Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[snakesoul]

Hi all!

I have two 5x5 farm plots of plump helmets. My population is about 55 dwarves and I don't have enough plants to be relaxed about food stores... My plant stores are always at 200-210.
I don't use potash, I'm on it, but in other fortress I neither used it and I got overproduction. I see some vermin near my plots and my food stacks... Could be that the problem? How to kill them? I read about having cats but I haven't... I have a giant jaguar, will the jaguar kill the vermin?

Thanks!!

[Hyphe]

No, the jaguar won't help - only domestic cats (and peregrin falcons, if you can get hold of some) will kill the vermin*. But if your food is stored in barrels, vermin shouldn't be too much of a problem.

2 5x5 plots should be producing a *lot* of food. Are you growing plump helmets all year round, or only one season? How many dedicated farmers do you have? Are the plants withering in the fields because no-one is harvesting them, perhaps?

How many seeds/spores do you have? You may only be planting a handful of mushrooms at a time (and thus harvesting very few) because something is depleting your seed stocks.

[XXSockXX]

Vermin shouldn't be a problem. I never use potash either.
Are you perhaps cooking the plump helmets? Cooking does not leave seeds, so that might be a problem.
Also if you're not brewing some plants you will get seeds at a slower rate, because dwarfs don't eat that much.

[snakesoul]

No, the jaguar won't help - only domestic cats (and peregrin falcons, if you can get hold of some) will kill the vermin*. But if your food is stored in barrels, vermin shouldn't be too much of a problem.

2 5x5 plots should be producing a *lot* of food. Are you growing plump helmets all year round, or only one season? How many dedicated farmers do you have? Are the plants withering in the fields because no-one is harvesting them, perhaps?

How many seeds/spores do you have? You may only be planting a handful of mushrooms at a time (and thus harvesting very few) because something is depleting your seed stocks.

Food is stored in rock pots, both plots are producing plump helmets every season. About 4-5 dedicated farmers, plots are always planted or mostly planted. I have been watched them and they work properly, planting and hervesting plants! My seed stores are ok, about 200+ plump helmets spawn.

Vermin shouldn't be a problem. I never use potash either.
Are you perhaps cooking the plump helmets? Cooking does not leave seeds, so that might be a problem.
Also if you're not brewing some plants you will get seeds at a slower rate, because dwarfs don't eat that much.

I forbid cooking plump helmets, and I'm brewing them!

[XXSockXX]

If you constantly have 200 plump helmets while brewing some and some being eaten, that seems ok. If you want to increase you booze and food reserve, you should probably plant other kinds of plants too.

[weenog]

Next time your mountainhome liason comes by, tell him "Bring me cats. ALL the cats."  Then when you get the cats, pasture them in the areas that contain your food (including seeds) so they're not away napping in the sun or shedding on something when vermin appear in the stockpile.

[Kestrel]

You're loosing food?  Why are you doing that?

Now, I've had problems losing food, and oddly I think I fixed it by making a few 3x3 farms instead of my typical Big McLargeHuge farms.  Dunno why it made a difference.  Actually, I've never had any food problems at all until this version.  In the latest DF I've had to keep plenty of turkeys handy for eggs and butchering, along with putting far more dwarfs on farm duty. 

[Bigheaded]

Abuse hens/roosters.

bringing 8 hens and 1 rooster, letting a few batches hatch and cooking the eggs can yield ridiculous amounts of food with very little effort.

Next suggestion is to dump plenty of cage traps near entrances where creatures appear from in the caverns, if you can catch some giant bats/bugbats/rutherer's and various other stuff, you can seriously get a tonne of food.

If you have access to the surface, just set a hunter, or again, abuse cage traps.

Also, buy food, cook it in lavish meals, resell for massive profit, order more raw ingredients from the dwarven caravan. Still got problems? purchase all animals from the caravans and butcher them all. I rarely use them.

If you're not using masterwork, the amount of eggs you get from chickens/turkeys is ridiculous. I will often remove all food except from maybe 7 plump helmets, get some nest boxes up and cook all the eggs in easy meals. Get 100 or so plump helmet spawn on embark, get the planters busy.
Sound expensive? It is a little, you can probably get away with as few as 10 spawn, not really worth the risk of forgetting to remove them from z menu cook and lose them all and the wait for them to grow can be annoying. It saves on the meat you usually bring, = 60 points taken back, don't even need the plump helmets if you get the nest boxes up fast and cook em fast. so thats 60 more points free'd. so 120 points could be 9 hens 1 rooster and 60 plump helmet spawn and it's way more sustainable than what the default is.

If you have more than 1 planter and get "no plump helmet spawn spam" and don't mind cheating just find the bag with the spawn in, designate a dump on the entire bag, use dfhack to "autodump here" on an area near a relevent stockpile and/or farm plot and voila, you've removed the spawn from the bag.


Vermin could be your problem though. Personally i use cats as ambush finders, i lose a few cats but it's better than losing dwarves, only problem is my entire fort gets covered with rat corpses which need to be moved to the refuse pile and the surface just is a complete mess of random vermin corpses.

[FlavorCat]

Sounds like everything is working just fine. Your stores are always 200-210... Are they decreasing? Did you have 250+ a few seasons ago? If not, it's nothing to worry about. Expanding helmet fields without importing spawn is really tedious though, so seeds are the one thing I always buy from caravans. I don't want my population to outstrip my helmet spawn harvesting.

[Triaxx2]

I use a 5x5 grid of 3x3 plots separated by a single tile each. The vertical separation is used for seeds, horizontal for harvested goods.

How many stills are you brewing with? I try to have three of them doing it, and I've taken to shipping helmets with minecarts.

Also, butchering. Seriously, if it moves, and isn't a dwarf? EAT IT. I've taken to bringing pigs on embarks because I'm terrible at remembering pastures, so I need something I can forget about. Just remember to butcher them once in a while. According to what I've been told, wait for the second year to butcher for maximum food.

[Sutremaine]

It saves on the meat you usually bring, = 60 points taken back, don't even need the plump helmets if you get the nest boxes up fast and cook em fast. so thats 60 more points free'd. so 120 points could be 9 hens 1 rooster and 60 plump helmet spawn and it's way more sustainable than what the default is.

I like to abuse turkeys instead. 120 points = 20 turkeys = 160 meat at least, plus 160 fat that can be rendered and cooked. Plus you get raw materials for making shields and crossbows and ammo, with only the skull having no use beyond becoming a trade good. Okay, so you don't get eggs this way unless you take the time to build nest boxes to give each turkey hen a chance to lay a clutch, but you get enough food to live off until the crops and tallow roasts start coming in.

[Langolier]

I loosed food once. There were not many survivors. The goblins that lived...will not live well.

/not helping

[thegoatgod_pan]

The best egg layers are cave crocodiles. Tons of eggs, tons of meat and great defensive animals.

The best regular livestock are pigs: they don't need pastures.

Finally: why not make another plot?

[Mushroo]

Another thing that sometimes helps is (o)rders, only farmers (h)arvest. This will give more experience to your growers, which means they will level up quicker and grow more plants per seed planted.