Print

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

[Gigaz]

We all know the story. Some migrants have arrived and they usually are high master soap makers, milkers or woodcrafters. They have to get a useful job or rather a useful combination, because if they have only one job they'll be idle half of the time.
But which jobs go well together and which combinations should be avoided?

In my games, I usually go with the following rules:

Mason+Grower: Both have to work upstairs, leads to short walking times.
Plant Processing+Weaving+Clothsmaking: The whole clothing industry is usually pretty compact, but if the dwarfs are too specialized they will quickly run out of threads or cloth.

Miner/Woodcutter+Nothing: Miners ans Woodcutters choose a new job every three seconds and it is much more efficient if they stay at their mining/woodcutting site
Manager+Not military: A manager in combat training will not manage jobs for months. Terrible.

What job combinations do you use?

[Psieye]

I divide all jobs into 2 categories: Specialist Jobs vs Drone Jobs.

Specialist Jobs are anything where skill makes an appreciable difference or requires some limited tool: mining, woodcutting and anything that has a quality level on the product.

Drone Jobs are EVERYTHING ELSE. Plus Masonry, as I use workshop profiles to ensure only my best masons are producing actual stone furniture while my drones are producing stone blocks.

Every dwarf who isn't in the military or have a specialist job have EVERY Drone Job switch on (this includes medical skills). Other forts have "Haulers", I have "Drones" who do every odd job. I need more booze? 9 stills are set to make booze and 9 out of tens of drones show up to finish it faster than one legendary brewer would. Need ore smelted? 15 magma smelters. Patients in the hospital? SOMEONE among the tens of drones in my fort will get to it promptly.

When resources permit, my drones also double as marksdwarves in times of siege.

[i2amroy]

I pretty much do the same thing, except my drone profession is titled "peasant".

The one thing that I do differently then most is mass enable pump operating on all of my drones and on any skilled laborers that I don't expect to be working most of the time (so leatherworkers, jewelers, etc.). Then I create 5-10 "Dwarven exercise machines" by building pumps and setting them to be manually pumped. The end result is a direct -5 or -10 to your idler number, as well as building dwarf stats. This also has the bonus side effect that for my drones pump operator usually becomes their highest skill and then their first legendary skill, turning them all a nice red color and allowing for quick and easy differentiation between drone dwarves (that I don't have to worry too much about) and skilled labor dwarves (who I need to take care with).

[zubb2]

That turning your sweat shoppers(I mean crafters) red thing is a good idea, I might ry it.

[joeclark77]

My "drone" profession is called "Trooper" because I use it for my military.  Typically the vast majority of the military is Inactive (they're marksdwarves; the few melee dwarves are on Active/Training).  They are also my plant gatherers and wood choppers because I don't want anyone else going outdoors.

[Mushroo]

I keep the jobs that migrants arrive with, and let the cheesemakers idle.
By year 2 or 3 all jobs should be covered through immigrant labor.

[Larix]

If i have many dwarfs, it doesn't matter much if my valued specialists end up spending half their time in the meeting hall lazing around and throwing parties.

I generally combine weaving and clothesmaking - those workshops are generally next to each other and if too many dwarfs are making clothes and not enough weaving, that problem solves itself by running out of cloth, whereupon they all swarm the looms. Potash making and lyemaking get combined, as happens with all the farmer's workshop labours, simply because it allows setting up generalist shops of these kinds and indiscriminately ordering whatever's needed from them. And finally, i roll the beekeeping industry labours together, because the paltry 40 hive limit doesn't produce enough work to keep the mandatory "two of each" in the sub-labours sufficiently occupied - beekeeping, pressing and waxworking all get rolled together and usually stuck on some random thresher or so. And when i have a big meat industry, a few dozen dwarfs get both butchery and tanning enabled, so the ~30 walruses or whatever get slaughtered within a season and not over the next full year.

But usually, specialisation has its benefits - even when it's only working speed that can be worthwile: a single properly set-up still with two high-level brewers available all the time can provide enough drink for 250 dwarfs, with capacity to spare (i actually kept the still turned off for about two months per year to use up the excess booze).

[Spacebat]

I divide all jobs into 2 categories: Specialist Jobs vs Drone Jobs

Same here, i just call my Drones "grunts".

[Jervill]

Generally I just keep them with the job they have arrived with or similar professions (All fishing labors enabled, masonry+engraving, plant processing).

Occasionally during a major project I'll enable masonry for just about every dwarf except Miners and Woodcutters.

[Orange Wizard]

I painstakingly analyse the stats and skills of every single dwarf that arrives in my fortress, and assign them one or two jobs that they will be most effective at doing.
This leads to EVERY dwarf being a specialist in something, and there always being an idle dwarf to do a job when it needs to be done.

[qoou]

Milker+shearer+cheesemaker, recovering wounded + feed patients (Nurse), the other medical skills (Doctor), gem cutting + gem setting, the fishing skills, and the metalsmithing skills.

Looking at my current fort, 35% of my Dwarves are children, 8% are dedicated military, 6% are dedicated garbage haulers (and I can't wait for some kids to grow up, because the garbage is piling), 6% are dedicated builders, ~15% are dedicated haulers (and again, I need more kids to grow up, because hauling is painfully slow; haven't bothered to learn minetracks yet). So that leaves the valuable 30% of my fort, all but a handful having only one skill enabled, and most of them legendary. My most valuable dwarf is a high-endurance badass with Legendary +5 in all the smithing skills. He's burrowed 140 levels below my main fortress in a mini-palace of his own, with two legendary furnace operators constantly feeding him. I should set up a cave-in lever that can cut his mini-palace off from the rest of the fortress in case of !!FUN!!, now that I think about it.


Mason/Growers: I need ~10 dedicated Growers working full-time (so I have 12-13), and my two Legendary masons have a big backlog of doors to make.

Clothing industry: 2 dedicated dyers, 2 dedicated clothesmakers, 1 each of plant processer and weaver, and a web-collector.