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[Melting Sky]

I'm relatively new to the game so I am hoping I am just overlooking something silly. I'm currently playing my second fort and the thing that is literally bringing my fort to its knees isn't the endless cave dragon riding goblin attackers but rather an issue that popped up right after I discovered bins. Initially I had a vast wasteland of stockpiles which seemed to be rather inefficient as far as space went but oddly enough all the stone I cut and items I created were hauled away in mere moments while I had this set up. Then something terrible happened. I discovered I could make bins which seemed like the perfect solution for my giant stockpiles stretching as far as the eye could see. Thus I made a bunch of wooden bins. Right after I did this the hauling job cancellation spam began. All of a sudden where as before if I mined out some huge area producing hundreds of stones that needed to be stored my idle dwarves would swarm all over the blocks and have them stored away in mere moments. After creating the bins things changed drastically. Instead of all my idle dwarves rushing off to haul stone and other items almost immediately now I have mined stone and other items that have sat around for over a year without being touched. Dropped items of every size shape and description litter every inch of the fort, most are clothing or random containers such as pots, barrels and buckets. Where as before the bins were made, if there was hauling to be done I would have almost no idlers. Dwarves would rush to the items that needed to be hauled and squirreled them away very rapidly. Now I have a good 30 idlers out of a fort of 100 dwarves despite there being literally hundreds of hauling jobs that need to be done. I have gone through the stocks and unforbidden every single item in the entire fortress. I have hauling enabled on all but maybe ten of my most elite and important dwarves. Nothing seems to help. I have only one burrow which literally covers every inch of the entire inside of the fort which I use to issue my civilian lock down alert when the forces of vile darkness arrive so I'm pretty sure this can't be the cause of the problem and I have vast areas of stockpile that are wide open and waiting for incoming materials so that also can't be the issue. I should add that I started having a problem with my military dwarves not being able to find their equipment right after I started making the bins along with some rather tragic incidents involving caged goblin weapon masters that I had ordered disarmed 3 months prior who once pitted for my military to train on came out of their cages still fully armed and very dangerous.

Is there something simple I am doing wrong or are bins just broken in some odd way that makes them completely useless for anything but severely hampering my dwarves ability to store anything in a timely manner? I should add that I introduced wheel barrows at around the same time as the bins so its possible they are the issue but I think its more likely the bins causing the dwarves confusion. If anyone could give me a heads up to what's going on I would be very grateful. Is there a way I can destroy all the bins in the fort to test if they are the source of all the cancellation spam and the droves of idlers and items needing to be hauled?

[AdeleneDawner]

That's probably the wheelbarrows, actually. A stockpile without any wheelbarrows them will generate as many hauling jobs as there are empty tiles; a stockpile with wheelbarrows assigned to it (meaning both that it has its wheelbarrow number set to something greater than zero and that at least one wheelbarrow actually exists and is associated with the pile) will only generate as many jobs as there are wheelbarrows - and you can only have three wheelbarrows assigned per pile, no matter how big it is.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't use wheelbarrows at all, just that you have to set it up correctly: instead of one large pile, make lots of smaller piles (minimum 6 tiles, since the tile the wheelbarrow is stored on doesn't count as an empty tile and won't generate a job), and set each one to use the maximum of three wheelbarrows.

[Melting Sky]

Thank you very much for this useful information. I will definitely do some stock pile tuning per your advice.

[sirdave79]

A few things ill chuck in there. Not 100 percent certain what your problem is but I have a few things to say which may be helpful.

1, stones do not go in bins. So making bins should have 0 effect on stone hauling. Stones are hauled to stone stockpiles by wheelbarrows, with up to 3 wheelbarrows assigned to the stockpiles. I would advise not assigning wheelbarrows to stockpiles other that stone ones.

2, bins can be a pain in the arse. Youve discovered that. They can be useful however. I use a strategy of employing bins in certain stockpiles and not in others. Leather, cloth and blocks I just leave the stockpiles with their max bin setting. Metal bars, armour, weapons, clothing I dont use bins. If you accidentally create a stockpile with bins on, the moment the game is unpaued jobs are generated to grab a bin and put it in the stockpile. The moment the job is generated you are going to end up with a bin full of stuff on a stockpile with a bin previously set to it. Emptying the bin is a pain but it can be done. (assign a dump over the bin,keystrokes - d, b, d then "undump" the bin on the stocks screen. If you have made a 1x1 garbage dump near to the bin the contents go into the dump but not the bin. The contents can then be claimed.

3,Your job cancellation spam I think is caused by the 1 guy with a bin who has "earmarked" his bin full of stuff. The people who would otherwise have picked up his earmarked stuff report job cancellation as they can no longer haul the item. This is like seeds in barrels. Due to a bug/issue with seeds currently, if you have seeds stored in a food pile with barrels set to it (and you want all food in barrels/pots) then 1 grower will grab the barrel and other growers will not be able to grab a seed from the barrel the 1 guy has picked up. Barrels hold a lot of seeds. Dont use barrels on seed only stockpiles.

4, If a bin has been assigned to a stockpile (like in the above description) and then bins are unassigned to the pile and the contents emptied. The bin seems to "hang around empty". It doesnt "collect" more stuff in the pile. Dump the bin and then claim it once its been dumped. I have seen issues where buckets get used to bring water to soldiers who are stationed. These buckets seem to get dropped and left where they are. Again I dump these and reclaim them. That clears up the buckets.

