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[vassock]

How do you handle item storage in the beginning? I want to build a fort underground, but the problem I always have is stockpile space. It must be rock-free, and rocks are almost always generated as a result of clearing an area. I always end up stockpiling near the top lawyers since that's where the sand/clay (non-rock) layers are which I can mine clear and have nothing left.

[StagnantSoul]

Bring along a wheelbarrow or two and have the first stockpile be a stone one, and have a single guy just haul a-...rock. Once some spots are clear store the stuff you want.

[Tontomanzz]

I usually put my initial 'trader'/starter stockpile near the top close to the depot.
If it's a stone area, I actually don't care about any stray stones on it as it's fairly large so won't fill anyway.  Why must it be rock free, personal preference?

I put it to take everything except stones and wood so that way I get everything from the cart inside pronto.

Later on as I build the fort, this starter stockpile becomes a generic trader dump one while others are built to satisfy the workshops etc.  As in fat wood ones for the carpenter, stone ones for the mason etc.  The mason stockpile with wheelbarrels then start cleaning stuff up as it's used.

Any mass dumping of rocks wait until I get a few migrations when I've got dwarfs to spare.

[Starver]

Depends on the embark, and I do tend to favour those with this available, but I make my first dig-outs into a soil layer (no rubble), often intending them to be my farms. But I can set up an everything-but-refuse-and-logs-and-rock (or more selective still) stockpile to clear the wagon out, and by the time I deconstruct it I've probably started a rock-craft industry that has properly consolidated the loose stone left around the rock-dug rooms.

(In older versions, miners used to not produce so many rocks when inexperienced, and the digging of useful rock-types was to be left until later, but ubiquitous stuff like gabbro would always be plentiful enough, later, if you wanted it for some reason. To start with, though, rock-dropping was less than now. But it's still not 1:1.)

And, thinking about it, I'm also right from the beginning also starting (at least) the construction of my aboveground walls and defences, the rocks left at the bottom of the deeper ditches get initially excluded from my building programme because of various other tricks of mine, so (especially at first) this also drags out the whole load of common rick-type that I've decided to use in the constructed walls.  So rocks often get moved out as quick as I can dig them out.


All else failing, set up (boring, especially) rocks in the way of any intended room-use and set to dump, with a dumping zone on the surface. Ensuring just enough dwarves with the appropriate haulage (you don't want to distract those with other jobs to do) is an exercise left for the reader but can be efficacious, as well. I use it more to keep things neat, but also to flash-empty areas I'm going to flood with water or magma, shortly. Similar principle.

(There's so many ways to do this. I suspect there's DFHack solutions too, but all the above are vanilla.)

[Aranador]

So - I fully understand the need to have all stones moved out of the way and the fortress neat and tidy with everything in its place.

What I do is minecart quantum piling.  Pretty much the first pile I build, right after a carpenter knocks out a mine cart as his first job.

You set up a modest stock pile, say, 3x3, for stone (or anything and everything you want) - if it is for stones or heavy things, include some wheel barrows.  Dwarves will fetch stuff and bring it here, but at 9 spaces, it will be full very quick.

Next to this pile - the input pile - I build a track stop, set to dump to a square outside the input pile.  I set another 1x1 stockpile on that output space, set to hold the stuff.  I designate a hauling route with a single stop, on the track stop, assign a vehicle, and have it take from the input pile the things I want (but not wheelbarrows, that is important)

Now dwarves will grab things in the input, stick them in the cart, and they'll dump into the small pile.  Dwarves will let them stay there as they are in a legal stock pile.  As they empty the input pile, dwarves will go fetch more things.  Eventually, everything winds up in the small output stack, all neat, and all automated.

There are two things to watch out for - one is if your piles handle wheel barrows, they'll get eternally shifted, and the other being barrels that have something in them, which just don't seem to work - so don't use this for booze, or for food/seeds that are in barrels (you can use non-barrel held food, and seeds in bags (but not seeds on their own, dunno why)

also, if you mess up and have the cart dump into the input pile, dwarves will for ever load the cart with the items being dumped straight back into the input in an eternal cycle.


