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[Urist McShaft]

Did not find the answer in the wiki, and I'm coming up with lots of questions, as my forts never make it this far.
I have learned a bit from my last set of questions about reclaiming and dumping items.

As the goblin sieges hit, I notice that they leave hundreds of items behind, including clothes(mostly troll fur, etc).
It seems that once I set these piles to be reclaimed(they seem to be forbidden by default), dwarves drop any tattered clothing and loot what they want from the goblins.
I understand from the wiki that this is normal behavior.  It also keeps me from having to make tons of outfits myself.

My question is how do the pros deal with the tons of tattered clothes left in the fortress?  I'm hoping there is an easy way to specify a pile for them.  I see that stockpiles can be set to only accept certain grades of items, including clothes.  I was hoping that tattered would be among the list(if not, I would LOVE to see that in the future).  Alas, I can't find any such option.

Any help for keeping my fortress tidy would be appreciated.

As I said before, an awesome idea would be to add a new filter for tattered items, separate from quality.  So you could have a pile set to hold masterwork tattered clothes so they don't get atom smashed by accident.

[Dzedajus]

Tattered and worn out clothes are dumped by default into zone designated as garbage dump. Also I am not really sure but setting only worn out clothes stockpile requires disabling quality grade in stockpile settings.

[Dwimenor]

As the goblin sieges hit, I notice that they leave hundreds of items behind, including clothes(mostly troll fur, etc).
It seems that once I set these piles to be reclaimed(they seem to be forbidden by default), dwarves drop any tattered clothing and loot what they want from the goblins.
I understand from the wiki that this is normal behavior.  It also keeps me from having to make tons of outfits myself.

Correct. Thats usually how my cloth industry works.
You can change how invaders items are treated (forbidden/unforbidden) in

• rders menu.

My question is how do the pros deal with the tons of tattered clothes left in the fortress?  I'm hoping there is an easy way to specify a pile for them.  I see that stockpiles can be set to only accept certain grades of items, including clothes.  I was hoping that tattered would be among the list(if not, I would LOVE to see that in the future).  Alas, I can't find any such option.

Unfortunately you can't set up stockpile for tattered cloth. Also dwarves will keep a lot of worn cloths as their possessions effectively rising fortress total item count (and thus lowering FPS). Some tattered cloths will be hauled into garbage dump.
 Here is my setup for this problem from v34.11 (did something change in 40.xx?).
1. Get a healthy cloth industry. Let it be goblinite, imports (cloths or materials) or actual full-scale industry.
2. Once you are sure nodwarf will be left without their socks:
3. Setup garbage dump, connected to waste disposal system (magma, atom smasher, more magma)
4. Use dfhack to periodically mark worn cloths for dumping. I think proper syntax is:
repeat time="1 months" command="cleanowned scattered x"

If you are making your own cloths, workflow plugin for dfhack is your best friend. Just build 1 clothworkshop and make it construct 10 types of cloth (there are 11, you can skip mittens if you make gloves and everything else). Set everything to [r]epeat. Now using workflow plugin (use gui/workflow) order to keep trousers made of any material at 5-10 units. Do it for every other cloth type you are making. This will save you from a lot of micromanagement.
Random thoughts about this setup:
1. If you are producing cloth from more then one material (eg. from wool and plant fiber) build clothmaker workshop for every material. If you setup workflow to count "trousers of any material" it will indeed count trousers made from wool, plant fiber, leather, etc
2. Workflow will auto suspend construction in all clothmaker workshops once you hit the limit. It will also autounsuspend when there are too few trousers in your fortress.
3. 5-10 units limit means: stop production once there are 10 units, resume once there are less then 5 units
4. Imported items (bought from caravan, goblinite) count towards limits
5. If dwarf claim item ("Must have socks!"), workflow will be aware of this. 5-10 means "5-10 unclaimed items".
6. Items that can't be worn by dwarves (which usually means that those items are to large, eg. made by humans) will count towards limits. I learned this the hard way. I had entire fortress running without pants for several years (temper tantrum included) and I couldn't figure out WHY my dwarves didn't wear pants despite workflow showing there are around 100 of them. Those were leftovers from human siege and some goblins. Workaround: check advanced stocks menu (if you are using dfhack: z-status screen->stocks->press "e") and search for large items and manually dump them.

This setup is self-sufficient. All you need to worry about is getting enough cloth materials, which can be done using another clever applications of workflow plugin, or ordering from caravans. Those can bring a buttoad of "cloth bins" if you order so.

As I said before, an awesome idea would be to add a new filter for tattered items, separate from quality.  So you could have a pile set to hold masterwork tattered clothes so they don't get atom smashed by accident.

