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[PatrikLundell]

Thanks for your sensible answers, DekKaFu.

I hadn't realized the material conditions weren't actually related to material usage. That's important info.

Your start condition explanation also explains why infinite orders seem to be unusable: rather than finish the current run and wait for the next start check, they continue to spam cancellations. They either ought to finish and wait for the next scheduled check, or there's a need not only for a start condition, but for a stop/suspend condition as well.

I agree retrying is desirable for fixed number orders, but not that great for indefinite ones. And regardless, retry failure should be caught before the job is actually posted for dwarf pickup (material becoming unavailable between the job posting and a dorf picking the job up would still result in a cancellation, of course).

The cancellation spam is the deal breaker for me. Not only is the spam in itself annoying and obscuring the useful info in the announcement flow, but I suspect it also disrupts the actual work, as dorfs are caught up in spamming about impossible orders rather than working with things they CAN do (an extreme example of this is a thirsty hospitalized dorf with no buckets: the carpenter is going to be too occupied spamming about the lack of buckets to make one, unless you work around it by disabling the give water task from him).

[freeze]

I actually like the current behavior as bin-in-use cancels happen. Infinite is great when you have an indeterminate number of input items and want to process them all, for example spinning and pressing sheets.

Perhaps adding a "always complete job" and "cancel remaining on error" toggle to start conditions would help. I never actually disable cancel announcements because they give good feedback when problems arise.

e: Infinite orders created in a workshop (a "workshop order") are normal workshop tasks with "repeat" enabled. They get removed on fail until the next check. Infinite quantity orders created in the manager ("manager order") are guaranteed to spam you.

[PatrikLundell]

Infinite shearing workshop manager orders caused repeated spamming without any break until the next season when I tried them in the shearing workshop. Thus, my experience doesn't match your last statement (or at least how I understand it...).

I don't use bins except as trash cans for the garbage trucks because of the problems bins cause (it's acceptable if a bin or two isn't hauled to the trade depot this time: they'll just have to wait for the next one. Things may change when an economy appears so there might be a need/desire to import stuff worth more than 10% of what the garbage sells for).

[DeKaFu]

For what it's worth, it is possible to set things up such that you're generating little-to-no spam. The main trick is to only generate jobs when you know you have an excess of available materials.

As an example from my automated glass industry:

Glass Workshop:
Order 1: When sand-bearing items is < 5 and empty sewn-imageless boxes and bags is >= 9, collect sand (8). Checked daily.
Order 2: When sand-bearing items is >=5 and refined coal is >=5, make raw green glass (4). Checked daily.

...the numbers are a bit arbitrary, but the point is that this results in my collected sand bouncing between 4 and 12, with green glass being made whenever there's plenty available. It's worked continuously for about 4 in-game years without generating any cancellation spam that I recall.

In fact, I have an entirely hands-off automated system for producing and decorating masterwork stoneware crafts with green glass, and the only place it spams me is in the gemcutting/setting area because I stupidly use bins there.

Fakedit: I'm not sure how the timing works on shearing, but I automated my milking industry by just manually setting the work order to match my number of milkable animals and then setting it to repeat monthly with no conditions. It's not optimized, but it works reliably in the background with zero spam. Shearing might require it to be yearly.

[timotheos]

Fakedit: I'm not sure how the timing works on shearing, but I automated my milking industry by just manually setting the work order to match my number of milkable animals and then setting it to repeat monthly with no conditions. It's not optimized, but it works reliably in the background with zero spam. Shearing might require it to be yearly.

I'm not sure about the timing either but a shear job set to about half the size of my flock and to restart seasonally works fine.

[PatrikLundell]

Shearing: The wiki incorrectly says shearing can be done once per season, while someone examined the raws the other day and found the period was 300 days, which matches my experience fairly well (I set up a manual old fashion repeating shearing job as a new year occurs, which happens to match when you tend to do it IRL).
The problem with setting shearing/milking to match the number of animals is that the number of animals varies as new ones mature and old ones are slaughtered off, but I guess you'd get a fairly good result if the limit is set conservatively to the intended base number.
Spinning is trickier, since I think the shearing yield varies (and on top of that you've got hair which tangles the numbers).

The glass workshop setup is neat, although it's susceptible to clashes with other uses of bags (I guess a corresponding quarry bush order may clash, for instance, and you've always got seeds competing). Adding a larger buffer stock of bags ought to work around that, however, and that's probably a low price for automation.

[freeze]

Bags for dyes and quarry bushes are pretty simple. Create closed loops (links-only pile takes from kitchen/dyer, gives to quern/farmer's workshop) and have as many as needed for sand.

fe: 43.04 here, I get one (1) cancel from seasonal infinite shear and spin work orders created in the workshop profiles (q over building, shift p, arrow over to work orders)

[PatrikLundell]

Interesting, since my 0.43.05 unnumbered shearing and spinning seasonal orders ('q'-'P'-<arrow> as well) just kept spamming cancellations until I removed them. I guess I should make a new attempt next year (as all animals have just been dealt with) to verify/falsify my observation.

Edit: Retried workshop manager shearing orders, and yes, they spam until killed.