5, clothes get scattered everywhere by your dwarves over the course of years.Clothing wears out (x, xx, X, XX) and dwarves have a tendancy to drop their crap around. Also because clothes are "owned by dwarves" sometimes the crap lieing around cannot be hauled to the trade depot for example. Eventually x,xx,X,XX clothes do end up in the clothing pile eventually however given a single moment when you say "im going to clean up my fort" and dump a bunch of stuff, a lot of these clothes will "resist" the dumping because they are owned. If you use DF Hack this is what the clear owned command is for, which helps but I find doesnt eliminate the problem completely.

6 Im not sure why you have barrels and pots everywhere but again, making bins should have no effect on this as barrels and bins tend to be containers for exclusively different goods/stockpiles. Have you done much in the way of custom stockpiles ? If so delete these and remake from scratch with simpler settings to see if your problems are cleared.

7 Finally when using fastdwarf 2 1 (another df hack command) it seems that jobs are overlooked for watever reason. Dropping them to 0 0 will often get them to display on the units list a job they are now doing, that you want them to do that they were assigned to do but didnt before.

Destroying items is best done by an atom smasher. Build a 3 x 3 raising bridge. put a wall around the bridge and a single door in the wall. Link the bridge to a lever. Raise the bridge. Put a garbage dump under the raised bridge (i key followed by a gfor garbage zone assignment). When you dump items the items will be hauled to the garbage dump. So you can dump all your bins (make sure you have no stuff in them you want destroyed). Once you have your bins in the dump, lock the door, make sure there are no dwarves in the garbage compacting area, as they will be killed, then pull the lever. The bridge will lower "atomsmashing" anything underneath it. Your bins are now gone.

I wouldnt advise doing this with bins tho, just set all your stockpiles to not use em till you get the hang of it. They ARE useful and ive never had the problems you are that have been due to bins.

Good luck

[Henny]

Something that could save some pain: Disable bins on ammo stockpiles. Currently, due to a bug, dwarves won't use bolts if they're in a bin. Just make a really big stockpile instead.

Otherwise, bins are pretty useful indeed.

[fortydayweekend]

Bins are great for storing bulk items - crafts, furniture, clothes, cloth, leather etc.

But they're sometimes frustrating, because everything in the bin being hauled is unavailable while it's being hauled. Also anything that interrupts the dwarf will leave you with an abandoned bin.

So you usually don't want bins travelling a long distance, e.g. goods forged at the magma sea being brought to the surface. A "feeder" stockpile can work well - have a small "no bins" stockpile taking from the workshops, next to the main stockpile with bins that "takes only" from the feeder stockpile.

Specialisation can also help, e.g. instead of a big "finished goods" stockpile, have separate "clothing", "crafts" etc stockpiles. That way a hauler collecting crafts won't prevent your military from equipping clothing.

"No bin" stockpiles can be good a visual bookkeeper too. Especially with meat and plants (no barrels), furniture, gems, bars, ammo, even weapons and armour if you have the space.

[sirdave79]

Food outside of barrels does attract pests tho.

Also I did not realise you can store furniture in bins. That doesnt make sense in my head. Ill try it. Wonder how many stone tables I can fit in a bin.

[WJLIII3]

Food outside of barrels does attract pests tho.

Also I did not realise you can store furniture in bins. That doesnt make sense in my head. Ill try it. Wonder how many stone tables I can fit in a bin.

Its not a great idea, cause they're so heavy.

To the OP, did you enable bins on stones? That is not a good idea, because stones are extremely heavy. A bin can hold three, so they have to walk to a stone, carrying a bin, pick up the stone, carry the bin to the next stone, pick that up and carry two stones anda  bin to a thid stone, and then three stones to the stockpile, now moving at a ludicrously slow speed.

[Larix]

Also I did not realise you can store furniture in bins.

You can't. Furniture stockpiles are by default set to request zero bins _because furniture isn't stored in bins_. If you increase the bin setting, the dwarfs will dump one stockpile-assigned bin into it, but it will sit empty.

[kiwiphoenix]

Wholeheartedly second Fortydayweekend.

Handicraft stockpiles are pretty much useless without bins, since every ring and bracelet will take up its own stockpile space, and every one will have have to be individually carried to the Trade Depot by a hauler.

The 'feeder' system fixes most bin-related problems. Dwarves will still take the entire bin with them to pick up single items, but when those items are only a couple steps away to begin with, it's not much of an issue. All the good with little of the bad.

Related note, you probably want to disallow barrels in your seed stockpiles, for similar reasons. Currently, farmers that go to plant seeds whilst another one is using the seed barrel will break down, panic, and spam you with alerts until the barrel is available again.

[Melting Sky]

Thanks for the heads up. Things are running more smoothly now that I've done a lot of optimizing and reorganizing although my stock piles were never originally designed with these issues in mind so it will likely be in my next fort that I am able to create a truly optimized set up but things are certainly running well enough now that its no longer hampering the entire fort. After doing some more reading on the subject the problem was the synergistic result of a combination of my incompetence and a couple of known bugs.