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[Legionaries]

I've been watching some more advanced dwarf fortress play on YouTube, and I started using quickfort, autochop and the workflow plugins.  After using workflow to do the following I started thinking about the cloth industry:

I set up workflow to automatically make coal, smelt or melt iron and create steel.
I set workflow to keep at least 10 of each weapon and at least 10 of each armor piece in my uniform set in steel.
I automatically melt any weapon or armor not made of steel.
(I am about to start melting down steel armor that is not masterwork so everyone has the best that is possible.)

Which brings me to the cloth industry.......
I've read that dwarfs only really need socks, cloaks and pants. (or a few other 3 item combos)  However, they will wear socks/shoes, mittens/gloves, caps/hoods ect. if you provide it.  While it does appear that you can get by by only making the 3 pieces, I would really like to know what those in the know do (and why) once they get their cloth industry going.  Do you provide the minimum, provide every possible piece, or is the wear such an issue you put everyone in armor?

Bonus for those who also use the workflow plugin:  Will the tattered clothing create an issue counting the number of existing units?  Do I have to set up clothing differently so that it doesn't count anything tattered?  How are you setting it up?

 

[Mohreb el Yasim]

tattered might count, just to be sure what i did last time when i set up a workflow-provided clothing industry is that i traded tattered clothing away, but you might go wit the let it rot away approach i think by setting a bit bigger margin on the productions. (if you make the clothiers set to provide only to one stockpile, and have an other with clothing / refuse used will rot away)

[Repseki]

I don't think tattered clothing counts towards the workflow numbers while it is still claimed by one of your dwarves (jammed in a cabinet or holding a door open for some vicious beast). Not certain about after it ends up in a stockpile.

What you can do is occasionally use the cleanowned script to have all the tattered stuff dumped. Once it is forbidden workflow ignores it. Just be a tad cautious if you aren't sure how much clothing needs to be dumped, since having your entire fort doing nothing but haul and dump old clothes for two seasons can be less than productive.

Ninja edit: After a few years I usually end up just drafting most of my population into non-active "Militia" squads that never activate and force them to wear leather armor so I don't have to keep pumping out new clothes constantly.

[fortydayweekend]

Do you provide the minimum, provide every possible piece, or is the wear such an issue you put everyone in armor?

Bonus for those who also use the workflow plugin:  Will the tattered clothing create an issue counting the number of existing units?  Do I have to set up clothing differently so that it doesn't count anything tattered?  How are you setting it up?

Keeping everyone in normal clothes isn't difficult, and easier than putting everyone in a squad. You need a lot of pig tail & rope reed farm plots, a couple of looms and a couple of clothesmakers (I also dye the cloth but it's tricky to set up the stockpiles so maybe get it right without dye first).

Providing the minimum 3 items made out of cloth is a good idea. I start with workflow set to 5-10 then ramp up to 30+. Only afterwards adding the extras. I usually buy as much leather as I can and make leather shoes and trousers as well. If you request every kind of leather from the dwarven caravan you can get much more than you'll ever need, and it's a lot cheaper than buying cloth.

Tattered clothing does slow down FPS, and you can't set stockpiles to distinguish it. I usually have a clothing stockpile near the depot that only accepts poor-quality clothing, and another near the dining hall that only takes high-quality (with no bins in either). This makes it easy to trade away the poor quality clothing (using "sort by distance"). As the dwarves' starting clothing is usually low-quality, it's the first to get tattered, so this roughly sorts the tattered (and goblin/kobold clothing) from the newer, better-quality stuff.

Another option is to set a garbage dump near the depot and run the "cleanowned" command in DFHack. Then mass reclaim the stack of clothing and trade it away. Or just put the garbage dump by a hole that goes all the way down to the magma.

[greycat]

Keeping everyone in normal clothes isn't difficult, and easier than putting everyone in a squad.

I find the opposite to be true.  When you've got 130 or more dwarves, after a few years, you've got a LOT of worn-out clothing to replace.

My long-term goal is to get every civilian (except miners and woodcutters -- and except hunters, except that I never use hunters) into a civilian squad and have them armored, armed, and carrying a waterskin full of their favorite booze.  Once you get a civilian into armor (which never wears out, unless exposed to fire or left in a refuse stockpile), your clothing needs drop dramatically, and your civilian is considerably safer.  Or at least he has a decent chance of surviving when that kobold master thief slashes at him from out of nowhere.

[krenshala]

Myself, I start making plain rope reed and pig-tail cloth sometime during the second year (usually shortly after the first elven caravan).  I haven't tried dying yet, however, so that something I'm going to be attempting on my current fort (started yesterday).  Is it better to dye the thread or the cloth, or does it matter?

