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[Veridirun]

I have been playing DF for about a week with my friend. Before that I watched several guides and let's plays, but I couldn't information about pots I needed.
Wiki says that pots has more benefits than barrels for storing food. So my question is: am I able to use only pots in the food stockpile? Is forbidding using barrels still allowes using pots?

[YetAnotherLurker]

I don't believe there's any way to prevent barrels from being used in stockpiles, aside from simply making sure there are no barrels to be used. Make nothing but wooden pots, or if wood is in particularly short supply for some reason, glass or pottery ones. Do note that ordinary clay (earthenware) pots can't store liquids until glazed, though.

The stockpile setting for barrels includes both barrels and pots, mind.

[PatrikLundell]

YetAnotherLurker answered while I typed, so this mostly says the same thing...

Pots and barrels are almost interchangeable. The "almost" is that a couple of workshops require actual barrels for their construction.
The stockpile setting for barrels includes pots. If, for some weird reason, you want to use pots but not barrels, the best way is to get rid of your barrels (destroying them, dumping them out of reach, or 'f'orbidding them.
Pots are a bit larger than barrels, and so can store a little more food (but there's no difference for drinks, as the storage limit comes from the brewing process).
The sum of it is not to bother. Barrels can be made of wood only by a carpenter, while pots can be made of wood, stone, glass, clay, and metal (in the craftdwarf's workshop for wood and stone). So use the materials and work force at hand. Clay pots need to be glazed to hold booze, unless made of fire clay.

[Veridirun]

What if stockpile with pots really close to food, but barrels will be stored somewhere farther, is it going to help somehow?

[Luriant]

Some Vermin have the [PENETRATEPOWER] tag.(Between 1 and 3)
When a vermin want food from a container, the game use a dice, if the random number is lesser than PENETRATEPOWER, the vermin eat some food.

Cloth/Wood use a 0-9, Rock/Glass/Metal use 0-99.

Source: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=19119.msg189487#msg189487

Use Large Rock Pots and limit food loss from vermin, and put a Milk/Lye/extracs stockpile with reserved barrels. Dump or sell the rest of the barrels.

[feelotraveller]

In the more recent versions pots and barrels have the same storage capacities.  Barrels can also be made of metal.  Golden barrels make impressive workshop fixtures.     Milk, lye and dwarven syrup can only be stored in barrels.  But pots are only 1/3 of the weight of a barrel made of the same material.

Having pots closer will help somewhat but sometimes dwarfs will still grab barrels from further away.

To be honest the difference is pretty minimal, best bet is to make mainly pots and very few barrels if this is your preference, and keep a few barrels forbidden until needed for specialist tasks.

edit: Damn ninjas!  But actually the penetrate power details are interesting, I knew (colloquially) that there was a difference but it seems somewhat of a bigger scope than I thought.  But honestly food, shit, I can't GIVE AWAY enough of the stuff. 

[YetAnotherLurker]

Honestly, as far as milk/lye go, I prefer to just make it so no stockpiles accept them, and make a large excess of buckets. That way, they mostly just pile up in the Farmer's Workshop/Ashery until I decide to make cheese or soap.

I don't worry too much about vermin, either. If I happen to get a breeding pair of cats via migrant waves, I'll toss them in my food stockpile areas, but I don't think I've ever run out of food. I currently have something like 30 tamed female cave crocodiles laying massive clutches of eggs, so I think I'm set for the next millenium or so. If only I could brew them or ferment them or something to make some kind of horrific egg-booze...

Oh, also, I did an experimental fort a while back where I made everything I possibly could out of lead. Lead barrels, lead bins, lead minecarts, lead wheelbarrows, lead furniture... the barrels being made of lead honestly didn't seem to make a huge difference overall. I mean, they took forever to haul anywhere, but my fortress designs usually don't have much hauling of food/drink over long distances anyway. The lead furniture, on the other hand...

Oh, one thing to note, wood pots are made with the Woodcrafter skill, not Carpentry, and are made at a Craftsdwarf Workshop. Same thing applies to stone/metal pots, using crafting rather than masonry/blacksmithing.

[Thisfox]

Barrels arrive in your wagon with the stores in them.

My method is to make a lot of stone pots as soon and often as possible, and prepare food, milk animals, etc as normal. When the human or dorf traders come around, I trade away every wooden barrel I have, often sacrificing the stuff inside because I don't want the wooden barrel. Stone pots are tradeable with the Elves, wooden barrels not so much, so I can't do that with them. I trade wooden barrels away every time the others come around though. After a few years my fort is barrel-free. I wish there was an option on Embark to take stone pots of food and drink instead of wooden ones.

Earthenware pots are more of a problem: If you make clay pots, you have to glaze them (I do it with ash glaze) before they can store food and things. It does make them a pretty colour though.

