruit of some sort.  I suppose that requires better management, in the form of not allowing barrels in stockpiles intended to receive the harvest from herbalists.  It's not something I do except at the very beginning of a fortress, so that would not (have been) a big problem.

[koruth]

Aye.  At the moment I'm thinking that this system is built more to be minecart-centric and decentralized.  Like you're not supposed to use just one major stockpile, but several 'gathering' piles, connected to a main 'storage' pile by minecarts.

Like, for woodgathering, you would setup a stockpile in a forrested area (sans wheelbarrows as you've noted) and have your woodgatherers bring wood to it.  You link a minecart to this pile, with tracks from it to your main pile inside the fort.  Every so often, when the gathering pile is filled, you start carting it to storage.

When you get used to it, it could very well be *much* faster than the old system... But it's going to take some getting used to.  Especially since it would mean essentially leaving a hole open into your fort for carts to pass through (until you have entirely self-contained underground tower cap farms, that is)

[Martin]

So far I have found that some stockpiles are best set to not use wheelbarrows.  Wood piles, for instance.  Or the food stockpile that you use to empty your wagon just after debarking.  Dwarves move just as fast with individual logs as they do with a log in a wheelbarrows.  The same holds true for barrels of food.  More importantly, in my mind, is that if you assign wheelbarrows to a stockpile, then the only three Dwarves at most can haul to that stockpile.  Three being the maximum number of wheelbarrows that can be assigned to one stockpile.  When you are trying to empty the wagon as quickly as possible, or gather the results of clear-cutting a forest, you don't want to limit the number of haulers.

I did eventually get to watch a Dwarf struggling out to a distant meadow with an empty barrel, to carry back a single fruit of some sort.  I suppose that requires better management, in the form of not allowing barrels in stockpiles intended to receive the harvest from herbalists.  It's not something I do except at the very beginning of a fortress, so that would not (have been) a big problem.

I do a lot of stockpile filtering with the 'take from' directive, and I think the added directives might solve this. It's hackey, but it may work until Toady fixes things up. I won't be able to see the new version until tonight, so this is guesswork:


For plants, create a smallish stockpile near your proper food/plant stockpile that only takes plants, but doesn't use wheelbarrows *or* barrels. Maybe put it near the farms. Have your proper stockpile take barrels and take *only* from the first stockpile. The long haul from the meadow to the first stockpile should work as it does currently, and then the rehaul to the second stockpile would involve grabbing a barrel and hoovering up all the individual plants. It'd be nice if stockpiles could treat farms as workshops (do they?) so the second stockpile could also take straight from the farms.


I would do something similar for stockpiles to clear out your traps. Create a 'staging' stockpile very close by that takes bins, so that hopefully your haulers will grab a bin, stuff a bunch of gobbo clothes in it, drop it on the pile, and then have a stockpile near your trade depot that only takes from the staging stockpile. Mix in wheelbarrows as appropriate, but my guess is to not use them for either - bins tend to be pretty light unless they're full of armor or blocks or bars.

[NW_Kohaku]

Oh boy...

Just what is the point of tying a wheelbarrow to a stockpile in the first place?

Why can't dwarves just look for the nearest wheelbarrow, rather than using the wheelbarrow that you know is going to involve walking the whole length of the trip from item to stockpile twice just because it's going to involve finding the wheelbarrow and the barrel at the stockpile and moving it to the target item before moving it back to the stockpile?

It would make more sense to have a "zone defense" where you leave wheelbarrows in the places where you are most likely to need them.

Beyond that, I'd have hoped Toady would have put enough forethought into this to just Reverse Polish Notation the job construction code to involve getting the wheelbarrow first, the barrel second, and then moving it to the target item third. 

[koruth]

Well this is why a lot of people wait a week or two for bug releases, I guess

I think right now the problem has more to do with traditional fort organization than the overall system (obvious weirdness aside.)  And we're gonna have to experiment a lot with new organizational patterns before we find something that works.

Like, I've already gone through two forts experimenting .  One was lost to starvation, the other to a tantrum spiral after a minecart accident killed a quarter of the inhabitants (one of them was decapitated, her head landed in the well!) 

[Saiko Kila]

...accident killed a quarter of the inhabitants (one of them was decapitated, her head landed in the well!)

One may say the head was well placed.

[Lockyy]

...accident killed a quarter of the inhabitants (one of them was decapitated, her head landed in the well!)

One may say the head was well placed.

That would have been funnier if it had fallen in a fish stockpile...