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[ibanix]

If more than one dining room is defined, how do dwarves choose which one to use? Nearest location when hit by hunger? Does crowding make any difference?

I want to keep adding new dining rooms as the fortress expands, instead of expanding existing ones; knocking down walls with ☼engravings☼ makes my engraver unhappy, and wastes time. But if they all flock to the first/nearest mess hall and get unhappy thoughts from lack of chairs and tables, I may as well just use one central hall.

Opinions?

[Sirbug]

I guess they go to nearest one, but why don't you make gigantic dining room in the first place? It's one of the best ways to keep dwarves sane.

[ibanix]

I typically want a high-quality dining room early in the fortress (inside first year) to keep the dwarves happy, so I start with a radius-9 circle room with smoothing and furniture. I try not to engrave until my engravers are getting close to legendary, to maximize value.

Plus when a fortress becomes large enough I like to limit the distance my dorfs have to walk to food or bed.

[Nikow]

No, they are not going only to narest dinning rooms. They will choose this rooms, what they like. More social dwarf will sit in group in most crowded and most value room, but if there is statue of creature, what they don't like, they will be avoiding it. They seems be attached to some thrones and tables too, sometimes to furnitures inside.

There is very much factors, i know dwarves who are running all the way from deep mountain to put their asses on WOODEN table on surface (with glass floor above). I have two miners like that. My carpenter is nearly always siting on granite thrones, because he like granite. My mayor is dining alone, most of times, but when he's sad he is choosing legendary dinning room.

Yeah, i have seted pop cap on 64, so i have a lot of time to watch my petsdwarfes.

[Larix]

I'm pretty sure that dwarfs will by default go to the nearest free _chair_. Whether it's in a designated dining room or not doesn't matter. If they prefer furniture made from materials they like, that'd make sense (i've seen dwarfs make slight detours to get hold of their preferred booze, so a "pick your preference" code seems to be in place when checking basic needs), but i haven't paid attention to detailed sitting choices.

If dwarfs are owners of rooms, they will use a chair installed in one of those rooms, if possible. I think dwarfs will only get happy "nice dining room" thoughts if the chair they're sitting on is inside a designated (dining) room, but they'll sit on a no-dining chair if it's closest to them the moment they grab their food. Notoriously, bookkeepers and managers will preferentially sit on the chair you designate for their office and complain if it lacks a table.

Multiple dining rooms (especially if at least one is _not_ defined as meeting place) work well for me, but they don't have a real advantage over single huge dining rooms. Keeping meeting rooms and dining separate can be helpful - partygoers and socialising idlers will clog the floor and may obscure chairs and tables, so hungry beards can have trouble finding a proper setting.

[Zac]

I think you'll have to be carefull when managing your food stockpiles unless you want to see a dwarf traveling through all of your fortress to pick his favorite -kea guts- biscuit then traveling it back to sit on his favorite chair. So make sure you have a good variety and quantity of meal available in each dinning room. It's not a life threatening issue for the fortress, it will just slow it down. Untill an urgent lever pulling is required.

[ustrikemagma]

a smoothened 9*9 dinehall filled with common rock table and thrones can be legendary, without engraving.

[doublestrafe]

Multiple dining rooms (especially if at least one is _not_ defined as meeting place) work well for me, but they don't have a real advantage over single huge dining rooms. Keeping meeting rooms and dining separate can be helpful - partygoers and socialising idlers will clog the floor and may obscure chairs and tables, so hungry beards can have trouble finding a proper setting.

I've got a megaproject going that involves ridiculous numbers of bucketeers dumping water. It is SO helpful to have idlers hang out nearby instead of way down below, because the next dwarf to pick up a bucket is invariably one of the idlers instead of the one who just got done. Besides, a lunchroom in the sky--how cool is that?

[FrankMcFuzz]

Do what I do and make a ginormous dining room to start off with!

So what if everyone eats and drinks and sleeps on the floor and get ganked by goblins until then; THIS IS CALLED FUTURE-PROOFING

[MDFification]

Burrowing solves all your problems if you want to restrict certain dwarves to a specific dining hall/food stockpile. Otherwise, it's best to only have one.
I frequently have dwarves eating in unassigned chairs and tables, which is annoying. Especially since they all start doing it in unassigned jail cells. I was going for rehabilitation of tantrumming dwarves, and ended up having free members of the fortress visit them, take their chair and table and start eating the food I left in there to avoid starvation.