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[Hans Lemurson]

Thinking about how unbalanced farming is in DF, with small plots able to feed large numbers of dwarves with relatively little labor, I got the idea to try to do farming with the most inefficient crop in the game: Rock Nuts.

The problem with mass producing Rock Nuts though is that you have to find a way to reliably yield multiple seeds per plant, since you're going to have to always take one seed back to replant.  Will large stack-sizes do the trick?  Will a size 2 quarry bush yield 2 rock nuts when processed?

If so, the focus of such an agricultural operation will undoubtedly be on getting highly skilled planters and possibly the use of fertilizer.  Fertilizer could get awfully expensive, since it would consume wood at an alarming rate, but could certainly be useful in jumpstarting the operation to grow the total seed mass for all the fields.

The second problem would be: What do I do with all those darned bags of leaves?  My goal here is to produce ROCK NUTS, not cave-curry.  I'll need to free up the bags as quickly as possible in order to yield the precious nuts, and I don't want stockpiles filling up with spice barrels.  Quarry bush leaves offend me, and I will not have my dwarves eating Draltha-fodder.  Would using the stockpile menu to regularly dump the leaves be sufficient to free up the bags for industry and avoid having foolish dwarves eating this "food"?

My ultimate goal here is to have all solid foodstuffs produced by the fortress come from Rock Nuts.  Nut paste and press-cakes fried in oil will be their diet.

[thiosk]

As I understand it, quarry leaves are inedible until cooking.  Thus, one needs only to forbid kitchens from cooking it, then you can ship it out on the next elven caravan.  Create a stockpile with no allowed barrels that accepts only quarry leaves.

The point about the bags though, now that I think about it, I'm not sure there IS a good way to discard of the items inside bags...

[Orange Wizard]

Wait, aren't quarry bushes the most efficient way of feeding a fort? One bush can produce multiple leaves, one leaf is processed into five meals?
Assuming the dwarves are drinking water, as quarry bushes can't be brewed...

[thiosk]

I think the point is that once you subtract the leaves, the rock nuts are the WORST method to feed a fort.  1/5 the yield, andthe seeds are the food, which means you rely on farmer skill to generate the needed plants, as the act of eating the nut does not produce a seed.

To support a nut only diet, you have to dump the leaves.  Run out of bags, needed to process the bushes, and you can't get more nuts.

[Hurkyl]

Speculative method:

Set up a food stockpile with 3 tiles accepting leaves but not barrels. Have this take only from your main quarry bush leaf stockpile. Feed this into a kitchen and queue up lavish meal jobs in the manager. With any luck, the following will happen:

• The cook will grab three bags of quarry bush leaves
• The cook will realize he's not allowed a fourth bag, and so he'll quit his task
• The quarry bush leaves will be returned -- without the bag -- to the main stockpile
• Haulers will drag three items from the main quarry bush stockpile to the mini-stockpile (hopefully in bags)

[Hans Lemurson]

Technically speaking, feeding a fort with Rock Nuts shouldn't be much different from feeding it with any other seed.  It's initially just a question of producing enough seeds in the first place.

Where Nut-Farming differs though is in the difficulty of processing.  If worst comes to worst and the leaf-bags aren't reclaimable, I could always just set up a lively cloth industry in parallel to provide an endless supply of bags, and then condemn the cave-curry to the atom smashers.

Alternately, it may turn out that leaves in bags but NOT in barrels may be prone to spoilage.  In this case, I'll simply need a large supply of bags to keep a "leaf rotting stockpile" going at full capacity.

One way or another, I'll have get my Rock Nuts and turn them all into precious* precious oil.  I'll be an oil baron!

*(of comparable value to the jugs that contain it)

[greycat]

The problem with mass producing Rock Nuts though is that you have to find a way to reliably yield multiple seeds per plant, since you're going to have to always take one seed back to replant.

Should be the same as any other plant, right?  You get 1d2 seeds per plant eaten or processed (other than cooking).  Unless my knowledge has some holes in it.

The second problem would be: What do I do with all those darned bags of leaves?

If you want the bags back (as I'd imagine you do), then you could cook meals out of 'em and then atom-smash the meals.  Use a leaves-only stockpile linked to a specific kitchen which does nothing else.

It might also be possible to dump the leaves out of the bags, without dumping the bags.  Haven't tried.

[greycat]

Oops.

[Hans Lemurson]

The problem with mass producing Rock Nuts though is that you have to find a way to reliably yield multiple seeds per plant, since you're going to have to always take one seed back to replant.

Should be the same as any other plant, right?  You get 1d2 seeds per plant eaten or processed (other than cooking).  Unless my knowledge has some holes in it.

I will have to test this.  I'll pay attention to harvested plant sizes and see how seed quantity relates to stack size, and what random factors are involved.

The second problem would be: What do I do with all those darned bags of leaves?

If you want the bags back (as I'd imagine you do), then you could cook meals out of 'em and then atom-smash the meals.  Use a leaves-only stockpile linked to a specific kitchen which does nothing else.

I will refuse to cook the leaves into meals, since my dwarves might be tempted to actually...eat them. *Shudder*

[Quietust]

This thread seems to be centered on a incorrect assumption:

Rock nuts are NOT edible

Their material definition may have [EDIBLE_RAW], but that doesn't matter because dwarves will never choose to eat seeds or, indeed, any other item which is normally not considered to be food. This is even explicitly stated on the wiki page.

These are the only items an omnivorous creature will ever eat (carnivores and BONECARN creatures have different criteria), and only if they're unrotten and aren't owned by a caravan:
* meat - always edible
* prepared fish - always edible
* untamed vermin - only if you're really hungry
* plants - only if the material has [EDIBLE_RAW]
* cheese - always edible
* prepared meals - always edible
* globs - only if they are made of Mud or Vomit (only possible in Adventurer mode, and you have to be pretty hungry for it to work)
* eggs - only if at least one material has [EDIBLE_RAW] (for stock raws, this is never the case)

[GreatWyrmGold]

You can, however, cook or butterize them.

[Hans Lemurson]

This thread seems to be centered on a incorrect assumption:

Rock nuts are NOT edible

I know this, but thank you for clearly driving the point home in 36 point font.

Looking back at my previous posts it appears that although I meant to talk about how I'd be processing them into Paste, Oil and Cakes, I never actually stated that explicitly.  It is thus only natural you would assume that I am an incompetent fool who can't read a wiki.  I apologize for leaving you with this impression.

Allow me to then clear up any confusion on this matter:
I am going grind the seeds and press them for oil.
Fried press cakes will feed my fort...IF I can yield a steady supply of Nuts.  That's the challenge here.  Do you have any wisdom on how to maximize seed yields?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Maximize plant yields, and don't process when you have 200 seeds.

[hanni79]

Woah, greets HansLemurson, a pleasure to meet you here, too.

One thing I want to add to your plan : A Dwarven Atom Smasher. You're so gonna drown in Quarrybush leaves.
As far as I can tell, your whole plan is dependant on having a lot of small farm plots and splitting the seeds to as much stockpiles as possible ( forbid barrels!). The second thing is near-instant processing of the bushes and a good system to free those bags again.
I think it should be working, but it will need constant micromanagement in my opinion, since the speeds how fast stuff is processed/planted etc. is skill dependant and the flow will change according to them.

"and don't process when you have 200 seeds."

Isn't that exactly what he should avoid ? If it is capped at 200 he never must reach that number, otherwise he will loose Rock Nuts.
Keeping the circle going without hitting the max and without running out is the trick here, isn't it ?

[Quietust]

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.