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[Micro102]

I'm looking for different ways people sort/bundle the jobs for their dwarves. I find myself making "builders" which build things, meaning masonry, carpentry, and architecture. I give my miners the stone detailing job as well as I find them needing something other then mining to keep them busy. I have "cooks" which cook(duh), brew, clean fish, butcher, and make cheese. Clothiers which do everything related to making clothes down to crushing the fibers. Engineers do everything I feel is mechanical, etc...

So list how you sort your jobs, whether they be for efficiency, or just because you think it's nice that your farmers also milk and shear animals.

[Ghoul]

Ah, now this is of interest to me.

Whenever I begin a new fortress, I assign dwarves to do what I need to be done at the time, e.g. If I need alcohol, I'll set someone as a brewer, then reassign them when they've run out of things to brew.

This leads to 0 idlers, but a lot of micromanagement. When my population reaches 50+ though, I'm able to set people permanent roles, without worrying too much about idlers.

Personally, I'd rather not have to micromanage quite this much - but I imagine that if I set the first 7 with fixed roles, then nothing would get done very well...

[Micro102]

Yes I think I've ended up structuring my jobs based on how there are more things that need to be done then there are dwarves, but what I noticed you leaving out and what I am asking is what are those permanent jobs you assign? Do you just pick a dwarf and give him one job and one job only, continuing to micromanage others? Or do you give him multiple jobs, and if so, what jobs do you assign to the same dwarf?

[fortydayweekend]

I've tried a few different ways and probably the most efficient was to have a single dwarf for each of the "skilled" labors - mason, carpenter, smiths, grower etc - with every other dwarf set to do every nonskilled labor (butcher/brewer/tanner/weaver/random farm jobs) and hauling. With a couple of extra engravers, extra masons when building blocks and walls, and an extra grower when setting up a clothing industry. There's basically no idlers unless the haulers run out of stuff to move or the workers run out of tasks to do, so it's easy to see what needs attention to keep everyone working at full capacity.

In my current fort I have 1-3 dwarves for each labor - a legendary + sometimes an apprentice for each labor. Engraving is the only labor with 4 dwarves assigned. All the other dwarves are either military or just haulers. It's less efficient, with more idlers, but easier to identify dwarves from their profession.

How many miners do you have? I go with just 2, which seems to be about right to dig everything quickly without ever running out of ideas for what they can do next.

Yes I think I've ended up structuring my jobs based on how there are more things that need to be done then there are dwarves, but what I noticed you leaving out and what I am asking is what are those permanent jobs you assign? Do you just pick a dwarf and give him one job and one job only, continuing to micromanage others? Or do you give him multiple jobs, and if so, what jobs do you assign to the same dwarf?

I usually have "temporary" assignments for the first immigrants - e.g. one of my starting 7 is a weaponsmith, who also does carpentry and mechanics until a dwarf with some skill in that labor arrives who can take over.

[Ghoul]

As I said, when I get to 50+ dwarves, I then generally give people permanent careers. Mining, Carpentry, Masonry, Engraving, Woodcutting, Furness Operating and a few of the more used jobs are assigned dwarves seperately. I generally bundle crafting and farming jobs together. I just assign all peasants as haulers.

That way I end up with skilled workers not having to race around dragging socks all over the place, and have as few idle people as possible.

[blue emu]

I like to make sure that every dwarf has a moodable skill... so I give my Planters at least one level of weaponsmith, my brewers at least one level of armorsmith, etc.

[TeleDwarf]

I try to have my dwarves move around a small area, so I group them by location of their work tasks. Farmers do farms and process plants and tend animals. If  I have grazers separated from the farms - I use one more class: herders.
cooks - cook and brew.
carpenters - work from the main lumber stockpile: make furniture, make wooden bolts, make wooden trinkets, sometimes burn charcoal.
smiths - work with metals: smelt, smith, melt...
haulers usually get divided into squads to be used along certain routs only: wood haulers, stone haulers, food haulers, etc...
speaking about squads: squads are the way I usually group dwarves visually in DT. my carpenters squad can have dwarves with different job assignements, but it is easier to manage differences in 10 dwarves at a time, then to search for a new fletcher among 200 dwarves...

[MeMyselfAndI]

This run for me is a pacificism (as in: no military. Traps / trapped creatures / magma / etc are fine) run.

And I tend to assign my dwarves a single labor, xor hauling. It means I need to worry about tantrum spirals more, but no biggie - that just means I need a mist generator and larger dining room. It means that I can assign dwarves to burrows more easily, though, which is nice.

[BoredVirulence]

I create castes.
Peasants do everything there is not a dedicated professional for. The peasant caste gets redefined occasionally.
At some point, I pick a few of the "highest" skilled peasants in a certain labor, make them apprentices, and turn that labor off from the peasants. Apprentices still do some hauling, and care for wounded, but can focus on their craft.
Once an apprentice reaches a high enough skill, they become a dedicated professional, and do nothing else. Once I have at least one professional, I stop accepting apprentices.

Certain labors have their own dedicated caste, mostly farmers and military dwarves.

Once I have a few dedicated professionals there is little micromanagement. And I still get to enjoy specialization. Its similar to the idea of a drone class that does everything, but in this case some labors become specialized.

[Authority2]

I use the autolabor plugin in DFHack. It's pretty okay for most things, but it sometimes puts dabbling dwarves into skilled jobs and keeps making my miners into woodcutters even when there aren't any trees left.

