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[catote]

Im trying to set my production up to run smoothly.
That works well with food processing (automated by game), but also stone/wood working works well, with the repeat feature.

I fail to find a good way for plant processing.
Fields/harvest works well.
Quern/Farmer's Workshop works badly.

When I use repeat there, soonish there's an error message about missing stuff (plants/bags/barrels).
Then the entire operation stops, and I must manually go to every workshop to start them again.
It's doable, but Im looking for tips to improve this.

[Tirion]

Use the manager. It's a bit tricky with the farmer's workshop if you have both pig tails and quarry bushes, but it can be done by queueing up both Process Plant and Process Plant (to bag) jobs.

[Snaake]

I have a separate stockpile with rope reed/pig tails only, which feeds a farmer's workshop set to repeat process plants (the basic version, which is only for those 2 plants). I do need to set it to repeat again occasionally, because the plants run out. Probably would regardless of stockpile size (mine is pretty small but has barrels), at least with pig tails, since you can't farm them all year round. This farmer's workshop is near my loom and subsequent cloth industry.

The millstone (current fort has an artifact one) and quarry bush/syrup-processing farmer's workshop take straight from the harvested plants stockpile. I also have a stockpile set to accept bags only (and barrels, if I'm doing syrup) nearby. Optionally, the millstone could have it's own intermediate stockpile that only accepts plants you want milled. You do need loads of bags, especially if you're also running a glass industry. Also, try to keep emptying out bags; in other words, don't forget to keep dying cloth, too, if you're farming dye plants.

[Stormfeather]

Right now, honestly EVERYTHING that uses plants/seeds is going to be a bit wonky and not smooth. That's because there's the new system where dwarves take barrels/bins/bags and collect things, rather than taking the things TO the bags/etc. all the time. This in turn means that one dwarf will be picking up a barrel with plants in it to collect new ones from the field, just as another dwarf wants to use them to, say, process them, or brew with them, or whatever. And you get an error message that the items aren't available, when you really have a ton of them, they're just being carried around. -_-

Not sure how Toady can fix this and keep the new system in, but I really hope he figures out a way, because it's annoying. To put it mildly.

[catote]

As always, I appreciate the input. Thanks.

[Snaake]

Right now, honestly EVERYTHING that uses plants/seeds is going to be a bit wonky and not smooth. That's because there's the new system where dwarves take barrels/bins/bags and collect things, rather than taking the things TO the bags/etc. all the time. This in turn means that one dwarf will be picking up a barrel with plants in it to collect new ones from the field, just as another dwarf wants to use them to, say, process them, or brew with them, or whatever. And you get an error message that the items aren't available, when you really have a ton of them, they're just being carried around. -_-

Not sure how Toady can fix this and keep the new system in, but I really hope he figures out a way, because it's annoying. To put it mildly.

To clarify, the "taking the bags to the items to be picked up" is a feature, not a problem, since now if there's eg. 8 seeds in close proximity (of the same type), it'll collect them all on one trip with a bag, instead of making 8 trips to carry 1 seed (it's so heavy!) every time.

There's a few issues, of course (which get annoying because carrying the bin/bag reserves the items in it for the duration of that hauling trip):
- A dwarf takes a bag/bin/barrel even if it's going to pick up just 1 item
- Dwarves don't care how much the barrel/bin weighs, so they may take a lot longer anyway, because they're carrying so much extra weight.
- as a corollary to the first, seeds are especially problematic, since their containers can be stored in containers, so once the dwarf has carried the bag and put 1 seed in it, it drops the bag, then fetches a barrel to put the bag in, instead of taking the bag to the barrel (since he always has only 1 bag, the opposite would make more sense). (milled plants also go into bags, which go into barrels, but only 1 stack per bag, so not an issue with them)

Some fixes that Toady could make include:
- When a hauling job gets assigned, the dwarf should decide beforehand which items it's going to haul (assuming it doesn't work like this yet), and if it's only 1, the dwarf wouldn't take a barrel/bin.
- introduce a small waiting period for if jobs don't have materials available (this could creates loads of new problems), or maybe only for cases of items being hauled (could be problematic in terms of resources, I dunno). Would at least solve the issue with seeds, assuming players are smart and have seed stockpiles, stills and millstones close to the farms.

