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[jez9999]

I've seen quite a few playthroughs of Dwarf Fortress on Youtube, and everybody seems to just leave the stones left from mining rock lying all over the floor.  One guy even just hides them.

But I always immediately get them hauled to a garbage heap, then reclaimed into a huge stone stockpile I have so I can build stuff with them.  Is there a good reason to leave all these stones lying around?  They just seem to get in the way of walls/buildings you want to build and look ugly.  Why would you not immediately dump them?

[Centigrade]

The quick answer is manpower.

[Button]

The quick answer is manpower dwarfpower.

Fixed

[Sutremaine]

It could also be the nature of an LP. I get bored with massive cleanup jobs, and I'm doing the game, not watching it.

[jez9999]

The quick answer is manpower.

But it doesn't take that long and surely saves you time in the long-term as your dwarves have trouble building stuff with stones lying in the way.

[Centigrade]

Especially in an LP where a lot of the action takes place in the first few months or years of the game with a small population and a hostile biome, you don't want to waste time on hauling stone that could be spent doing more productive things. You especially don't want to bother with that when you're designating and mining huge sections of fortress at once, all planned out in advance, because you would end up with tonnes and tonnes of stone. After my population gets above fifty or so, I absolutely start assigning stone to be picked up and hauled; but, until then I generally leave it where it lies.

[Centigrade]

The quick answer is manpower dwarfpower.

Fixed

I thought about doing that joke.

[Rydel]

The stones aren't hurting anything sitting there, and I have better things to do.

If I have a surplus of Dwarves, I'll sometimes quantum stockpile them near the mason or craftdwarf's shop, but that's more to speed up production than clean things up

[DWC]

I just leave them where they are. If they get in the way of a new buildings, dwarves automatically move them aside. Putting them in stockpiles or dumping them is a waste of time, eventually masons and whoever will clear them all out with building aboveground towers and furniture and pots.

With ore, I dump that all down an open garbage chute to the magma furnaces, since it's such a long way down, but all my regular stone shops are on the upper levels and I don't dig around much in the low value rock in the lower layers.

[Xinael]

Once I've had a migrant wave or two, I set up a non-economic stockpile (economic stones go elsewhere) with three wheelbarrows. I make it quantum with a minecart but that's not a requirement if you'd rather not use the exploit. Doing it this way has two advantages, I find: firstly that the number of dwarves that go mental hauling rocks when you mine out a new area is limited to 3, and secondly that those three guys can get it all done pretty fast thanks to the weight-reducing wheelbarrow. It's really nice being able to just leave those three guys to it, knowing they'll get the job done eventually but won't cause any problems with dwarves getting distracted. I find that letting the masons do the hauling really slows everything down, because they don't use barrows.

[MrSparky]

I don't do much digging, I actually sometimes have stone shortages. I typically keep a stockpile of the most common stone color adjacent and linked to my masonry for blocks and furniture and set up another small one with all other colors near a craft shop for rock pots. The haulers will use the wheelbarrows to refill them as needed and I can quickly see if I'm running short on the main color of my fort.

[Trif]

The stones can stay where they are. They don't bother me, and if somebody needs them they'll put them into a stockpile eventually. Exceptions are public spaces like dining halls or nobles' quarters, but otherwise I don't bother.

[joeclark77]

I create multiple stockpiles in my workshop area -- black stones, white stones, brown stones, gray stones, magma-safe stones, microcline, etc.  They are relatively small and each has three wheelbarrows assigned, so they get filled pretty quick.  Whichever stone I have an overabundance of, I assign the linked mason or mechanic or craftsdwarf shop to make items on repeat.  Fairly quickly the stone of that type gets used up and cleaned up.  Typically the only "clutter" I get is from some stone like marble that I decided I don't want to waste on low-quality items, so it sits there waiting for me to come up with a project or train a skilled worker.

[Ubiq]

Since moving stone takes so much longer than it used to, I usually just build mason workshops in the middle of mined out areas and let them take care of it. Setting multiple shops to repeately make blocks works just fine.

[zubb2]

This killed a few of my early forts back when EVERY block dropped a stone, they hauled faster though.

Still the OCD ness of it all made me waste time moving rocks and then everyone died.

I just live in clay mostly now.

I also modded bricks to make 4 bricks from 1 clay like they should be.