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[Cobbler89]

As far as I can tell, seeds keep just fine lying in a stockpile by themselves. And bags are needed for a variety of jobs other than holding seeds. But no matter what stockpile settings I set, short of forbidding seeds or at least not stockpiling them (which as far as I can think of would, in effect, be throwing them away), I can't seem to stop dwarves from stuffing them back in bags even if I try to dump them all into one stockpile or another.

(In all the below attempts, my other stockpiles do not allow seeds.)

I've tried having a stockpile with only seeds allowed, with "allow plant/animal" on and "allow non-plant/animal" off. That seems to not take even seeds (what, they're non-plant??), and I think I might've caught my dwarves *still* stuffing the seeds back into a bag despite there being no other stockpiles that take seeds and more than one that takes bags.

I've tried having a stockpile with only seeds allowed, with "allow plant/animal" and "allow non-plant/animal" on, and they stow bags of seeds in that stockpile anyway (even if I have them dump the seeds out of the bags first they just fill the bags back up and drop them in that stockpile). This despite the fact that I have been able to get my stockpiles differentiate between empty and non-empty bags (allow bags, disallow everything else, so bags full of anything will be left in other stockpiles).

I even tried allowing seeds and allowing furniture but turning off bags in the furniture type sub-list, and that didn't work either. (I think -- I've tried so many things I'm almost losing track, though I remember for sure it didn't work right -- they still stuffed seeds into bags, they just didn't put those bags of seeds in any stockpile afterward!)

Is there any way to get dwarves to keep seeds stockpiled but not stuff them into my limited supply of bags? (I don't care if I have to dump the seeds to get them out of the bags in the first place, as long as they don't stuff them back into the bags afterward and leave the seeds useable and preserved in a stockpile.)

I suppose I should also ask, is any of the behavior witnessed here (e.g. seeds not being put in the stockpile if "allow non-plant/animal" is off) bugged? And/or is there a DFHack fix for any of it?

[tussock]

A bag with seeds in it, as far as the game is concerned, is stocked like a seed. Things which are also finished goods can still be stored in the finished goods pile when they've got things in them, for easy export and general annoyance.

But a bag's furniture when it's empty, and a seed (or thread, or powder, or whatever else they hold) when it's full. It's the only way the game can stick them in barrels. Oh, don't have barrels/pots at your seed piles, real bag eaters.

To free bags of seeds automagically, you cook them. Have one seed-collecting pile near where they're generated (still, farmers, quern, dining hall) that gives to the farm supplies pile and your kitchen. Have a locked seed reserve somewhere (one bag of any you'd care about missing for a year), and then turn on seed cooking. Have your farm supplies seed pile only take from the seed collector pile. You'll end up needing about 20 bags for seeds total, less if you just stick to less crops. Just keep the piles small and keep cooking what accumulates at the collection site.

Note: If you have any stockpile giving to the kitchen, you have to have every possible raw food collection pile also giving to it (in a chain if nothing else), so the Cooks can still find everything. Once one thing's linked, they only look at the links, which also saves processing time.

Then just buy bags of everything until you can stop fussing with that and instead face the problem of massive furniture stockpiles constantly clogged with bags. Caravans have huge numbers of the things.

[tejón]

Not the answer you're looking for, but turkeys. For six embark points you get one leather (i.e. bag, though a quiver or two and armor/boots for the militia aren't bad either), a small stack of bones (bolts, and also the other three armor pieces), and a full round of meals for your initial crew.

I like to bring about two dozen, and a pair of nest boxes which I set up immediately (20+ more meals). Then I slaughter all but the two biggest/toughest of each gender (you only "need" one of each, but accidents happen) and let their eggs hatch.

[sal880612m]

I have noticed that dwarves will make multiple seed bags when they don't need to but if I have read the wiki correctly in the past there is a finite limit to the number of each type of seed your fort can have before your dwarves will stop gather them or things like brewing will stop producing them, so eventually this should become a non issue. Keyword here being should.

I have had bags and no seed stockpile and the dwarves still used the bags to collect seeds so I really don't think there is a way to stop them short of not having any bags at which point they will do what you want but each seed will need it's own stockpile spot so a quantum stockpile is advisable.

[GavJ]

Try setting up a 2 tile minecart route, which takes from a seed stockpile A, and dumps to a single tile seed stockpile B that only takes from links.
The first stockpile only takes from your kitchens and stills.
Set the route to be pushed always once every day or two.

What I think might happen is that they'll put seeds in the first pile, and the same dwarf will usually grab the seed and put it in the cart immediately, before a bag can come into the equation. Then the seeds sit in the cart unbaggable. It gets pushed and dumped into a single quantum seed stockpile.

This might stop bagging. It might also allow one bag of seeds but then once that it sitting in the single tile, no more bagging will occur. Or it might not work at all, but it's worth a try.

[Sadrice]

It would be a little cumbersome to manage, but you could dump the seeds out of the bag, with the dump zone dropping them in a food stockpile, and then unforbid them as needed.  I assume the dwarves will not bag forbidden items, but they do seem to be awfully persistent about seeds, so maybe they would make an exception.


Of course, when you unforbid some seeds to plant, they'll probably get stuffed in a bag before going to the farms, but at least this way you can keep it down to one or two bags for actively used seeds, and no bags for your main seed reserves

[Larix]

You can keep seeds out of bags to some degree, but it's probably not worth the effort. Just having enough bags is preferable.

You can link your seed-producing workshops (farmer's workshop, still, mill) to stockpiles "taking" from the workshop, and make sure those stockpiles don't accept seeds. Seeds will accumulate in the workshop and will not get moved from there until needed for planting. (Planters pick up and plant single seeds, they don't handle the bags themselves and won't stuff their seeds into a bag, either.)

