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[Opti]

Hello all,

I have a couple of questions and would very much appreciate any answers or advice. I have looked around the forums and the internet for solutions but I am still unclear.

1.) I have difficulty with seeds and farming. My last fortress had a real food problem, and I was getting lots of announcements that the Growers could not plant because they did not have the seeds. However in my inventory there were hundreds of seeds.

Should I have created a stockpile next to the farms and set to seeds only? Was perhaps the problem caused that my stockpiles were far away from the farms? I am really unsure about this one.

2.) Hauling = I am a little confused by hauling as well. Should I turn hauling off for specialised workers. For example my Growers. If I turn off food hauling for them and leave them only with the Grower skill, will they be able to take seeds from the stockpile? And deposit seeds in the stockpile?

Essentially I want to create farmers that can self farm continously without getting distracted to haul unrelated food products. Could some please advise? My aim is to have a food production area that requires no micro management once set up.

Many thanks,

Opti

[Garath]

first of all, hauling only refers to the job of moving something to a stockpile. If a dwarf needs stone for a craft mechanism, he'll get the stone since the job is craft mechanism, not haul stone, similarly harvesting is harvest plant, not haul food, plant seed etc, so turning hauling off doesn't affect that.

For seeds, what you need is a stockpile with barrels set to 0 for seeds only. This will cause the seeds to be stored in bags. They are always stored in bags, but those are then stored in barrels unless you tell them not to and this is what causes your problem. To minimize time away, you should also set milling, brewing and plant processing close to the seed stockpile, these jobs produce seeds and would cause a dwarf to get a seed bag (or barrel) to collect them, so the closer the better

[redsector]

1.) I have difficulty with seeds and farming. My last fortress had a real food problem, and I was getting lots of announcements that the Growers could not plant because they did not have the seeds. However in my inventory there were hundreds of seeds.

Should I have created a stockpile next to the farms and set to seeds only? Was perhaps the problem caused that my stockpiles were far away from the farms? I am really unsure about this one.

Job cancellation spam regarding a lack of seeds is a common problem since the hauling update. Basically, all your seeds are in bags and the bags are all in a barrel. Some random hauler wants to pick up a seed left in the dining hall or brewery or wherever, and picks up the whole barrel, takes it to where the seed happens to be, puts the seed into it, and hauls the barrel back to the stockpile. If a farmer wants to plant something while the barrel isn't there, you will get the canceled job message. You can usually ignore it, the farmer will try again once the barrel of seeds is back at the stockpile. A common solution seems to be to disallow barrels in your seed stockpile so that seeds are stored in bags only (a bag will hold 20 seeds, I think, so you will usually have multiple bags available for planting and picking up seeds, whereas in turn, all those seed bags are usually put into a single barrel that your dwarves will then be constantly hauling around the fortress).

Regardless, it is of course advisable to have stockpiles of raw materials near where those resources are actually needed so your workers will have to do as little hauling as possible. Let the dedicated haulers do the legwork instead.

2.) Hauling = I am a little confused by hauling as well. Should I turn hauling off for specialised workers. For example my Growers. If I turn off food hauling for them and leave them only with the Grower skill, will they be able to take seeds from the stockpile? And deposit seeds in the stockpile?

Workers will always haul whatever they need to do their job, regardless of their allowed hauling jobs. So, yes, you can and should turn off all hauling for specialized workers so they can concentrate on their jobs. Regarding growers with food hauling disabled, they will take seeds from the stockpile to plant, but they will not pick up seeds from the dining hall and put them in the stockpile - that's not part of their job and is done by food haulers instead.

[Opti]

Thanks a lot for your replies. I really appreciate it. You have both cleared up my understanding. I will try your suggestions now!

[Opti]

I am having difficulty setting the stockpile to not allow barrels. Could someone quickly explain how? many thanks

[Garath]

make a custom stockpile, it is default at no barrels, enable food, disallow anything but seeds and you're set. On an existing pile, use (q) and set barrels to 0

[Opti]

Great thanks