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[ktrey]

You too can prevent Bag hogging by Seeds, with these convoluted steps, I intend to demonstrate how it can be possible.

Firstly, refrain from constructing bags until you have done the following.

• Constructed Glass Furnace
• Constructed Clothesmaker/Leatherworks shop as far from Still as possible
• Created 1 tile Barrel-less seed stockpiles for any primary crop seeds you may have purchased during initial start up (Plump Helmets, Sweet Pods, Cave Weat, Pig Tails, etc)
• Allowed your dwarves to haul seed bags to their respective 1 tile stockpiles.
• Cease all Brewing. Brewing generates seeds, which in turn generate hauling tasks.
• DISABLE FOOD HAULING on the
  • rders menu. This is key. And Dangerous. Once you've gathered enough sand, make sure that you re-enable this order, or else your fortress will fill with Miasma quicker than you can say Lavish Meal.
  • Remove all other labors from your Bag Maker, construct as many Sand Bags as you feel necessary out of Silk/Pig Tail/Leather.
  • As the bags complete, queue up Collect Sand jobs at the Glass Furnace. Create a Furniture Stockpile set to only accept Sand Bags (It's on the menu)
  • Marvel as your Dwarves ignore any stray seeds and Collect Sand in the empty bags.
  • Once Sand Collection is complete, make sure that you re-enable Food Hauling on the
    • rders menu.

    Hopefully, I haven't left out any steps. I never saw the need to disable food hauling until it struck me that it might restrict the hauling of seeds as well. This has worked well for me, because I like to have my Glass Industry up and running by the second Spring. One potential problems I've noticed however is that once Food Hauling is disabled, if you have any XXfood itemsXX (nearly rotten/worn food) from your initial buy, these may be hauled to a refuse pile by your dwarves. Once Food Hauling is re-enabled, they will be hauled back to their respective stockpiles. I had some XXturtleXX and XXcave lobsterXX hauled out briefly. In order to prevent Bag Hogging after the initial sand bags have been constructed and once you begin to produce glass items, just make sure that you queue up a Collect Sand job immediately after any glass item. This has tasked the empty bag faster than any seed hauling tasks, it helps if your furnace is further away from your still/dining area/seed generating spot than your seed stockpiles. I suppose the ultra paranoid could cease brewing/disable food hauling temporarily each time you want to create glass, but this could get rather tedious once you reach the Magma and are producing mounds of glass.

[PresidentEvil]

That fix seems way too complicated. I just make a small, seeds only stockpile in a room off my farm, and disable seeds in all my other food stockpiles.

300+ seeds, 6 seed bags out of two dozen bags in the fortress.

[Grek]

Why not keep everything used for glassmaking in a seprate sub-fort?

code:

#############~~~#####***#######mmm##  # wall
##BBB#SSS...~~~.####***######GGGmmm#  ~ river
##BBB.SSS##+++++...+++.......GGGmmm#  B bag making shop
##BBB#SSS##~~~..###***###.###GGGmmm#  D door that gets locked during sand gathering
###.#######~~~..##***####.#####mmm##  m magma
##===#####~~~####***####fff###mmm###  G glass kiln for glass making
##===..###~~~###***#####fff###mmm###  S glass kiln for sand getting
##===#.##~~~####***#####fff####mmm##  + bridge
######D###~~~###***###########mmm###  f food stocks for glass making dwarfs
...........+++...+++...........mmm##  * chasm
###########~~~####***###########mmm#  = cloth/leather stockpile for bag making

[ August 21, 2007: Message edited by: Grek ]

[ktrey]

The problem is, dwarves will haul seeds to any free bags they get the chance to, even if you have seed only stockpiles, you can end up with a kitchen full of bags containing one Pig Tail Seed, a Framer's Workshop with three Rock Nut bags, a Leatherworks with a cave crocodile bag brimming with Wild Strawberry seeds, etc.

Even careful management of stockpiles doesn't stop this from happening, because a bag cannot stay taskless long enough.

I liked the idea of completely making a completely sequestered glass industry though. But when I tried it, a bunch of dwarves simply hauled seeds to the locked door and dropped them there.

[PresidentEvil]

My dwarves always end up taking seeds to the nearest bag, so simply building an out of the way glassworks solved it for me.

[Cerej]

Seeds get stored in the closest available bag (empty/same type).  No exceptions.  If your glass making (and bag making) industry is sufficiently far from your food industry AND you have seed bags (NOT barrels) available near your food production, you'll have no problems.

The problem most people have with seeds hogging bags is because they build their looms and clothesmaking workshops so close to the food production in the name of efficiency. This is counterproducting because far more bags are needed in such a fortress.

[ktrey]

But what happens when your cook decides to make a tasty +Quarry Bush Leaves+ roast? Suddenly you have an empty bag in your kitchen, which is bound to be close to seed generating areas like the still/dining room. Same thing happens if you cook with flour or sugar. So, the problem can be softened by moving the bag production site far away, but it won't completely eliminate it. Once your primary crop seed piles have become full (I go almost completely barreless for food production) (I think the bags can hold somewhere around 100 seeds), if there's a free bag, and if food hauling is turned on, they will start grabbing seeds to take to it. Enable-ing barrels on the seed piles doesn't completely fix this behavior, because if the empty bag is closer than the seed stockpile, it gets filled with a single seed and then placed in the barrel. I'm pretty sure the planting order is first in/last out, so that bag with a single seed could be tied up for ages.

Micromanagement of the kitchen by keeping seed amounts below one hundred is possible, as is expanding the single seed piles to two bag-only piles. That would mean that any excess wouldn't get hauled (200 is still the max for seeds right? do the others simply disappear where they are?), unless of course a nearer bag is freed.

Sequestering the kitchen sufficiently far away from the still/dining room seems like it would generate far too many hauling tasks to get the food to and from.

The problem with bags virtually disappears in later years though, because by that time free bags start showing up seasonally with snatchers.