Anyway - this is useful for stone tidy up, and for above ground towers where space is a premium.  Have fun

[FortunaDraken]

Seconding quantum stockpiles, they're great for rocks. I've been using them ever since I learned about them because I can't stand the rocks littered everywhere either - partially because my masons love walking across half the map for that newly mined stone when they have decent stone right nearby, for some reason.

I split it into two, one for basic rock and the other near the smelters for the metal ores and flux stone. I swear by quantum stockpiling these days. It's just so good to not see crap everywhere.

[Naia]

You can work your way out of the problem.

Start out by making a few wheelbarrows and bin. Construct a craft dwarfs workshop and set up a small stone stockpile next to it with wheelbarrows and a finished goods stockpile whit a few bins.
Have the workshop take stones from that stockpile
Assign a dwarf  to stone crafting ( preferably someone who likes earrings or figurines or one of the other trade goods ) and then just have them turn all those annoying stones into stuff you can trade.

A masons workshop is also a good idea. You dwarves needs tables, chairs and a lot of stone blocks for constructing various things.

Stone mechanisms for some early defences, like stone fall or cage traps.


You can clear out stones almost at the same rate your mines generate them. As space gets cleared out, you start moving stuff underground.
Later on you can replace those initial shoddy shale tables, for masterwork diamond encrusted platinum tables or whatever else you prefer.

[mikekchar]

Kind of a different way of looking at the problem: don't bring so much stuff with you.

I've been playing minimalist embarks the last few times and I'm amazed at how little stuff I really need/want at the beginning.  In the first year you will almost certainly have no more than 20 dwarfs, so there is no need to bring supplies for a large fortress.

• Food/Drink: You need 2 drink and 1 food per month per dwarf.  If you want to save initial space, then don't bring booze.  1 plant = 5 booze and setting up a still is pretty simple.  You also only need enough food to last you until your farm produces -- a little over a month. 4 plants for drinks and a further 7 food will be enough (but see below). Also, you can store your booze in the still (i.e. don't make a booze stockpile -- just leave it in the still at the beginning)
• Rope, cloth, thread: 1 llama will produce 15 wool and is shearable right away.  A female will also give you 1 milk every 17 days (i.e.
   2 food for the first month).  Once butchered, you also get 1 leather, 12 fat, 23 meat-like food, and 12-18 bones.  So shear the llama (and store the wool in the farm workshop), milk twice and make cheese, then butcher the llama (or keep it). Anyway, rope isn't necessary until you are building a well.  Building a well takes time, so you can build your cloth production at the same time.
• Of course you need an anvil
• Wood: Either bring wood or cut wood.  Either way you need a wood stockpile.  Usually put mine outdoors at the beginning (unless it's a crazy biome).  Build what you need. You aren't going to need splints until you have a hospital.  Once you have a hospital, you will have a place to put splints.  Also, you really only need 1 pair of crutches at the beginning (you can build more crutches later).  Only build a wheelbarrow when you have a stockpile that needs a wheelbarrow.  Only build a stepladder when you want to pick fruit from trees (which really doesn't need to ever be a priority).  Build buckets when you milk the llama, or when you want to make lye.  Stockpile them near the farm workshop and the ashery.  Really, none of this stuff is necessary until you already have a place to put it
• Seeds: You'll probably want one bag of each type 6.  I tunnel out my farm area first and make 6 stockpile tiles - one for each type of seed.

So basically, you need a food stockpile.  You only need 2 barrels for that at first.  Depending on how fast you build your carpenter's shop (it's the first thing I build and I usually do it outdoors) you might take an empty (or full) barrel for booze. You need 1 tile of storage for you anvil.  You need 6 tiles of storage for your seeds (when you dig out your farm).  You need some place to put your llama. If you don't have grazing space, you can build a rope/cage and set the animal care labour on your dwarfs -- they will feed the llama using your food plants (so you can bring a couple of extra plants, which will fit in the barrel, for that purpose).

So grand total, you need about 4 tiles of storage space for various things and 6 tiles for your seeds.  You can put all of it in your farm room to begin with.

[Skorpion]

Soil layers exist to house stockpiles.

