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[Hans Lemurson]

It is thus only natural you would assume that I am an incompetent fool who can't read a wiki.

To be fair, there are a lot of people who can't be bothered to read the wiki, and the idea that rock nuts are edible raw is a very common myth that was only recently debunked.

Fair enough, 'tis true.

The wiki also mentions a bug where I'll need to have at least one Rock Nut outside of a stockpile in order for the quern grinding to work.  I suppose I could dump a nut in a hole, remove access, and then unforbid it.  Alternately, seeds planted in the soil might count towards this.  I do not know yet because despite all my talk, I have yet to actually FOUND this fortress.  I procrastinate!

Speaking of which, my Redstone CPU still needs a user interface...

[thiosk]

I think I've got that bug going on.  They !Never! Seem to grind.  It's not really a problem, though- my legendary chef has stockpiled ~7000 masterwork meals... (I just got war dog training online, he is going to get two, I think...)

[Tack]

It is thus only natural you would assume that I am an incompetent fool who can't read a wiki.

To be fair, there are a lot of people who can't be bothered to read the wiki, and the idea that rock nuts are edible raw is a very common myth that was only recently debunked.

I would like to just say that there could never exist a dwarf fortress player comfortable enough to attempt a criteria-fort without reading the wiki.
The game is virtually un-learnable without either the wiki, a friend who knows the game (recursion ahoy), or someone with genius level IQ (which this forum does attract a lot of).
And even the latter would be missing big gaps in knowledge.

[hanni79]

The wiki also mentions a bug where I'll need to have at least one Rock Nut outside of a stockpile in order for the quern grinding to work.  I suppose I could dump a nut in a hole, remove access, and then unforbid it.  Alternately, seeds planted in the soil might count towards this.  I do not know yet because despite all my talk, I have yet to actually FOUND this fortress.  I procrastinate!

Speaking of which, my Redstone CPU still needs a user interface...
[/quote]

I noticed that the easiest way to make that work for me is to have a single stockpile(only Rock Nuts activated, Barrels set to zero) directly besides the Farmworkshop where you process them and set it to "take from workshop->your Farmers". As much as I can tell, it only stops working when the rocknuts run out in mid winter ( Due to not having enough Quarry Bushes to process.

Also, you will find that Jugs seem to be able to have that problem, too, but regarding the screw press : http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Screw_press/DF2012:Screw_press . That actually gave me more problems than having a single unstockpiled rocknut

[Hans Lemurson]

Just got back from a vacation and finally started up my Nut-farming Fort.  Preliminary results indicate that this is more practical than I was afraid it was going to be.

-Stack size = Seeds produced.  Larger stacks means more nuts.  Skilled growers will be able to deliver moderately sized stacks on a regular basis.

-Leaves are Dumpable  To free up bags for further processing, you can simply dump the leaves.  The leaves get dumped separately from the bag, and the now empty back can be sent back for further leaf collection.  Unfortunately, this has to be done manually from the stocks menu, so it can become micro-intensive.  I recommend a large number of bags.

Don't let any stockpiles accept Rock Nuts  This is the easiest way to get past the no-grinding bug.  The easiest way to ensure at least one nut is outside of a stockpile, is to make sure that none are in ANY stockpile.  Rock nuts will end up sitting around in the Farmer's workshop ready for grinding into paste.

Don't let any stockpiles accept Jugs(Tools), either.  Same deal there.  Jugs will either sit around at the workshop that made them, in the food stockpile when already full of oil anyways, or in the kitchen when their oil has been used in cooking.

[Hans Lemurson]

Now the current problem that I'm facing is that my Cooks won't use Rock Nut Oil in making meals.  My guess is that this is a similar case to Dwarven Syrup, but I can't think of how to apply a good workaround.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Let them cook a single bag of leaves with each bunch of rock oil?
Mod in rock nut butter?

[greycat]

You don't need to mod in rock nut butter -- there is already rock nut paste, which can then be pressed into cakes + oil.

You need at least one solid ingredient when cooking, so the rock nut press cakes should work, right?

[billybobfred]

Hm, is the paste edible or cookable as-is?

