Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Micro102]

I'm making this thread to discuss how we group labors and what professions we end up labeling them as and why. Mostly so I can steal everyone's ideas 

Here's my most important ones:

Miner - Does nothing but mine and stone detail because I always seem to have something to mine and for when I don't, they have something else to do that involves stone.

Woodcutter - Does nothing but cut wood. Sometimes I have them also burn wood. Again, always cutting down trees and for when I don't, wood stuff.

Builder - A combination of mason and carpenter with the architecture added on. They.....build stuff.

Cook - Cleans fish, makes cheese, brews drinks, cooks meals, and butchers animals. I like to stick these buildings together

Farmer - Basically anything your generic farmer would do, plus beekeeping. Because farmers have to do farmer stuff and beekeeping was added after I have cemented these roles into my brain and I can't think of a good profession to split them up.

Craftsdwarf - for all that basic crafting and leather working. It's what I imagine craftsdwarves should do.

Molder - For all that glass/class/wax because I don't want to put that many jobs into one profession.

Blacksmith - because only blacksmiths may touch metal

Clothesmaker - Has all the labor required for making clothes and dying them enabled. I also like to stick these buildings together.

[Daris]

I don't find it useful to group together professions that have quality-rated output.  I don't want six adequate cooks, I want one legendary cook.  I don't want two dwarves who have middling weaponsmith and armorsmith skills, I want one legendary weaponsmith and one legendary armorsmith.

[Micro102]

I don't find it useful to group together professions that have quality-rated output.  I don't want six adequate cooks, I want one legendary cook.  I don't want two dwarves who have middling weaponsmith and armorsmith skills, I want one legendary weaponsmith and one legendary armorsmith.

Isn't it a pain to have all these individual labor assignments? What DO you group together?

[Zuglarkun]

The way that I play, I group dwarves so that they always specialize in just one profession that can give rise to a strange mood, and the rest of the professions they have won't be moodable. This way, I kind of get some control over what artifact gets produced.

So, stuff like weaponsmithing, armorsmithing, blacksmithing and metalcrafting usually gets grouped with furnace operators, farmers, brewers and cooks. That way I can let them hit a level in their moodable skill, disable that labor, then have them be full time farmers or whatever until they get a strange mood. This is only if I already have obtained or trained a dedicated legendary for that profession and there are excess smiths to go around. Likewise, stone crafters go with engravers and miners go with masons because same grouping of moodable skills.

Otherwise, the professions are grouped so that they can perform other related jobs in the same family of professions. So if a soaper dwarf is free, they will be able to just focus on lye making and then soap making, instead of having to wait for another dwarf to come around and make soap from the lye. So stuff like soapers go with potash makers and lye makers, tanners go with leatherworkering and butchery, and mechanics go with building designers.

As for other kinds of groupings, I usually disable stone hauling on my miners so they can mine continuously instead of mining a vein, grabbing a rock to haul, then coming back to mine again.

[blapnk]

I don't find it useful to group together professions that have quality-rated output.  I don't want six adequate cooks, I want one legendary cook.  I don't want two dwarves who have middling weaponsmith and armorsmith skills, I want one legendary weaponsmith and one legendary armorsmith.

Isn't it a pain to have all these individual labor assignments? What DO you group together?

I call them "artisans". When it comes to useful professions with quality levels I want a single dwarf mastering that profession and when they're not doing that I want them very safe and happy. They get to have all labors disabled and then I just tick the one thing I want them to do. They've earned in my eyes. Grouping them together like that makes it very easy for me to see at a glance who are my most valuable dwarves that need protecting when !fun! happens.

Related, I also have my "peasant" profession for all those dwarves with skills I don't find useful, no matter how legendary they are at cheese-making. Not just dedicated haulers here, they do everything from furnace operating to milling when it's needed. If a job can be done just as well by throwing more dwarves at it, I use these guys. Their labor assignments tend to become a bit of a mess over time so I periodically reset them to some base set. They're also a handy pool of for military recruits because I know they won't be missed.