Yeach, that would be great.
Advanced stocks menu (as well as inventory menu for stockpiles) can filter worn cloths.

[greycat]

My question is how do the pros deal with the tons of tattered clothes left in the fortress?  I'm hoping there is an easy way to specify a pile for them.  I see that stockpiles can be set to only accept certain grades of items, including clothes.  I was hoping that tattered would be among the list(if not, I would LOVE to see that in the future).  Alas, I can't find any such option.

Yeah, this is a sorely needed stockpile option.

The most commonly suggested workaround is to create a stockpile that takes all clothing (that's 5 "finished goods" subcategories -- armor, headwear, legwear, handwear and footwear).  You can either enable the refuse category (disabling all items) in that stockpile so the clothes degrade quickly, or you can store the clothes there long term to trade away.  In any event, this stockpile should "take from anywhere", which means all the randomly scattered clothes will go there.

Now, you want to prevent your brand new masterpiece pig tail trousers from going there and disintegrating before they've even been worn, so you create a second stockpile which takes from the clothier's shop where they are made.  The stockpile link means the products of that workshop can't be taken by any other stockpile.

Also dwarves will keep a lot of worn cloths as their possessions effectively rising fortress total item count (and thus lowering FPS).

I've seen this stated a few times, but it just does not happen in my forts.  Is it possible this behavior differs across platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux)?  Are the people who experience dwarves hoarding old clothing without cabinets all running on a specific platform?

[Dwimenor]

Also dwarves will keep a lot of worn cloths as their possessions effectively rising fortress total item count (and thus lowering FPS).

I've seen this stated a few times, but it just does not happen in my forts.  Is it possible this behavior differs across platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux)?  Are the people who experience dwarves hoarding old clothing without cabinets all running on a specific platform?

Nope, I had it on both win and lin.
I think it is related to the fact, that most garbage dump zone are 1x1 for quantum stockpiling ar atom smashing purposes. I wonder if it will help, if you set 10x10 refuse stockpile and then 10x10 garbage dump zone on top of refuse stockpile.

[celem]

Hmmm, I wasnt aware dwarves ever used a 'garbage dump' zone without you actually flagging for dump.

I was infact always sure that this 'clothing decays' thing actually takes place in a refuse pile, not a garbage dump.

This may not be correct, its what i recall from some time ago.

If theres worn tattered stuff lying about it's probably still claimed.  You make a nice set of clothes and someone takes it, do they immediately drop their old claims?  doubt it, theres an owned item clear periodically, cant remember how often.  So my guess is you are seeing this specifically because you are replacing the items.  They get new clothing items but havent yet decided to chuck out their old stuff.

Personally I do micromanage and dump unwanted stuff to a garbage zone under a DAS, but i've never ever noticed anyone dump something without a flag.

[Loci]

Also dwarves will keep a lot of worn cloths as their possessions effectively rising fortress total item count (and thus lowering FPS).

I've seen this stated a few times, but it just does not happen in my forts.  Is it possible this behavior differs across platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux)?  Are the people who experience dwarves hoarding old clothing without cabinets all running on a specific platform?

I *always* experience this behavior. My guess would be that there is something about the way you manage your fortress that is preventing this from happening.

While dwarves may not carry their worn out clothes back to their rooms if they have nowhere to store them, they will certainly shed their cast-off clothes inside their rooms, adding to an ever-growing mound of rags. You could be avoiding this problem by only producing clothing in limited quantities. If there are 20 dwarves who want a new cloak and you only produce 10 cloaks, all of them will be immediately snapped up by "no job" dwarves (leaving their old clothes at the meeting area they were hanging around in). By the time your room-dwelling dwarves ("sleep" and "on break" tasks) are able to pick up new cloaks there are no new cloaks left. If you produce a constant oversupply of clothes, though, room-dwelling dwarves will see new cloaks available when they wake up, and leave their old cloak on a tile in their room.

Hmmm, I wasnt aware dwarves ever used a 'garbage dump' zone without you actually flagging for dump.

There is an option on the standing orders screen which enables this behavior; it is disabled by default.

I was infact always sure that this 'clothing decays' thing actually takes place in a refuse pile, not a garbage dump.

Garbage dumps do not cause decay, only refuse piles do. You can, however, garbage dump stuff onto/into a refuse pile, where it will decay as though it were placed in the pile normally. (In the general case, items that "end up" in a stockpile tile are treated as part of the stockpile no matter how they got there. This is relevant to the topic at hand, since any "only new clothes" stockpile will gradually fill with old clothes as dwarves who are standing on the stockpile drop their worn-out clothes.)