[Mostali]

I generally make all rock pots and have my Still linked to a large pot stockpile so the brewer never uses barrels.  Dwarves will still store food in barrels and there's no way to prevent that as far as I know.  But... when the caravan comes around, you can forbid the food inside the barrel and have the barrel sent to the trade depot.  Dwarves will remove the food in place and cart off the empty barrel.  Then you unforbid the food and they'll put it back in large pots (if you've managed to remove all possible barrels).

Honestly, I do it for aesthetics.  Food is so plentiful that saving it or losing some really makes no difference.

[Veridirun]

Oh, thanks guys for your advices! I really worried about food stockpile having a lot of barrels, but it seems to be not a big problem. But still, pots are cheaper and lighter. I'm going to make an experiment: I will try to connect to food stockpile pot-only stockpile, and watch if dwarves will use only pots. So if that's going to work, I won't have to worry about barrels getting into food stockpile.

[Veridirun]

Yeah, that didn't work as expected, because pot and barrel are the same thing in the settings, so it's impossible to make pot storage. Well, at least there are other solutions.

[PatrikLundell]

It IS possible to make pot storages by linking your pot producing workshops to stockpiles set to take from links only. However, given how easy it is to screw up with stockpile links, it might not be worth it. Also, this would make your pots essentially one use, since you can't get them back into the stockpile after they've been emptied (at least not without trickery).
Another option is to use the materials setting for the pot stockpile to only accept e.g. stone and glass, if pots go into stockpile categories that can be sorted on materials.

[Mostali]

Yeah, that didn't work as expected, because pot and barrel are the same thing in the settings, so it's impossible to make pot storage. Well, at least there are other solutions.

"large pots/food storage" under "type" may be misleading, it doesn't include barrels.  Barrels have their own entry.  It is possible to separate empty barrels and empty large pots by storage facility.

It's also possible to guarantee large pot usage in brewing by linking a large pot stockpile to the brewer, and that's because the container is part of the reaction.

What isn't possible is to prefer large pots over barrels in food storage by using stockpile settings.  The "Max Barrel" setting doesn't distinguish between barrels and large pots so haulers will just grab whichever they decide is more convenient.  A link from a large pot stockpile to a food stockpile is unlikely to help.  It might, I don't know that it won't for sure.  But stockpile-stockpile links are not exclusive in the same way as stockpile-workshop links.

[Maul_Junior]

Yeah, that didn't work as expected, because pot and barrel are the same thing in the settings, so it's impossible to make pot storage. Well, at least there are other solutions.

"large pots/food storage" under "type" may be misleading, it doesn't include barrels.  Barrels have their own entry.  It is possible to separate empty barrels and empty large pots by storage facility.

It's also possible to guarantee large pot usage in brewing by linking a large pot stockpile to the brewer, and that's because the container is part of the reaction.

What isn't possible is to prefer large pots over barrels in food storage by using stockpile settings.  The "Max Barrel" setting doesn't distinguish between barrels and large pots so haulers will just grab whichever they decide is more convenient.  A link from a large pot stockpile to a food stockpile is unlikely to help.  It might, I don't know that it won't for sure.  But stockpile-stockpile links are not exclusive in the same way as stockpile-workshop links.

wouldn't "Take only from links" fix that? OR is that DFhack-only sorcery?

[Mostali]

Yeah, that didn't work as expected, because pot and barrel are the same thing in the settings, so it's impossible to make pot storage. Well, at least there are other solutions.

"large pots/food storage" under "type" may be misleading, it doesn't include barrels.  Barrels have their own entry.  It is possible to separate empty barrels and empty large pots by storage facility.

It's also possible to guarantee large pot usage in brewing by linking a large pot stockpile to the brewer, and that's because the container is part of the reaction.

What isn't possible is to prefer large pots over barrels in food storage by using stockpile settings.  The "Max Barrel" setting doesn't distinguish between barrels and large pots so haulers will just grab whichever they decide is more convenient.  A link from a large pot stockpile to a food stockpile is unlikely to help.  It might, I don't know that it won't for sure.  But stockpile-stockpile links are not exclusive in the same way as stockpile-workshop links.

wouldn't "Take only from links" fix that? OR is that DFhack-only sorcery?

That only affects what is stored in the stockpile, and since containers aren't the object being stored then it doesn't work for deciding what containers to put food into.

For example, if you "take only" link from a large pot stockpile to a food stockpile, then nothing will ever get stored in the food stockpile.

Another example, if you "take only" link from a large pot stockpile and a kitchen to a food stockpile, then the food stockpile will only ever take from the kitchen and the kitchen will only ever give to that food stockpile.  But when the decision is made to store the food in a container, anything goes.