IIRC KittyTac is on Linux and there was a known issue about DT with the Linux LNP (which might or might not be solved by now... I didn't follow the thread).
But I'm with KittyTac on this one. Assigning labours is not as difficult as many people suggest. Here are the questions you usually want to ask:
- Do I have someone with X labour set?
- What labours are set on this dwarf?
- Where is are the dwarfs with X labour set and what are the doing?
- Which dwarf should I set with X labour?
When you are first starting #4 barely matters. Skills are gained pretty quickly for the most part. Thinking about skills that actually matter: Grower, Diagnoser, Weapon Smith, Armourer. Animal trainer matters, but most novices won't care. Nothing else really matters because either the skill will be gained so quickly or the benefit of extra skill is so small that it doesn't matter. And really even the skills I've mentioned don't really matter too much (there is already an overabundance of food in the game, you almost always have more migrants than you want so dead dwarfs are OK, weapon and armour material far outweigh weapon and armour quality in terms of importance).
As a novice, you really just want to make sure that all of the labours that you want to use have a dwarf set. Then when you choose a dwarf for a labour it's useful to see what labours are already set. Division of labour is important. Finally, when something isn't getting done, it's important to see where your X dwarf is and why they aren't doing their job.
This can be accomplished in many ways. Here is a list ordered from more organised to less.
A surprisingly easy way is simply to make a spreadsheet with the dwarf's name in the left hand side and a column for each labour that might be set. So it works pretty similar to using DT except that you have to do it by hand. It might seem like a lot of work, but writing down the names of the dwarfs in each migrant wave takes a lot less time than deciding which dwarf should have the labour.
Another way is simply to put each activated labour in the dwarf's profession nickname. At the beginning of the game you might have a dwarf or 2 with 4 or 5 labours, but as the game progresses it stretches out to having only a few labours each. Really the entire fortress can run on about 20 dwarfs, so unemployment is actually a bigger problem than organising labours. By doing this, you can look at the 'U' screen to get a list of all dwarfs and see their assigned labours.
Another way is to split up the labours into groups. So you might have mining, stone detailing, and stone crafts as a group; grower, thresher, spinner, weaver as a group; cook, brewer, miller, plant gatherer as a group; etc. You assign a profession title to each group and set the same labours up on each dwarf in the group. If you find that you do not have enough resources for a specific group, then just move some dwarfs from one group to another. I've not actually tried this method, but watching Krugsmash's youtube videos makes me think it would be fun to try. The only tricky thing about this for a novice is knowing which labours don't work together (for example, you can't have the fisher dwarfs and the fish cleaning dwarfs in the same group). But you can eventually figure it out...
Finally, the last method I'll mention (but not the last method I can imagine) is simply to leave the dwarfs with the labours that they have at the beginning. It's a little harder to see what's going on, but what I suggest is to try to have dwarf with each main skill. If you don't have a dwarf with a main skill that you want (say wood cutting), then disable all the labours except that labour until they become skilled enough to have their title match their labour. At the beginning of the game, you'll be missing lots of dwarfs with specific labours, but you'll also only have a few dwarfs so you can relatively easily look. I don't think this is really a good novice way, but it would be a fun challenge.
There are other techniques for managing and optimising. For example, if you have a legendary worker, then you might build a special workshop for them and make it exclusively for them. Then you can use the manager to ensure that they always have work for that specific workshop (with the other workshops filling in for volume). Or if you have a group of workers all with the same labours (say cook, brewer, etc) you can assign the kitchen to 2 of the dwarfs and the still to 2 other dwarfs. That way they will only do the things you want and you don't have to mess with their labours. I also often set up military squads and have some patrolling or training, while others work in the shops. It's a way to battle unemployment since you can say "This month these 2 squads will do all the work in the fortress, next month these other 2 squads will do it", etc.
I don't want to detract from the DT fans -- it's a great tool. However, I often hear that people think the game is impossible or un-fun without DT. I really disagree and want to encourage people to try to play a vanilla style to see what it is like.
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Topic: MY DWARFS HATE WORK (Read 2423 times)