I'm not sure about what the problem is. Also 50 seeds on embark sounds like an exaggerated amount... I usually bring exactly 9 seeds per crop, and that inevitably leads to an overflow of seeds in a bunch of seasons only.
Heh, clearly I'm doing something wrong then. Actually, taking 50 was experimental; I was thinking maybe the shortage of seeds had something to do with just not having enough to replace them as fast as I was brew-
Actually, that might still be an issue. Nobody says I can't have two stills, and my surplus mushrooms are an indicator I totally can do that.
Are those kittens confined in the general food stockpile via a pasture zone? Pests will happily munch on your seeds if they are allowed to.
Not per se, but at this stage the fortress is small enough they don't have a lot of room to roam. Also, my corpse/refuse pile is literally piled with their kills, so they seem to be doing their job.
Otherwise, I'm really clueless. The way I go is this:
- I go with a 3x3 plot as soon as the initial 7 strike the earth. Plump helmets it is.
- I usually have a small seeds stockpile next to the plot accepting seeds and no barrels,
only accepting from links (this is to avoid "plump helmet seeds required" spam").
- Secondary seeds stockpile somewhere around which is taking from everywhere and giving to the main one.- Turn off plump helmets cooking in the Kitchen screen.
- Turn the harvested plump helmets into wine asap to get seeds and repeat the process.
- rinse and repeat.[/b]
I've bolded a couple things because, well, I'm not entirely sure I understand them. For one, I'm not entirely sure what "only accept from links" actually does. The wiki says it "disables automatic stockpiling", meaning that...dwarves won't automatically take seeds to that stockpile when there's room? I'm not sure why I'd want to turn that off. Also, the second stockpile "feeding" the first one kind of confuses me. I can only assume that this gets around some of the bizarre dwarf AI, but I'm not sure exactly how. If you/someone wouldn't mind explaining this one a bit more, I'd greatly appreciate it.
Now, to make production go faster, you want to get as big a stack of harvested plants per planted seed.
- Your best bet to do that is dumping a few points in grower skill at embark (the more skilled the dorf who plants the seed, the bigger the stack you'll harvest).
- If you don't want (or can't) bring an experienced farmer at embark, just train up one. You can set standing orders to have plants be harvested by those with the grower labor enabled only (this will help you condense experience on your farmer)
- Potash also makes you harvest larger stacks ofc.
Oh, I embarked with two farmers. They have skill at Growing, Brewing and... something. I forget what else. Though I'm considering altering the loadout so that I can craft more bags, which clearly I don't have enough of at start. Since I don't have many bags, I can only assume that the seeds are being directly stored in barrels.
You have barrels enabled on your seed stockpile. Thus, the dwarfs will store seeds in bags and the bags in barrels. Whenever a dwarf hauls a seed, say from the dining room, he will take the barrel with lots of bags and hundreds of seed with him. So you get spammed with no seed messages.
Set barrels to zero on the seed stockpile, that should solve the problem.
Aye, that's likely the issue, but again, now I run into another issue: I wasn't aware bags were so vitally important. >.< So I started with a low number of bags and low cloth. I'll be sure to modify the loadout so I have more of either bags or cloth at embark, whichever is more efficient. At least, I'm assuming that's a problem; I'm not entirely sure what the heck my dwarves are doing for storage without them. Likely storing the seeds directly in barrels, as I said.
Four pointers;
-Separate drink and food stockpiles, it's good organization and allows at glance determination of amount left.
Good idea, actually. I'll try that.
-Never enable barrels in seed stockpile, and keep it separate from food and drinks. Seeds in barrel makes for a lot of non-planting because it's being hauled around.
Yeah, that's likely the #1 issue with this system.
-Check that your farm's set to plant as much as possible, if you're suffering from low food. And never process all of your plants at once.
I'm actually not cooking any of these Plump Helmets at all. O.o I'm just letting the dwarves eat them and recover the seeds. Seems the logical thing to do, at least until I can start getting a surplus.
-Check that cooking is disabled for seeds and plants ( z-kitchen, red is disallow ). It is disabled by default, but sometimes oddities happens or you get new plants after embark ( I can't read that tileset so I can't tell if kitchen's there ). Kitchen cooking also don't gives seeds.
No kitchen built as of yet. I've room to expand and build one should I need it.
Those usually takes care of all of my farming issues, other issue might be you just have a lot of plants, but there're not much seeds because it's not been processed/eaten yet. I always brew/mill/process anything I plan to cook to make sure I gets the seed first.
I'm wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea to, as migrants come in, start constructing additional stills and double the brewing. The issue is, though, with constant hauling of barrels, the Brew Ale (R) order is
constantly getting cancelled. Thinking that the barrels themselves are the issue, and once I start using more bags, that'll change.
As for amount of seed you're bringing in, 50 is huge. I buy at least 100 plump helmet, and that usually gives me that much seed back without buying any after brewing or dwarvs eating them while digging out and setting things up. I bring 10 of other kinds because no plants and grow them on idle lands.
It would probably be a better idea to bring the helmets than seeds anyway, because it takes time as my miners excavate my planned rooms, so they can eat the food and create seeds as they go. So yeah, let me see about posting the relevant details of my embark profile and see what I'm doing wrong (likely: quite a bit. But it leads to hilarity, and of course Fun down the line.)
Author
Topic: Seed Shortages (Read 1970 times)