Otherwise, stone stockpiles only really need to be around workshops so stones don't need to be hauled far by hand. This CAN be a minecart-assisted quantum stockpile, but that's a pain in the ass for regular stone.
For ores, I have a smallish stockpile at the top of the fort that dumps them down a shaft by minecart, from where they get loaded into a second minecart for quantum-piling near the forges.
Two minecarts so I don't have rocks falling into the forges at terminal velocity and killing dwarves.
Why a drop shaft and not a ramp? I tried the ramp first. It killed dwarves because they let go of the minecart for whatever reason, and it rolled down over them or someone else.

[Fleeting Frames]

JSYK: You can make the minacart qsp feeder pile use wheelbarrows, as well as have multiple minecarts take from 1 pile, and track stop doesn't need a hole adjacent to it.

(probably know all that, but you called it kind of a pain in the ass for regular stone)

As for moving stuff from sedimentary layers to ore/stone stockpile..I prefer to use a sealed rampway, but you could also, say, change your dropshaft so that the stones either dump on hatch that is setup so that dwarves can't walk to pile while stones are falling, or have your dropshaft dump ores into a constructed fortification and then use a local pump loop to push them out onto stockpiles on downstair drainage.

[Jazz Cat]

There's also a few ways to clear out stone depending on how willing you are to cheat. First, you can hide it (designations > building/item properties > hide items). It's still there, your dwarves can still use it, but you can't see it. If all you want is to make your fort look pretty, that's the way to go. The stone will still take up stockpile space, though, and it can get stuck in doors or whatnot. It'll also be super-far away from your mason's and craftsdwarf's workshops. The other way (which is what I do) is to cheat a little with DFHack. You can mark all the random stone for dumping, just like if you were going to have your dwarves haul it away, but then you can run "autodump" and it'll automatically get dumped at your cursor. You'll have to reclaim it afterwards (d>b>c).

[Skullsploder]

Just dig out rooms as you need them, and have an active stone industry. For bedrooms for instance, you need to mine 12 tiles worth of stone per room if you want to give every dwarf a chest, cabinet, and door. Halls similarly need to be filled with chairs and tables, and in many cases will take more stone to fill with furniture than is generated by digging them out. For handling the excess if it's too much for your stockpile, you can just set a work order that makes blocks and/or crafts if there is more stone than the amount your stockpile can take.

Also, at the start, you probably won't be filling your non-stone non-wood stockpiles completely, so once you have the automated processes and stone stockpiles set up you really can just leave it and let the dwarves slowly clean things up over time. In my forts I only really think of a room as assimilated into the fort once all the stone generated by digging it out has been used up or moved elsewhere.

The only time dumping is really necessary to me is when I have to clear out a pipe quickly because I want to get that new well running or somesuch thing.

[eerr]

People like to make a stockpile for stone, a stockpile for gems, a stockpile for furniture, a stockpile for wood.

However, I merge those stockpiles into one big stockpile.

If I need more space, I use some of the crap I built up. Simple and effective.

Food gets it's own stockpile with individual doors for each tile. The vermin become insignificant.

[Thisfox]

Put in a rock stockpile (it could be outside, if necessary and safe enough to do so) and also you can always floor over the space you want to have your stockpile, making it neat: There's another use for all those annoying rocks. Make 'em into a floor.

Personally I turn the majority of my "base normal" rocks into small trade goods (rings, figurines, and amulets and the like) and sell it all off to the nearest caravan: No more rocks, small but not problematic profit, and it can be traded for booze, bags, and other useful stuff.

[escondida]

Personally, at the very beginning, I dig out a store room/work area/dorm while the fort gets on its feet, and immediately have the dorfs haul in the food from the wagon, which can then be deconstructed. If I suspect there are thieving creatures about, I'll also make a one-tile furniture stockpile accepting only anvils to get the anvil safely indoors. I don't find there's any particular rush to start stockpiling stone properly right away.

Next up is a wood stockpile, probably just outside the entrance to collect all the wood the woodcutter's been cutting.

Finally, I begin to set up real, permanent stockpiles for things as I create their workshop floors. I'll generally start with masonry or carpentry for that.