As far as i know, loose seeds do not rot and are not normally eaten by vermin. Errant seeds left behind after eating raw plants seem to get stuck in bags anyway, so you might need to restrict your farming to plants that aren't edible raw.

[slothen]

I don't know how you could sustainably and easily keep seeds out of bags, and I have absolutely no idea why you would ever want to.

In my experience all you really need to do is keep the seed stockpiles from using barrels, and then set up two stockpiles (A, take from anywhere, B, take from A only).

An entire fortress's worth of seeds takes up only a few bags.

[Merendel]

I don't know how you could sustainably and easily keep seeds out of bags, and I have absolutely no idea why you would ever want to.

Well one reason near and dear to every fortress overseer's heart is stoping the spam about farmers not haveing plump helmet spawn (or whatever seed type).  Dwarves are a bit stupid and take the container to a single seed instead of the other way around.  While this behavior might be helpful if they waited untill there was a few dozen seeds to colect at once they will often get bag, go get seed, bring bag back, realize a new seed was made and drag the bag back to get the seed, ect.  All the while farmers cant work because some goof is runin around the fortress playing keep away with the seed bag.

Best work around is what larix suggested. put your farmers workshop/mill/still near your farms with linked stockpils that dont take seeds so they all stay in the workshop.  The planters can then always get seeds as needed, no bags are used, no spam produced.  you have to put up with a bit of workshop clutter but those tasks are rarely time critical and you can always just add more workshops.   a bit of manual dumping can be done to move plump helmet spawn up from the dining room on an as needed basis.

[GavJ]

Dwarves are a bit stupid and take the container to a single seed instead of the other way around.

Why did they start doing this btw? IIRC, they used to carry items to containers sensibly, and then it changed in 2012, right?

[Cobbler89]

An entire fortress's worth of seeds takes up only a few bags.

Mine would only take up one or two if the dwarves would stop starting new bags just because they can. 8^(

Of course, that would potentially lead to the inverse problem mentioned by another reply about cancellation spam due to all the seeds being in too few bags, but I don't think it'd be as big a deal once I have space cleared out for farms.

I have this bad habit of starting off all my forts as hunter-gatherer villages: hunt and gather plants for food and drink, make bolts for more hunting from the bones of the slain wild beasts, lather rinse repeat while I set up components of the long-term fortress one at a time. I also have a bad habit of wanting to avoid wasting things like seeds even if I haven't set up the farms yet... maybe I just need to change my attitude. 8^\

That said, if seeds don't rot even if forbidden (whether in a stockpile, which can be arranged, or not, which doesn't even involve arranging then), then I suppose it's entirely doable (even if not quite as simple/automatic) to just dump them all and get them back when I go set up the farms -- that would be more or less the sort of solution I'm looking for, even if not as clean and automatic as stockpile settings that wouldn't involve dumping and later unforbidding.

And that said, if Larix is right that seeds in a workshop won't be bagged (and won't rot there either), that would be an excellent alternative with less manual dump-designating... I'm gonna try that one and report back.

...And if that fails I guess I'll just dump the seeds, leave them forbidden and make a note if they rot (though it sounds like they won't). Thanks for the ideas, everyone!

[ninja'd]

Dwarves are a bit stupid and take the container to a single seed instead of the other way around.

Why did they start doing this btw? IIRC, they used to carry items to containers sensibly, and then it changed in 2012, right?

I think the idea is that they don't have to make as many trips if they carry the bag and make a sweep of a room full of seeds. But for some reason the job system isn't worked out to expect that and not try to create lots of jobs with lots of cancellation spam. And I'm not sure if they can plant more than one seed like how they pick up more than one seed in a single bag-trip. And I'm not sure that they always go deal with all the seeds they could/ought, many times -- I've seen them grab three seeds when there are ten lying around. In short... the idea is right when you think of it in terms of "doing a job with multiple seeds and one bag", but the execution needs more tweaking to actually gain efficiency in many cases.

[doublestrafe]

Dwarves are a bit stupid and take the container to a single seed instead of the other way around.

Why did they start doing this btw? IIRC, they used to carry items to containers sensibly, and then it changed in 2012, right?

So that they could also take the container to multiple items.

[slothen]

I don't know how you could sustainably and easily keep seeds out of bags, and I have absolutely no idea why you would ever want to.

Well one reason near and dear to every fortress overseer's heart is stoping the spam about farmers not haveing plump helmet spawn (or whatever seed type).

Which is why I included that helpful little bit about how to set up seed stockpiles such that they will NEVER take the entire bag to collect leftover seeds from milling/brewing.  The only time a dwarf can ever take the whole bag is if a farmer is actually planting.  So more or less no cancellations.

[Cobbler89]

Tried having the still and quern give to a non-seed stockpile and the seeds do seem to be left in the workshops. That takes care of most of it.

There are still the occassional seeds from some dwarf eating a plant raw (how elfen...), so once in a while I've also dumped those into my seed-only stockpile and left them forbidden until I plan to use them... and that seems to work too.

Thanks!

[greycat]

Dwarves are a bit stupid and take the container to a single seed instead of the other way around.

Why did they start doing this btw? IIRC, they used to carry items to containers sensibly, and then it changed in 2012, right?

This was done in 0.34.08, on 05/14/2012 ("Here is a hauling release").  It was really a major change to fortress mode, introducing not only combined container hauling, but also minecarts, a general change to the physics of falling/flying objects, and a bunch of other little changes.

Some people really hated the new hauling system, and decided to stick with 0.34.07 for a while.