[escondida]

Skilled (or potentially skilled) laborers (the masons whom I want building furniture, the mechanics I want making mechanisms, clothiers, the weavers actually *making* the cloth and not just gathering webs), dyers, smiths, cooks, planters, etc., I tend to allow to do only what they're good at, unless I decide to cross-train them. Workshop profiles help to make sure that some unskilled dwarf I have set to build walls doesn't end up building a lot of no-quality furniture, for instance.

Those who start with mediocre skills in skilled labors I already have covered, I tend to assign to the Artisan class: they build walls and make blocks, set up traps, smooth stone (and later, when the handful of artisans any given fort has are reasonably skilled engravers, engrave, too), do architecture, and if there's a labor shortage, haul.

Those who start with no skills or with no-quality-modifier skills, I give all the jobs where skill has no influence on quality, only speed (brewing, shearing, cheesemaking, etc.)

I assign one and only one beekeeper, even though technically it's no-skill; this helps to make sure nobody gets bugged out. (Ha ha ho ho, get it?)

[EvilBob22]

This run for me is a pacificism (as in: no military. Traps / trapped creatures / magma / etc are fine) run.

And I tend to assign my dwarves a single labor, xor hauling. It means I need to worry about tantrum spirals more, but no biggie - that just means I need a mist generator and larger dining room. It means that I can assign dwarves to burrows more easily, though, which is nice.

Exclusive or! I love it!

On topic: I noticed a lot of people care about the skill level of their masons.  It is probably because I often do a fair amount of above-ground construction, but I care more about quantity over quality for masonry -- everyone gets masonry assigned.  Everyone also gets architecture enabled and hunting and fishing disabled (although, once I have secured a protected waterway, fishing may get re-enabled).  Anyone with any doctor skills gets all doctor skills enabled, and anyone with any mechanic skills gets all four of those enabled.  For the rest, I generally leave them to whatever they have skill in.

I usually intend to have everyone get a moodable skill, but I usually never get around to actually doing it.

[Sefarian]

It depends on how mature the fortress is for me. I like to start with my dwarves carrying a broad array of tasks, and as I get more dwarves and infrastructure built, I narrow those jobs down accordingly. I do have some odd quirks that are relative to me, I think. Ex. I try to make the bulk of my future military dwarves start out their careers at my fortress as some other profession that requires building of physical stats -- miners, mostly. Combining that with a few very early starting military dwarves that build up their actual skills for proficient teachers for my future military masses.

Eventually, I like to have a dedicated number of dwarves set to the important tasks in maintaining a healthy fortress. Food, drink, clothing, etc. That means I usually end up with a proportionately large number of dwarves that are in some way or another fixed into the farming industry -- cooking, growing, processing, butchering, brewing, etc. I like to have a large excess of such things in all my fortresses, so I can focus on other things and not worry about micromanaging the bare essentials.

[Eidre]

As I'm building up to a mature fortress, I usually pick jobs in areas I need if the migrants show up with things I don't need.  Although I have no evidence there's any skill crossover, I will usually activate (for example) weapon smith and armor smith labors for that novice metalcrafter that arrives.  If they show up with something useful (brewer, carpenter) then I'll activate the related labors as well so they can make their own raw materials (so no dwarf ever has to wait for another dwarf to do their jobs).  For example:

Soap maker and lye makers, I activate wood burning, lye making, cooking or pressing (for the tallow/oil), and soap making.  Sometimes I'll add these labors onto existing doctor-types so they can make their own soap when they're not fixing the injured.

Anyone with food prep related I'll activate growing, milling, plant processing, and cooking

Anyone with animal processing I'll activate butchery, tanning, and leatherworking

Anyone with metal related I'll activate furnace operator, metalcrafter, and either weaponsmith or armorsmith (sometimes both), although sometimes I'll leave most of the forge dwarves as furnace operators since I generally want lots of dwarves smelting ore and melting down goblinite, but only a couple highly specialized dwarves forging high-quality weapons and armor.

Anyone with stone-related skills I'll activate mason, engraving, and architecture (so the masons don't have to wait for the one architect to design their buildings).

And so forth.  The only workers I leave dedicated to a single task are typically miners (I turn off everything for them except mining, burial, and clean), woodcutters, hunters, and fisherdwarves; miners, because I want them to be responsive when I need something dug out, and the rest because I don't want them wasting more time walking back and forth across the map to do both internal jobs and external jobs.  They should only return to base to eat and sleep.

I also sometimes leave dedicated stone crafters and carpenters, since they're usually spending their whole time cranking out stone crafts, rock pots, wooden bins, and beds.  Bone crafters as well for the bone bolts and totems (to clear out all of those otherwise-useless skulls).

[Fen]

I typically assign my dwarves into groups of jobs with both overlap and exclusivity. For example, I'll have some dwarves who are miners, and little more than that, but also some dwarves who are miners/masons, and some who are miners/engravers, and some dwarves who are engravers/masons. This typically requires a few migrant waves to really kick into gear, but gives me the ability to have two or three of these jobs going on at once, and having them actually get done, or just having one of these jobs and knowing that someone will get on it right away.

Sometimes, if I get a migrant without useful skills, I just assign them a wide variety of labors that I don't need them to be very skilled for, just so that I can have an extra buffer for any miscellaneous work that needs doing.