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[snakesoul]

Hello!

Every time I start a fortress, food and wood are my paranoia... And now this is my situation:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Food: 10k
Drink: 7k
I don't have too much wood, but that's because of the amount of barrels I need lol

a) What would you do? Stop farming for a time? I don't mind farmers are busy, because my population is 200 so I have enough workers and military. But I think this is not normal.

b) What do you think about the desing? I though making a huge room for storing everything was a good idea.

Thanks!!

[katana]

Rock pots.

Make ALL the food.

[snakesoul]

Rock pots.

Make ALL the food.

hmmm... What do you mean? Soap? Drink?

[katana]

Should've elaborated a little. I meant fill everything with food. And make rock pots instead of barrels if you're low on food.

Additionally, make a tower out of soap and store more food in it.

[AutomataKittay]

Start planting pigtails and dimple cups, start up a cloth industry. Or prepared meal industry with quarry bushes and sell them.

Personally I only have a warehouse style floor ( random stuffs in one space ) during start of fortress and when I'm moving major industries or food stockpiles around. I prefer to specialize stuff as much as possible and putting them into rooms ( constructed block walls preferred personally ), and around 100 population is pretty much enough to specialize food industry ( including butchery and animal keeping ), metal industry and clothing industry with some wood industry running.

Your layout looks pretty messy, but it works if it works.

For specific farming advice, yes I'd say stop farming if you have too much stuffs, that you literally can't store it. If you don't mind letting plant rot as sort of demand systems, then you'll want around 50 to 100 tiles worth of unbarreled space specialized to each plants you grows. Rotting plants don't make bad mists! I'd recommend using pots for storage, but it's pretty hard to clear out barrels, each pot can hold around twice as much as a barrel does ( around 60ish plants? somewhere pretty high )

[birdy51]

Considering my current fort became *this* close to complete starvation and a tantrum spiral, I'd say having a little bit of extra food doesn't hurt!

[Blue_Dwarf]

At some point I just keep the largest stacks of plants, and throw away everything else.
 
Then I only cook on demand.

[terko]

Why do you use precious wood for barrels? That's heresy.

[melphel]

You have 176 tiles of farm plot, that is your problem.  There is enough real estate on those farms to feed a fort of 2000.

Small plots with only a couple of highly skilled planters will do just fine to feed your fort.  Make rock pots exclusively for your containers, and save all that wood for making potash and fertilize your fields (better yet, trade some of that food for potash).  Less than 20 tiles of farm could support your population of 200 that way.  Six 1x3 plots, fertilized each season, will cost 24 potash/year, give you a decent selection on food, and give you roughly double the output for half the input.  Even if you don't want to mess with fertilizing, you don't need as much plot space as you have.

Have you any kitchens?  If not, build some and get cooking.  Prepared meals have a much higher value than raw food, and tend to bring things together into larger stacks, which means fewer containers needed.

As for layout design, big open areas are bad news for the pathing algorithm.  You dwarves may not have to walk around walls to get to things, but your processor is working harder to find what route they should take.  Keep workshops and related stockpiles near each other, this reduces time spent walking back and forth to make something and to unclutter a workshop.  Consider building vertically.  It faster to walk over 5 tiles, down a flight of stairs and over another 5 than it is to walk 20 tiles all on the same floor.  I generally have raw material stockpiles on one floor, workshops above that, and finished good stockpiles above that.

[Nuoya]

Lets say you're growing plump helmets, pig tails, and strawberries. Make, say, three 4x4 stockpiles. One only accepts plump helmets, one only takes pigtails, and one only takes strawberries. Eventually those stockpiles will completely fill up, get slightly depleted when someone grabs one, then get topped off again. Excess crops just rot in the farm plots (and then later get replanted) and your fortress stores only exactly what it needs. If 4x4 is too small you could do 4x5 or 4x6 or 5x5, whatever you need to get the right equilibrium. Disable raw plants in every other food stockpile. Meanwhile place drink-only stockpiles near the meeting areas, meat and ingredient stockpiles near the kitchens, an all-food stockpile near the dining hall that only takes from the kitchen, and then specialize everything else where it needs to be (e.g. dimple cups near the clothing factory). Export all of the extracts to the traders. You can export all of the dye stuff too if you don't bother with it.

Alternatively, make a tiny minecart quantum stockpiler that just puts all of the food ever into one 1x1 food stockpile square. I use quantum stockpiling for a lot of things but for some reason I enjoy seeing the huge pantries so I don't use it for food.

[Clover Magic]

Only 7k and 10k?  Pish, you aren't drowning in food until you have 20k+ of each.  I once had a fort where an area roughly the size of that entire room was just food stockpiles.  That was too much food.  Also yes, precious wood need not be sullied with making barrels and bins.  Rock pots and lead bins for everyone!

I personally would never have such huge farms.  One 3x3 field for each crop works just fine for my forts, and often gives me overabundance even for 200+ population, so my underground plots are often only the size of that top plot there for all the farm.  Skilled planters make a huge difference, as well as fertilizing if you have the wood to spare.

If you don't do all the secondary food/farm industries, I recommend you do.  They can help eat through surplus plants quickly.  Process pigtails for cloth, dimple cups for dye and get a nice clothing industry running.  Mill and process all such plants, and cook everything into nice roasts.  When you get swamped with seeds, forbid a select few of each plant from your stocks screen, then make seed biscuits - I often end up with thousands of seeds by year 3 or so, that's a lot of prepared meals and edible food waiting to happen, and you only theoretically ever need one seed of each plant to restart the whole crop.

In terms of layout, it's not my preference, no.  I like splitting up my food stockpiles -> One takes "raw" ingredients such as meat, plants, cheese, etc.  This stockpile does not accept barrels.  The second takes only drink and other processed things like syrup, and it does accept barrels.  The kitchens are next to the latter -> this makes them grab the delicious dwarven syrup for dwarven syrup roasts.  I also keep a stockpile of only prepared food next to my dining area, and a seed-only stockpile next to the farms.  Streamline everything!

[Blue_Dwarf]

Rock pots and lead bins for everyone!

My dwarves wanted me to tell you how much they hate you.

I've been spoiling them with featherwood bins and barrels.

[Clover Magic]

Rock pots and lead bins for everyone!

My dwarves wanted me to tell you how much they hate you.

I've been spoiling them with featherwood bins and barrels.

Featherwood?  Are your dwarves pansy elves who can't stand to lift a bit of weight?  Featherwood's only good for sleeping on!   

Haha but seriously, since I usually embark on tree-less biomes, I've gotten into the habit of treating wood more stingily than freaking platinum.  Bins get to be made out of whatever useless metal is lying aorund,a nd since galena is often plentiful, it's often lead.   

[cvar]

1) Make your primary export food.

2) Too much open space for me, I like the neat hallways and rooms look.  I used to have a stockpile level that would have 10x10 rooms in a + shape, but I started using minecarts and quantum stockpiles.  I dunno why, it's not like I needed to compress my fort anymore.  There's only another 100+ z-levels to work with.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Rock pots and lead bins for everyone!

My dwarves wanted me to tell you how much they hate you.

I've been spoiling them with featherwood bins and barrels.

Featherwood?  Are your dwarves pansy elves who can't stand to lift a bit of weight?  Featherwood's only good for sleeping on!   

Haha but seriously, since I usually embark on tree-less biomes, I've gotten into the habit of treating wood more stingily than freaking platinum.  Bins get to be made out of whatever useless metal is lying aorund,a nd since galena is often plentiful, it's often lead.   

Lead has the additional benefit of not scattering so much when you reclaim.