A fix that any player can make is to try lowering the aggressiveness of the seed_combine settings in d_init.

[PainRack]

It may be a feature, but one of the thing is that for the first time in my dwarven history, I'm running out of alcohol..........

Sure, I have had dwarves drink out from wells before, due to shortage of barrels and stuff, but this is the first time I'm running out of alcohol in the game......

[Snaake]

It may be a feature, but one of the thing is that for the first time in my dwarven history, I'm running out of alcohol..........

Sure, I have had dwarves drink out from wells before, due to shortage of barrels and stuff, but this is the first time I'm running out of alcohol in the game......

It's a feature, not necessarily a very well-working feature yet, like I said. Like with almost everything else, it's possible to work around it by adapting your previous setup somehow, it seems like either you haven't and/or your setup was especially vulnerable to this, or your changes haven't helped. If it's the cancel brewing and you forgetting to set it to repeat again, try setting up multiple brew*30 orders at the manager.

[wuphonsreach]

It's a classic race-condition.  The solution is multiple stockpiles.

Seed stockpiles should never use barrels.  And the seed stockpile nearest to your farms should be set to only take from links.  With a second buffer pile beside the first one.  Then, near the areas where you will be generating seeds (farmer workshops, querns/millstones, dining rooms, and stills) should all have their own mini stockpiles setup which give to the main buffer stockpile.

What should then happen with seeds is that they get carried to the nearest stockpile, then another job is generated to carry them to the buffer stockpile, then a 3rd job moves them into the links-only stockpile.  That last move is the one which can cause job cancellation spam, so you want the buffer and final seed stockpiles to be as close as possible to each other.  Which limits the distance that a bag full of seeds destined for planting can stray away from the farm area.

For any item which can be put inside a barrel or bin and which is used in a workshop task, you should always create (2) stockpiles as well.  The one that directly feeds the workshop should be set to only pull from links.  The second stockpile feeds the first one and can pull from anywhere.  If these two stockpiles are right next to each other then you should rarely see job cancellation messages.

[Triaxx2]

Which can be simplified by using mine carts.

Say for example you have four 4x4 fields. Give each one it's own small stock pile on one side, and build a mine cart track along it. Set each of the four stops to accept up to one quarter of the cart worth of stuff before being guided to the next one. Each stop is one step more full than the previous. And the last one has it sent to the stock pile where it gets dumped. Then it should be sent back the other way.

This will alieviate the bag issue because only the last stock pile will use bags and the seeds should get redistributed into bags on arrival.

[Snaake]

Which can be simplified by using mine carts.

Say for example you have four 4x4 fields. Give each one it's own small stock pile on one side, and build a mine cart track along it. Set each of the four stops to accept up to one quarter of the cart worth of stuff before being guided to the next one. Each stop is one step more full than the previous. And the last one has it sent to the stock pile where it gets dumped. Then it should be sent back the other way.

This will alieviate the bag issue because only the last stock pile will use bags and the seeds should get redistributed into bags on arrival.

Have you actually used this? Because it sounds like a very bad idea due to the massive volume minecarts can hold, e.g. 2500 crafts, or 400 sand bags. I'm somewhat sceptic if it's possible to have enough plants coming out of 4 fields fill up a minecart to 25%, let alone 1 field.

Also, you're mixing up stuff. Seeds are "produced" at farmers workshops, stills, querns/millstones and by eating raw plants (only plump helmets out of the underground crops for the last one, I think). What you're suggesting, with the track by the farm plots, would be for plants, and plants being barrel-hauled isn't such a big problem.

[Triaxx2]

Fah, I did say seeds, but I meant plants.

It would work the other way also. Particularly hauling back from the brewers. You'd have to set the stockpile to take only from links and have the cart track set for that. Then you could allow those bins to be used in the source stockpiles so you'd have those hauled, which take a lot more room.

