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[Shonai_Dweller]

Recently I tried playing DF without therapist or DFhack manipulator. I've always used manipulator (or therapist in between dfhack updates) because the thought of trying to handle more than 20 dwarves with the labours menu just seemed far too overwhelming.

Then just last night, migrants swarmed in, 70 dorfs, then 96 plus a whole bunch of mercs and entertainers and I realised everything was running smoothly and actually I didn't need the labours menu much at all. Oh, once in a while I stopped a fisherman from fishing, or enabled hunting on a hunter (not sure why he wasn't enabled already...) but generally the dorfs seem to have enough labours amongst themselves to handle pretty much everything. Very refreshing!

I'm not some kind of wild-eyed traditionalist, shunning the mod community, but it's kind of nice to discover that a lack of therapist doesn't actually plunge the game into micromanagement hell. Oh sure, if I was a min-maxer I'd surely need it, but all I really wanted was a fun game of Fortress mode and to watch my dorfs scuttling about. Fun was had. Goblin Fun was averted by military squads working just fine. Caravans were...a bit off. Oh well, roll on 42.07. 

[Gremdavel]

Yeah, the only time I really use Therapist is to answer questions like, "Do I have ANYONE assigned to, say, beekeeping?"  But even then you can just guess "I might not," and assign someone random to that job.  Skills generally train up fast enough that it's not a huge deal if you don't pick a dwarf that's already good at it.

[MoonyTheHuman]

I never use therapist, i prefer stout labor C: (P.S. Not really, i never min-max)

[Libash_Thunderhead]

Skills generally train up fast enough that it's not a huge deal if you don't pick a dwarf that's already good at it.

Yeah, right.
And most of the time, item quality is not that important. Unless you are some sort of perfectionist.

[Dyret]

Yeah, I've never understood how DF is supposed to be 'unplayable' without it. Some folks love their micro, I suppose.

[Diamond]

You are just one of those 80% of DF players.
I, for one, can't stand unknowingly having farming enabled on white skinned male dwarf or having a specialist that is not the most suitable dwarf for this position and produces 3% less masterworks. Also, it is easier now with masonry with mass building, but enabling/disabling mining on everyone still takes lots of time for large-scale terramorphing.

[steel jackal]

yeah i had that experience when the latest version came out and LNP hadent been updated yet

the funny thing is though that when i started playing df i had no idea what i was doing, even with therapist.
over time i had learned playing df with oh so many utilities that they all seemed a natural part of the game.
now that i actually know how to play, it was quite surprising to find df lacking so many things that i had grown so used to, like setting quotas for how much booze i wanted
i was actually able to play "vanilla" (i manually removed aquifers) df surprisingly easy without all these fancy plugins

in fact im having one of my best forts yet, its super secure from above ground invaders, anyone who wants in has to get through 1000 serrated steel disk weapon traps (100 traps, 10 disks a trap) and then whatever is left has to fight my steel clad children who somehow survived 11 years in a room full of masterwork training spears connected to a repeater

[Linkxsc]

Eeh i keep therapist running, but aside from removing labors that id rather people not do (like hunting and fishing) usually there is more than enough variance in the labors dorfs show up with to run just fine.

Do use it to check the sexuality of my animals though.
nothing against gender identites and all, but I embarked the other day with 6 homosexual and asexual roosters...
Thankfully the first caravan showed up with a straight 1 to get the poultry industry started.

[Saiko Kila]

If you have 70 dwarfs coming, then DT or manipulator are not that necessary, simply because of statistics. Almost all jobs will be enabled on SOMEONE. If you don't run many projects concurrently then it will be enough. I use DT/manipulator for jobs mostly during early and mid-game, when every dwarf counts. However, these programs have capabilities beyond mere labour assigning, and I prefer to use them no mater what stage it is.

[Linkxsc]

Have thought of running a game sometime where i actually cant assign labors on anyone except children when they come of age.
Can only rely on the starting dorfs and their varied skillsets (as id be able to set those). Perhaps make all peasants get every labor.

[Psieye]

I've come up with 2 separate ways to play depending on whether DT is available or not. Without DT, nickname nomenclature is enough for labour tracking when the population is small and I don't let it stay small for long. It becomes a minigame to open up a dwarf's bio page after a while to see the mismatch between what they want and what they get.

[Jaqwon_The_Chef]

When I play I get spurts of incredible micro (usually around coffee time), until I realize I just have to back off a bit.  Then I enable hauling on everyone, queue up some very precise stockpiles and just read through my dwarfs "facebook profiles" in therapist while the game runs in the background.

[moondowner]

I do my micromanaging in Excel. I want to minmax but using tools feels cheesy.

Yes I'm a masochist.

This, but depends on my mood. Sometimes I feel like spreadsheeting every bit of info, sometimes I'm too lazy and use Therapist instead.

[mirrizin]

I could probably make more efficient use of my  dorfs if I picked up therapist, but I find this game runs perfectly fine without maximizing efficiency.

I use dfhack mostly for stonesense, because I like being able to visualize the things I build in 3D.

[darkflagrance]

Sometimes you get migrants with 1 weaponsmith, who then start taking weaponsmithing jobs instead of the legendary weaponsmith you embarked with and had been training for the life of the fort. Usually this 1 level of weaponsmith is less than another professional skill the migrant has so they appear to be a planter or fisherdwarf instead.

You only find out about the interloper when you tab through your weapon stockpile and notice some crappy -Battle Axes- instead of the masterworks you anticipated.

Then you have to go through EVERY SINGLE DWARF because you weren't paying attention to which dwarves arrived most recently, and because ANY dwarf other than the starting 7 could be the rogue weaponsmith.

This is some of the pain that Therapist has saved me.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I know I could have used workshop profiles to exclude non-proficient weaponsmiths. But I do want my crappy metalcrafters to use the forges too dammit.