[jcochran]

Myself, I start making plain rope reed and pig-tail cloth sometime during the second year (usually shortly after the first elven caravan).  I haven't tried dying yet, however, so that something I'm going to be attempting on my current fort (started yesterday).  Is it better to dye the thread or the cloth, or does it matter?

Haven't seen any advantages or differences between dying thread vs cloth, so do whatever you find easiest. For me, it's cloth, since I buy a lot of cloth from the caravan and limiting myself to thread would be silly. Although if you're using workflow to create clothing, it seems that when the job is created, it takes note of the dyed/non-dyed preference in your options and changing options won't change the options in the actual job (e.g. you have "use any cloth" when you originally created the repeating job. Then later change the option to "use only dyed cloth". The repeating jobs already present in the clothing shops won't suddenly insist on just using dyed cloth. My workaround for that is to use 'x' to start deconstruction of the workshop, then immediately use 's' to cancel the destruction. Workflow then recreated the destroyed jobs and suspends them. And the newly recreated jobs take note of the option settings...)

[Thormgrim]

there is a downside to dyeing thread in that sometimes dyed thread can be used for sutures, which wastes the dye.
of course, sometimes dyed cloth can be used for dressing, so maybe it doesn't matter.

[Panando]

Keeping everyone in normal clothes isn't difficult, and easier than putting everyone in a squad.

I find the opposite to be true.  When you've got 130 or more dwarves, after a few years, you've got a LOT of worn-out clothing to replace.

My long-term goal is to get every civilian (except miners and woodcutters -- and except hunters, except that I never use hunters) into a civilian squad and have them armored, armed, and carrying a waterskin full of their favorite booze.  Once you get a civilian into armor (which never wears out, unless exposed to fire or left in a refuse stockpile), your clothing needs drop dramatically, and your civilian is considerably safer.  Or at least he has a decent chance of surviving when that kobold master thief slashes at him from out of nowhere.

Yep definitely. In fact a mail shirt and gauntlets and highboots and helm (the lightweight full metal protection) can offer reasonable chances of surviving being wailed on by an entire ambush - provided military arrives at the speed of legendary +5 axelord. Between the body armour protecting against cuts, and the helm protecting against headshots the survivability is good. Sure, sometimes they come in with all their limbs and all their fingers broken and spend the next 2 years in hospital but they survive!

Until now I've been using a combination of metal and cloth for my civvies, but I might start going with pure metal to cut down on rubbish.

[wierd]

Required clothing:

Some form of top covering
Some form of bottom covering
Some form of foot covering

This can be any combination of:
Toga, Shirt, (tunic? i forget), Dress, Robe, (cloak?) for top covering
Pants, trousers, braies (however you spell that.), for bottom covering
Socks, shoes, for foot covering.

There are additional perks to wearing more types of clothing items, especially when there are environmental hazards, like evil rain, or forgotten beast ichor/blood/excretions.  This is also helpful when attempting to layer clothing underneath uniform armor, as it increases the number of layers that penetrating attacks must get through before harming the dwarf in question.

The wiki has a very helpful table about this. Just scroll down about half way through, where it talks about armor piece sizes, and layering.

Since quality plays a big role in how well an item deflects damage, make sure that your under-layer fabric items are of masterful quality, or at least exceptional quality. Sell off all the dross to the elves.

[Panando]

Since quality plays a big role in how well an item deflects damage, make sure that your under-layer fabric items are of masterful quality, or at least exceptional quality. Sell off all the dross to the elves.

Is this confirmed? If it is I'd love to see the science.

[Bumber]

Keeping everyone in normal clothes isn't difficult, and easier than putting everyone in a squad.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but you can remove them from the squad once they've got their armor, right? (As long as they don't tantrum and throw everything off later.) Easier than managing all the tattered clothes.

[fortydayweekend]

Keeping everyone in normal clothes isn't difficult, and easier than putting everyone in a squad.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but you can remove them from the squad once they've got their armor, right? (As long as they don't tantrum and throw everything off later.) Easier than managing all the tattered clothes.

Not sure.. I guess it is probably easier to put everyone into a squad than it is to get rid of the tattered clothing.

It's not overly time-consuming though if assigning armor feels a bit exploity:
1) Set up a low-quality clothing stockpile (no bins or metal clothing)
2) Periodically empty the stockpile by trading or mass-dumping into magma

Kinda like getting rid of body parts if there are necromancers around.

Amazing how much clothing affects FPS - I just went from 23 to 45 after setting up a garbage dump into magma and clearing out all the junk..

[Bumber]

2) Periodically empty the stockpile by trading or mass-dumping into magma

Or enable refuse and have the clothing decay on its own. You could also let minecarts handle the dumping for you.

[Repseki]

If you remove them from the squad they will drop whatever uniform they were wearing.