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[ManaUser]

So I decided to try setting up a minecart track to my obsidian farm. I wanted to try them out and it seemed like an appropriate use. But I quickly ran into a problem, dwarves would carry obsidian down to the "loading zone" stockpile from elsewhere in the fort, which of course is the exact opposite of the goal, and super annoying since carrying raw stone takes forever now. I found a solution, but it's clunky. I have to designate the obsidian casting area itself as a stone stockpile, and turn off "take from anywhere". This isn't too bad for the obsidian farm, I guess, but designating each mined out area I want the rocks from as a stockpile and linking it appropriately will be a pain. Is there any better way to say I want these rocks, either for minecart loading or manual transport? Maybe using burrows? Those are still a bit mysterious to me.

[NullForceOmega]

Well, it can be very micro-management intensive, but you can tell the feeder stockpile to only accept obsidian/whatever through the stockpile settings.  Other than that there aren't really many options.

[kingsableye]

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Stockpile
Links are one way, so if you make a "loading" stockpile down below and then the "destination" stockpile through your minecarts and set it to take only from the "loading" stockpile then you shouldn't run into problems. This will apply for all stones. Be careful, however, as when a new stockpile is made unless it has a "will take from" tag from the "loading" stockpile than there is nothing preventing your dwarves from hauling it all the way down there.
Loading -> Upper storage | Since links are one way, the dwarves won't haul the stone back
Loading -> Upper storage -> another storage | This one will allow dwarves to haul the stone back down
This limits you to one stockpile to use up top.
The only way to use multiple stockpiles up top is to use a burrow down below that encompasses all the area your stone-to-be-carried is (and the amenities of course) and send some haulers down there

[Mostali]

I've never understood how minecarts are more efficient than wheelbarrows for this.  A dwarf runs all the way down to the quarry to load a stone into the minecart, then needs to put away a sock or get a drink so it runs all the way back.  Once the minecart is full an additional dwarf runs down to push it.  So if a minecart holds X stones, then they make X+1 trips to move it.  With wheelbarrows you get X trips, all at full speed for the entire trip.  None of this even accounts for additional investment of building track and so forth.  It's been a couple of years since I've built a mine cart for anything other than magma, so maybe something has changed with priorities?  What is it I'm missing about minecarts?

[Niddhoger]

I've never understood how minecarts are more efficient than wheelbarrows for this.  A dwarf runs all the way down to the quarry to load a stone into the minecart, then needs to put away a sock or get a drink so it runs all the way back.  Once the minecart is full an additional dwarf runs down to push it.  So if a minecart holds X stones, then they make X+1 trips to move it.  With wheelbarrows you get X trips, all at full speed for the entire trip.  None of this even accounts for additional investment of building track and so forth.  It's been a couple of years since I've built a mine cart for anything other than magma, so maybe something has changed with priorities?  What is it I'm missing about minecarts?

Burrows. You'd typically pair this set up with a burrowed in stone hauler or two. Otherwise, yeah, it'll be just like textiles- dwarves will drop everything, cross the fortress, and haul cloth one at a time. A different dorf for each one.

[Bumber]

I've never understood how minecarts are more efficient than wheelbarrows for this.  A dwarf runs all the way down to the quarry to load a stone into the minecart, then needs to put away a sock or get a drink so it runs all the way back.  Once the minecart is full an additional dwarf runs down to push it.  So if a minecart holds X stones, then they make X+1 trips to move it.  With wheelbarrows you get X trips, all at full speed for the entire trip.  None of this even accounts for additional investment of building track and so forth.  It's been a couple of years since I've built a mine cart for anything other than magma, so maybe something has changed with priorities?  What is it I'm missing about minecarts?

They have to go fetch the wheelbarrow each time.

[ManaUser]

Burrows. You'd typically pair this set up with a burrowed in stone hauler or two. Otherwise, yeah, it'll be just like textiles- dwarves will drop everything, cross the fortress, and haul cloth one at a time. A different dorf for each one.

That does make sense. Though to clarify, although I brought up minecarts, my main concern is not with the minecart per se, it's how to tell dwarves which stones to take (not which types, but which particular ones). So if I disable stone hauling, for all but a few dwarves, then put them, and the stones I want hauled in a burrow, that will do it? In other words, they won't be able to collect stones anywhere outside their burrow?

[PatrikLundell]

Burrowed dorfs won't perform jobs whose source and/or target is outside of the burrow. However, dorfs love to TAKE jobs with one mismatching end and then generate endless cancellation spam (in addition to not performing any actual job, because they take the ones they can't perform).
If all stone hauling to be performed is from a reasonable number of locations to a another reasonable number of locations, I'd rather set up stone stockpiles around the current stone locations, set these to "take from links only" (to block hauling to these stockpiles), and then have the target stockpile(s) 't'ake from the source one(s), with this stockpile also set to "take from links only". They'd probably not use the wheelbarrows, though. However, I just won't bother. Let them haul stone from where they want. When I want to clear out an area (such as my nice water cistern) I 'd'ump mark the stones instead, and set the dump zone to be close to where the source is (so the stones don't have to be carried far).
If you just want to get stone out of the way, I've found the fastest way is to use them to build a floor underneath themselves. That's useful to get rid of magma safe stone in your magma pump stack so they don't gum up the works.