I also have my kitchen staff which are somewhere between these two. While they may well be a legendary farmer or cook, I also have them food hauling, brewing, and other similar tasks. In a larger fortress I may have unskilled workers to this bunch. My kitchenstaff should be capable of feeding the fortress entirely on their own, even when my peasants are distracted with building my latest mega project.

Of course I usually have a standing army so my axedwarves are axedwarves even when off duty.

In short, I group my dwarves not by what they do but by how important what they do is.

[Daris]

Isn't it a pain to have all these individual labor assignments? What DO you group together?

No pain at all.  I use DFHack's extended labor plugin, which makes it easy to assign and de-assign labors, and it only has to be done once.  Dwarf Therapist also makes this painless.  I choose a young-ish dwarf to be my once and future cook and then I never have to think cooking again.  You really only need one cook for a 200-dwarf fort.

Now, my most recent fort, which is in its 55th year, is a generational fort that allowed no migration.  My starting 7 had to cover all roles for the first 13 years until the first batch of kiddos grew to laboring age.  I grouped labors that were unlikely to be needed at the same time.  My carpenter was also my glassmaker.  I had one dwarf who was a mechanic, a mason, and a weaver.  My expedition leader was broker, bookkeeper, manager and cook.  Literally everyone had non-quality labors equipped, except for woodcutting, which went to only the non-miners.

My grown kiddos do not have that kind of redundancy in their quality labors.  A weaver is a weaver and nothing else.  A clothier is a clothier and nothing else.  My craftsdwarves do have some multitasking, with bone carving, wax working, and pottery on all three of them.  I prefer to specialize in order to maximize the quality of finished goods.

[Immortal-D]

I will also vouch for Dwarf Therapist Professions, and the importance of having skilled jobs assigned to only a few Dwarves.  I feel it important to note that jobs like 'Lever Operation', 'Give Water', etc. are categorized amongst the Hauling labors, so be carefuly when removing all Hauling from your skilled Dwarves.  Even my Legendary Leatherworker is expected to Haul Trade Goods   In no particular order, this is how I group my skilled jobs;

Weaponsmith
Armorsmith
Metalcraft
Jeweler, Glassmaker
Leathercrafter
Farmer, Herbalist, Cook
Miner, Engraver
Stonecrafter, Mason, Engraver
Woodcrafter, Wood Cutter, Carpenter

Many of these Professions have a few related but non-skilled jobs in order ensure my Peasants don't get completely overwhelmed.  For example, my Farmers also get Milking & Cheese Making.

[Abaddon]

Weaponsmith/Furnace Operator
Armorsmith/Furnace Operator
Blacksmith/Furnace Operator
Metal crafter/Furnace Operating
Miner/Mason (I only use masonry for odd bits and pieces, mostly for blocks)
Carpentry/Woodcutting
Glassmaker
Clothes making
Gem cutter
Gem setter
Weaving
Mechanic
Bowyer (Low priority skill for moods)
Cook/Brewer/Planter/Plant Gatherer/Milker/Cheese Maker/Spinner/Dyer/Butcher/Tanner/Lye Making/Soap Making/Wood Burning (Biggest group in my current fort, about 6 of them) - I only give these jobs to 1 starting dwarf and then anyone who gets a mood before I have managed moodable skills, so legendary woodcrafters et cet, also the legendaries are the only ones who do tanning.  I've cut down on killing things in this version because dwarves have panic attacks when they see dead bits.

I don't assign woodcrafting/stonecrafting/bone carver because these are basically useless skills imo.  I have a few legendary bone carvers from moods that make totems.  As stated above anyone who reaches legendary in these skills is destined to milking llamas and picking fruit for the rest of their life.

[omega_dwarf]

I never put woodcutting and carpentry on the same dwarf. Mostly because I'm terrible at maintaining a decent wood stockpile, so when I need logs, I basically have to go cut down some trees (but don't want to wait for the same dwarf(ves) to cut down 20+ trees and haul it all to a stockpile before starting in on what I actually wanted made.)

Yeah, I'm so bad with that currently that, even in an evil biome with husking smoke, I have an open-air wood stockpile next to an open-air carpentry workshop. I should really build a shed for those.

So anyway, I think my current fort is...