Cause if so, pressing it basically just doubles your food supply for no real cost. (Unless the press cakes or the oil aren't both edible/cookable...)

[Hans Lemurson]

I'm pretty sure that Rock Nut Paste and Press Cakes count as solid ingredients for cooking.  I've had trouble getting the Oil to be used, so I'm not sure that using a screw press really doubles your food supply.  What it DOES do is add even more micromanagement hell as you have to maintain an adequate supply of empty jugs to be filled with the rather worthless oil.  I have only seen Oil used in cooking once, and it was in a Roast that contained 3 units of well minced Oil, and one unit of Yak Tallow (I haven't been able to keep my food supply 100% pure Rock Nut, since I had to do away with some animals).

I had the genius idea of also trying to have a wool-based clothing system as another part of this challenge, but found that I couldn't sheer and spin the wool, since my Farmer's workshops were constantly overloaded with "Process to bag" commands.

Although I believe it is possible to feed a fortress on naught but Rock Nut Paste, I do not recommend it due to the huge amount of micromanagement required at nearly every step of the process.  Not bothering with Oil makes things easier, since you don't have to worry about Jugs, but you still need to queue up a bunch of "Grind to paste" jobs for your querns and face the constant battle of dumping leaves to free up your bags.  If the workshops are located near the garbage chute, then emptying the bags goes very quickly, but this doesn't get around the fact that you're bombarded with job-cancel spam whenever you run out of bags, or your Planters Millers and Threshers are fighting over the same bag of Rock Nuts.

Rock Nut Paste as a food source is a pain in the ass because it requires your constant attention to do trivial and repetetive tasks which are difficult to automate in any reliable manner.  It's do-able, but I think its best use is just as a material source for vegetarian soap.  Rock Nut Oil is worth less than the containers that hold it.  A no-quality stone jug with Rock Nut Oil in it is worth $15, and $10 when empty.  An "Oil Exporting Economy" is a Jug-Exporting Economy.

I had dreams of feeding a fortress on massive quantities of Fried Nut-Cakes, but I think I'm going to give up on this in frustration.  There's just too much busywork involved in the extraction and processing of Rock Nuts into foodstuff.  (I had well over 2,000 units of leaves before I decided an atom-smasher was going to be a necessity.  They just don't rot!)  It turned into a non-stop drama of "not enough bags and jugs" which distracted me from getting a proper military going.

[hanni79]

Why don't you use the oil for making soap ? You need soap anyway... I would have been to lazy to trade for all that oil, but soap has at least some use.

Also I never used the Queue for stuff like this, always "R" for repeat. At least that only produces one cancellation, not 10.

[Hans Lemurson]

Why don't you use the oil for making soap ? You need soap anyway... I would have been to lazy to trade for all that oil, but soap has at least some use.

Also I never used the Queue for stuff like this, always "R" for repeat. At least that only produces one cancellation, not 10.

I did, but soap also requires Lye.  Also, there's a limit to how much soap you can usefully make.

I did both Job orders from the Manager's interface and later when I got enough bags, "Repeat" actions.  It still involved a lot of job cancellation and my personal attention.

[Reelya]

EDIT: I added this then deleted this on seeing your solution, then read further and thought it might be handy.

You can add custom workshop reactions to automate the leaf-dumping, make an automatic reaction that takes a bag with quarry bush leaves and outputs both items separate. Or just make it "incinerate" the leaves for a built-in atom smasher

You might also be able to add the automatic tag to the "grind to paste" reaction, but obviously you want to be sure you won't run out of rock nuts to plant.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Dump leaves into magma, or in front of dragon pillbox.

[Reelya]

Now the current problem that I'm facing is that my Cooks won't use Rock Nut Oil in making meals.  My guess is that this is a similar case to Dwarven Syrup, but I can't think of how to apply a good workaround.

I have a suggested plan, but i haven't had time to boot up the game to try it - make a 1 tile stockpile per kitchen that takes solid food and feeds into the kitchen, make a large liquids stockpile that feeds into all kitchens. Presto, the cook should usually take only 1 piece of solid food.