[Snaake]

The weight issue still stands. I did suggest using pressure plates for lower weight triggers than the 25% from hauling orders, in The "How Does Minecart" Thread, but even that only gives a control resolution of 50 Urists of weight, and seeds are listed as "<1" in game. Full seed bags are up to 9 Urists, at least (the bag weighing 1 Urist).

It does require a bit of setup, so probably not so useful for seeds. For hauling sand down to magma furnaces, definitely. For hauling food from the surface farms etc. down to your kitchens, maybe.

[MenacesWithSpikes]

Slightly funny story:  Dwarven hauler grabs a barrel and takes it outside to collect some fish.

A kea passes by.

Dwarf panics and drops his barrel.

Kea steals 3 fish from the barrel.

 

[Neckbeard]

For what it's worth, I get around the hauling changes by doing this stuff in phases and micromanaging a single brewer for booze.  This kind of assumes you have or have had a dwarf do bookkeeping work at some point.

For booze production I do it like this:

• Go to the cooking screen and disable brewing on any plants you don't plan on brewing.
• Forbid plants you specifically don't wish to brew, OR mass forbid all plants of that type and then unforbid the ones you do wish to brew.  But only if you've set them to be brewed.
• Set your head brewer or brewers to brew repeatedly until done.
• Repeat steps 1-3 until all of the plants you wish to brew are done.

I like this method because it allows me to prioritize brewing plants in big stacks for larger stacks of booze that takes far less space to store than just wildly brewing all the plants I have access too at once.  It saves on barrels and pots in the beginning, and it allows me to work on more than one plant processing operation at a time for efficiency in case I want to say, brew plump helmets and process pigtails into thread or something.

Next, for processing pigtails, and optionally dimple cups, to get thread I do the following.

• Optionally order as many different leather bags from your dwarven caravan at the max level of demand as possible, and trade uhh...  you know what just deconstruct the trade depot when they finish unloading everything.
• Optionally set a stockpile for empty bags near areas where they are needed.
• Forbid pigtails that you want to save for brewing.
• Set threshers to process plants.
• Optionally set your dwarves not to auto-loom thread.
• Optionally forbid all non dye millable plants.
• Optionally set your quern or powered millstone to repeat until finished.
• If you haven't set separate stockpiles for thread, cloth, and optionally dimple dye, do so now.  Optionally set a clean thread stockpile for undyed thread set to only accept thread from the farmer's workshops and only give to the dyer's workshops, and a second thread stockpile to only take from dyer's workshops and only give to the looms.
• Wait until your pigtails are processed and the thread stored.  Optionally also wait until your dimple cups are processed and stored if you are going to dye your thread.
• Set one or more dwarves to be clothiers, and weavers.  Optionally also set them to be dyer's if you want to dye your thread.  Multiple dwarves set up like this make the next steps faster.
• Optionally have your clothier's dye as much thread as possible if you plant to use dyed cloth.
• Set your dwarves to auto-loom all thread or if you are using dye, only dyed thread.
• Weave all the thread.  Or optionally only weave dyed thread if you are using dyed thread.
• Once all the thread, or optionally only the dyed thread, is weaved into cloth set your clothier's shops to produce whatever you want.  Or optionally more bags.

This should eliminate the spam messages and most of the job cancellations from overactive item haulers.  Be careful not to brew plants in season as I've said before.  Also, I think you can probably still brew things like sweet pods and cave wheat while your miller is constantly milling dimple cups by using a stockpile that only accepts dimple cups and gives it's stock to the quern or powered millstone being used.  But I tend to play on the safe side.  Also thread isn't created in stacks.  9 pigtails = thread, thread, thread, thread, thread, thread, thread, thread, thread.  While 3 pigtails = thread, thread, thread.  So it's usually better to save large stacks of brew able plants for brewing rather than thread or sugar.

And I know some people are going to insist that I should multiply all of my ingredients, but even with 3x9 farm plot fed with fertilizer being worked by 2 dwarves, I'm easily producing 5000 units of various booze by the end of year 2, and even one season of quarry bush farming leaves me with tons of food, and almost nowhere to store it.  That's not even factoring in poultry or pig farming.