Miner or Miner/Engraver or Miner/Smith/Furnace Operator
Stonecrafter
Mechanic (their jobs always seem to take a while; I no longer pair them with architecture, since that's what also frequently happens simultaneously)
Brewer
Cook
Farmer
Woodcutter/Jeweler
Siege Operator

Various dwarves have...

Stone Detailing (just for the smoothing process)
Architecture
Pump Operation (almost everyone)
Masonry (mostly whoever had time on their hands when a job wasn't getting done)
Carpentry (well, now they've all been replaced by one legendary carpenter from a mood, but it started out this way)
Hauling (we're still in construction stages, with very non-ideal fort layout, so this takes a lot of the workforce; disabled on most-frequently-needed dwarves)

Noble jobs are assigned to random, un-busy dwarves (with the exception of my awesome baron, who carved and smoothed his own baronial suite and tomb.)

I remember I always used to have specialized miner-engravers and stoneworker-mason-engravers, but I haven't in a while. Mostly because a lot of those jobs happen concurrently, and I don't want my food supply to be halted by rock block production, my mining to be halted by smoothing/engraving a few square kilometers, etc. So I agree with the philosophy of minimizing downtime, hopefully not at the sacrifice of quality.

[Abaddon]

I never put woodcutting and carpentry on the same dwarf.

Currently have 9300 wood logs.... for the first few years I kept an area outside my fortress clear and dumped them inside to keep cave adaption away.

[milo christiansen]

In .34 it was important to keep wood cutting and carpentry separate because wood was scarce. In .40 wood is so common that I have NEVER run out unless I had no trees on my map.

So go ahead and use your carpenter as a wood cutter, one tree will supply beds for your starting 7 plus a few extra barrels or whatever...

[FortunaDraken]

I tend to run with fairly wide groupings until I have enough dwarves to start specialising towards jobs that I need more people on (aka miners and mechanics). So my groups initially tend to be...
- All the various metal jobs
- Mason, Stonecrafter, Mechanic
- Carpenter, Bowyer, Woodcrafter
- Miner or Miner and Architect
- All the fish jobs (you want to fish 'em, you process 'em :|)
- Butcher, Gelder, Shearer, Milker, sometimes Animal Trainer
- Cook, Cheesemaker
- All the clothing jobs and leather jobs tend to go together
- Engraver or Engraver and Architect
- Gems, glass and pottery

That kind of thing. I start splitting people off once I have enough dwarves.

[Flying Dice]

I tend to take a generalist approach to labor and use workshops to control quality. Generally that breaks down like this:

1. Miner/Mason/Engraver/Mechanic/Architect
2. Woodcutter/Carpenter/Bowyer/Woodcrafter
3. Farmer (every goddamn food/animal-related skill except fishing, my forts have no fisherdwarves)
4. Furnace Operator/Wood Burner/Weapon/Armor/Blacksmithing/Metalcrafting
5. Misc. Craftsdwarf: Stonecrafting/Bonecarving/Leatherworking/Clothesmaking/Weaving/Glassmaking/Pottery/Gem Cutting & Setting/Glazing/Strand Extraction
6. Disposable Drones: Mason/Engraver/Mechanic/Furnace Operator/Hauling/Pump Operating/Gathering Those Fucking GCS Webs/Deconstructing Dangerous Shit/Woodcutting when outside is hell.
7. Dedicated Military: Tend to share jobs with disposable drones minus the blatantly suicidal ones. Shit for them to do in their downtime + they're more likely to survive a nasty encounter.

Then I designate one workshop of each type for Master/Legendary-only and use that to produce stuff that matters. So for example my mediocre smiths get trained up making stacks of bolts while my legendary ones are cranking out adamantine weapons and masterwork steel serrated discs. My miners are never important craftdwarves like smiths, clothiers, or cooks because of how easily they can die to poor luck or lack of common sense.

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

I can never decide whether to give all my dwarves engraving so smoothing and tracks get done quickly, or only enable it on dwarves who are good at it so I get decent engravings.

[GoblinCookie]

I can never decide whether to give all my dwarves engraving so smoothing and tracks get done quickly, or only enable it on dwarves who are good at it so I get decent engravings.

You really want the latter, once you have an engraving you are stuck with it.