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[Fenrir]

Out of the 44 dwarves in my fortress, 17 of them are idle. Is that a sign that I'm poorly managing this fortress? I don't feel like going through each and every one switching the relevant labor on and then off when the job is done, and having to remeber who's got what labors activated.

[Fedor]

Depends entirely on what you want to accomplish with your fortress and your playstyle.  I personally would be ashamed to have idle dwarves.  On the other hand, it's been a long time since I had to suffer through the game's UI for changing labor preferences.

Zorba's Dwarf Foreman.  Never play without it.

[pushy]

There will always come a time when some of your dwarves are idle. Some people create menial tasks like moving rock somewhere to tidy up the fort, which keeps dwarves occupied for a while, but that's a short-term thing and generally pretty useless. Once I've got 30+ dwarves, it's actually not uncommon for 20 of them to be idle, and I'm not bothered by that - a lot of them will take a minute to do the odd hauling job here and there and I'm not waiting forever for such tasks to be done because I've got them all wasting their time engraving my legendary dining room floor; as long as they do the job when I need them to do it, I'm happy  

[Sowelu]

If you have more dwarves than jobs, put them in the military! Even if you don't have weapons or armor for them yet, just put them offduty and give them a barracks to spar in. Usually worth it.

[Fenrir]

In an unrelated story, I made the dwarf with the coolest name leader of my swordsdwarves and appointed him sheriff. His name: Nil "Savagerazor".

[Mephisto]

quote:Originally posted by Fenrir:
<STRONG>In an unrelated story, I made the dwarf with the coolest name leader of my swordsdwarves and appointed him sheriff. His name: Nil "Savagerazor".</STRONG>

Should have made him lead your hammerdwarves. Nil means hammer.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Nil "SavageRazor" the legendary barber gained earned infamy when he entered a fell mood.

On the casket is an engraving of a Dwarf and Dwarfs. The Dwarf is holding up a shaved Dwarven baby, and is surrounded by fallen beards. The Dwarves are pleading. The Dwarf is laughing. The Dwarves are despondent.

[McDoomhammer]

I had an expedition leader called Nil.  I really wanted to kive him the nickname "Desperandum".

[Slappy Moose]

Bah!

Useless loafers, the lot of them.

I say, let them haul goblin carcasses!

[Pandarsenic]

Well, I think we're all bad management. It's just a question of how bad.

[Fenrir]

The biggest problem with idlers is that they seem to party more often (please confirm), sometimes involving more important dwarves.

[Vugor]

it seems that it is mostly just idlers or anyone that can't find a job (same thing basically) are the only ones to throw parties

for me those darn kids always get any of my growers distracted from planting with all of their DDR parties on the tables or statues...

[Pandarsenic]

That's why I make statue gardens instead of meeting places and my non-statue-garden meeting place is 6 squares, outside. They seem less inclined to party.

[Torak]

I usually try to keep all my dwarves busy, but there's a point at which you just dont have enough wheat to grind, rocks to haul, trees to cut, metal to work, purring maggots to milk, or crafts to work.

[Scorpios]

quote:Originally posted by Torak:
<STRONG>I usually try to keep all my dwarves busy, but there's a point at which you just dont have enough wheat to grind, rocks to haul, trees to cut, metal to work, purring maggots to milk, or crafts to work.</STRONG>

You're just not trying hard enough.