Print

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

[Robsoie]

Hello

As i am reclaiming a good fort that due to an unfortunate bad timing encountered a nasty fate , with the reclaim i'm now faced with a problem : the job priorities that seems really insane (though my embark dwarves have not yet reached that state of mind ) .

So i'm marking area for reclaiming items with D -> B etc... as with a reclaimed fortress everything is thrown now all over the whole map
As expected the dwarves then went to fetch everything and drop them into the newly designed stockpiles.

Then giving a look at my reclaimed fortress walls i decided to fix what was the source of the death of the previous expedition : the unfinished wall and the entrance that would be bridge controlled.

I then noticed that the dwarves have then been completely ignoring that and continue to happily fetch the tons of item over the map and put them into stockpiles, despite all the required stone is already availble in the appropriate redesigned stockpile (as fortunately those didn't got scattered by the reclaiming)

Noticing bunch of ghosts popping up too, i decided to relaunch the coffin making industry and setup the stone workshop to produce them.

Again the able dwarves are completely ignoring this

As an attempt to prevent them to oddly focus exclusively on the item hauling, i decided to D -> B -> then forbid tons of items.
I cancelled too the workshop order and instead decided to use the manager to order the building of coffins as i remembered the manager was able to order specific amount of items manufacturing .

But unfortunately this changed nothing, the dwarves are still completely obsessed with hauling the remaining of items i didn't forbid into those damned stockpiles instead of doing those much more high priority jobs.

Is there anything i can do other than having to forbid even more of those items or is there really no way to give better priority to some jobs over this obviously super high priority hauling job ?
The job screen does not give the option to increase priority to a specific listed job, while the manager screen only have 1 job displayed (the coffin making one) and so the priority increase will do nothing there.

[ospamiony]

Hi,
Turning off refuse hauling for dwarves with important tasks is the only option here I'm aware of.
If not then you can only remove Dump from items or forbid them all.

Custom job priorities are still on the "DF ToDo" list.

I always dump only the most irritating garbage and leave the rest after more McUseless get to the fortress and have no other stuff to do.

[Larix]

AFAIK, promoting a job on the manager screen only means the assignments are passed to workshops earlier: when you have 30 'make socks' and 30 'make shoes' jobs, in that order, the socks will be made first, and only after all sockmaking jobs were lined up at your clothieries will the shoe jobs be assigned. If you promote shoemaking, the first sockmaking job will appear only after the 30th "make shoes" appeared on the workshop job queues.

Hauling jobs seem to be extremely important to dwarfs, although i'm not sure if they're actually prioritised over other jobs (and what priorities do, "next job" choice appears to be largely random). If you want non-hauling jobs done urgently, disable hauling on the beards in question - e.g. from the 'v'iew unit - 'p'references 'l'abour, shift-enter on the hauling block; should black them all out. I generally do this for miners and disable at least wood hauling on woodcutters. As the fortress grows, important craftsdwarfs also get their hauling licences revoked.

[Robsoie]

Thanks, it really looks like hauling is the highest priority for the dwarves, as experimenting further the only way i got them to complete the vital jobs were to simply forbid everything (except items required for the actual jobs).

Good that dfhack helps a lot with the autodump command, as it allowed to centralise all those myriads of items in a single location for when i was finished with the walls and coffins.

Hopefully the next version will allow for more customisation in the actual priority of the jobs you need to be done.

[smjjames]

Hopefully the next version will allow for more customisation in the actual priority of the jobs you need to be done.

Doubt it, there hasn't been any mention on Toady's part about job priorities in the upcoming release AFAIK. There could be during the bugfixing phase after it's released or in the next dev phase.

[WhimsyWink]

I'm not sure I would vote for customize-able (if it were to be put to a vote) job priorities.  Part of the 'charm' of Dwarf Fortress: fortress mode is that controlling dwarfs is less like role playing than it is like herding cats.  They have to have a base AI otherwise the players' job is much changed.

Just my opinion.

[Finn]

I'm not sure I would vote for customize-able (if it were to be put to a vote) job priorities.  Part of the 'charm' of Dwarf Fortress: fortress mode is that controlling dwarfs is less like role playing than it is like herding cats.  They have to have a base AI otherwise the players' job is much changed.

Just my opinion.

I second that.  If players were allowed to rearrange priorities I think the game would lose something.

[Garath]

not necessairily. Dorfs with an antipathy to authority and such might simply not follow the priorities. It's not that strange that someone, for example a manager, can set priorities for jobs, such as making taking care of wounded a higher priority just after a battle.

[Stormfeather]

One other thing you could do is assign 1-3 wheelbarrows to the stockpile(s) in question. That would limit the current number of haulers to however many wheelbarrows are in play.

Assuming of course you already have the wheelbarrows made. Otherwise you could follow one of the other suggestions until you get some made and assigned, then revert back and use the wheelbarrows to have slow but steady hauling going on while other dwarves do other things.

[Merendel]

I'm not sure I would vote for customize-able (if it were to be put to a vote) job priorities.  Part of the 'charm' of Dwarf Fortress: fortress mode is that controlling dwarfs is less like role playing than it is like herding cats.  They have to have a base AI otherwise the players' job is much changed.

Just my opinion.

I kinda agree on not being able to directly tweek priorities but I wouldnt mind if dwarf skills bumped the priorities a bit.   If for example a master mason had both masonry and hauling enabled and both a mason job and a hauling job were avalible he'd be much more likely to go for the masonry job while a dwarf with low skills all around is much more likely to take a hauling job vs the masonry job.

[WoobMonkey]

I kinda agree on not being able to directly tweek priorities but I wouldnt mind if dwarf skills bumped the priorities a bit.   If for example a master mason had both masonry and hauling enabled and both a mason job and a hauling job were avalible he'd be much more likely to go for the masonry job while a dwarf with low skills all around is much more likely to take a hauling job vs the masonry job.

This.  Any mason worth his rock salt would send an apprentice to haul the rocks, while pursuing his craft.  Either one would be equally likely to grab a barrel of booze to haul to the dining room, however.

[kardwill]

Thanks, it really looks like hauling is the highest priority for the dwarves, as experimenting further the only way i got them to complete the vital jobs were to simply forbid everything (except items required for the actual jobs).

Simply disable "hauling" for the important dwarves, no? Much faster.

[Robsoie]

I usually do that for the bookkeeper as soon as i arrive on an embark but in that case i completely forgot about that for the workers.

[Garath]

fishing is a higher priority than hauling btw

[WhimsyWink]

fishing is a higher priority than hauling btw

coz a bad day of fishing beats a good day at work