[kingsableye]

Also, if you take the time (and don't mind the FPS loss) then using powered minecart rails will allow minecarts to be sent upward without need of a hauling dwarf, which will allow you to just burrow off the "loaders" and "unloaders" and let the minecart line be automatic. This makes it more complex, and I'm not sure how much better this is than wheelbarrows.
The best pro I can think of is that you don't need as many stone haulers, as each one theoretically take less time to haul stone, but I'm not sure if overall you shave time off compared to wheelbarrows.

[Corona688]

Burrows.

Has the burrowspam been fixed yet?

[kingsableye]

Burrows.

Has the burrowspam been fixed yet?

00006000
I don't think so, there are a number of duplicates and related articles (some fixed, some closed, some "resovled" because they're duplicates). It would seem minecarts will not be as useful for their intended purposes until this is fixed (still great for clocks though).

[Niddhoger]

Burrows. You'd typically pair this set up with a burrowed in stone hauler or two. Otherwise, yeah, it'll be just like textiles- dwarves will drop everything, cross the fortress, and haul cloth one at a time. A different dorf for each one.

That does make sense. Though to clarify, although I brought up minecarts, my main concern is not with the minecart per se, it's how to tell dwarves which stones to take (not which types, but which particular ones). So if I disable stone hauling, for all but a few dwarves, then put them, and the stones I want hauled in a burrow, that will do it? In other words, they won't be able to collect stones anywhere outside their burrow?

Oh hell, if that is all you wanted, then just control stockpile settings.  You can enable/disable specific stones in the stockpile, and only link specific stockpiles to the minecart track for loading. In this case, enable obsidian-only stone stockpiles. 

As far as cancellation spam... you can set up a QSP as a dump zone or set up the feeder/receiving stockpiles to only accept from links.  This was all for obsidian farming, right? All the stockpiles in question would accept obsidian only.  The first one would take from anywhere and give to the second one.  This one only accepts from links and feeds the minecart track.  The last also only takes from links, and is set up to be dumped on by the second stockpile.  So long as the QSP never gets empty, it shouldn't generate cancellation spam?

[Corona688]

Burrowspam isn't just them selecting out-of-burrow jobs, its also them not doing in-burrow ones while they're wasting time complaining about unreachable ones.  So if the stockpiles break down for whatever reason, you get near total productivity loss.  Until that's fixed burrows are basically useless.

[ManaUser]

Oh hell, if that is all you wanted, then just control stockpile settings.  You can enable/disable specific stones in the stockpile, and only link specific stockpiles to the minecart track for loading. In this case, enable obsidian-only stone stockpiles.

I'm not sure why this is so hard to explain. Maybe mentioning minecarts was too big a distraction or something.

Let me me try again, here's the important part: I see some rocks over yonder. I want to put them in a certain stock pile. To accomplish this without dragging other rocks around, I can designate the area I want to collect from as a stock pile with "take from anywhere" turned off, and set it to give to the real stockpile. Is there any better way to do it?

So far the answers I've got are:
Do the thing I just described.
Use burrows.
Don't use burrows.
Use mass dumping.

Arguably the dumping idea is the best, but it has significant drawbacks. No wheelbarrows, and it's fiddly if you have an actual garbage dump at the same time. So at this point I'm inclined to guess the answer is no, there isn't any better way to do it. I wish there were something like the dumping designation but different... call it Priority Hauling.

[Sadrice]

I think there's a bit of mutual confusion.  As far as I know, no, there is no way to do what you want without dumping.  If you really want that level of selectivity, I would dump all the target stones on a tile in the same room for minimum hauling cost, and then set that tile as the mine cart loading stockpile and reclaim the stone. I personally consider dumping shenanigans to be a total pain in the ass, and only use them as a last resort.


However, everything people have suggested should give the practical results you want, even if it's not what you asked for.  Do you have a large amount of unstockpiled obsidian elsewhere in your fortress?  If so, why have you set up an obsidian farm?  Stockpile that shit and use it.  Once you do that, setting your loading stockpile to "obsidian only" will cause them to gather stone from your only obsidian source: your obsidian farm.  If you are still actively mining obsidian elsewhere while farming it, you will probably need burrows to separate them, which is a total pain in the ass, and you'll probably forget to give the appropriate permissions and your legendary miners will die of no booze due to being in a booze free burrow.


I may be an exception to the rule, as I consider mass QSP abuse to be the ideal fortress management strategy, but I don't believe in having loose stone.  The moment I have enough dwarves to spare, I set 3-10 dwarves with wheelbarrows to gathering up all the loose stone and putting in a tile near my stone shops.  This almost totally eliminates these sorts of issues, since the only stone open for stockpiling jobs is the stuff you meant when you gave the order.