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[PopTart]

How do you guys use burrows in 2018? Have you found any interesting uses for them other than blowing the siren during a siege?

I'm a shameless user of the manipulator UI plugin, and tasks basically get done by the right dwarfs, so I haven't really needed any drastic labor management. Is anyone using burrows to section off dwarfs by labor? Does this reduce commute times?

I'm asking this because I like the idea of burrows and am wondering if there's a good way to implement them. Thanks!

[tiresius]

I recently used burrows for the hospital workers.  My hospitals are usually out of the way next to the well and not really near my main fortress.  All the back and forth the dwarves do to take care of the patients (cause they just hung out in the dining room or library) was taking a long time.   I find hospital bugs annoying and dwarves getting up halfway through treatment and blinking + signs at me forever really get my goat ....  so to avoid that if possible I'm trying to make the hospital efficient.

I make the main hospital zone near the well, put assigned bedrooms next to it for my medical dwarves.  I put in food/water stockpiles and nice statues and carve lots of engravings for them to enjoy.  Then I put them all in a hospital burrow with everything included so they can survive down there forever.

It has worked out pretty well, actually.  But I still sometimes get annoying AMA dwarf leaving the hospital with open wounds and whatnot.

[PopTart]

I like the idea of stationing dwarfs in far-off areas of the map with burrows. Maybe I'll move my clothing operations closer to where the GCS webs are in the caverns. Fun!

[PatrikLundell]

Apart from civilian alerts, I use burrows for pre nuptial encouragement and dorfling production encouragement.

[anewaname]

Web collection... I dig out a little room near a large mossy cavern area, build a weaver's shop, and paint the burrow over the cavern area and over the workshop, then set the burrow to workshop restricted, and change that workshop's profile to only allow web collection labor and to only allow weaving skill less than about rank 10. Dwarfs are not added to the burrow, the burrow just restricts the places they collect webs.

[Starver]

I've always and only used Burrows in permanent non-alert ways.

For example, if I'm digging ditches on the surface, as part of my fortification plans, I'll paint a burrow across that external surface footprint (and down however many layers needed) within which I place one miner, whilst a second miner is given a burrow that keeps it digging internal explorations for caverns and (if I have a third miner, etc, rather than temporily reassign one of the others) another burrow or more burrows painted over priority room-digging that I need, like urgent bedrooms, farm-space or something.

Each burrow also includes the dining/drinking facilities and a bedroom, so they can deal with those needs without further bothering, but then always go back and do (especially since the priority designations came in) the most important or next-most-needed digging, whilst the fellow miner(s) fulfill the other needs.

Before the latest "make stuff with this exact material" ability, I'd also use Burrows and/or dedicated Stockpile->Workshop links and/or workshop Profiles to keep crafts restricted to certain subtypes (no longer necessary for anything but beds, which still seem to need such guidance to keep them to one particular wood-type), according to how much overlapping skillsets and production-lines I have.


I've never really used Alerts in any manner. I just manually make changes to make everyone's Burrow the "(deeper) within the walls" one (with other nudges to deal with those that still want to wander outside, without any reason that I am happy about), get levers pulled that need pulling to change the entry/exit paths plus zone-isolations and then activate squads in whatever bespoke manner I feel needs to be activated given the nature of the threat.

[Sarmatian123]

I use just one burrow and I use it for:
1. Blowing siren.
2. Restricting workshops to materials found only in burrows. It makes production faster. Inside stockpiles still collect materials from outside and I use quantum stockpiling close by workshops on top of it. It works pretty well I have to say.

[Romeofalling]

Web collection... I dig out a little room near a large mossy cavern area, build a weaver's shop, and paint the burrow over the cavern area and over the workshop, then set the burrow to workshop restricted, and change that workshop's profile to only allow web collection labor and to only allow weaving skill less than about rank 10. Dwarfs are not added to the burrow, the burrow just restricts the places they collect webs.

Stealing this idea!!

----

I keep dreaming about setting up burrows to keep the farmers near the surface and the deep dwarves near the magma, with minecarts connecting the two. I have yet to succesfully implement it, though.

[anewaname]

@Starver
About how many permanent burrows and how many temporary burrows do you maintain? Do you have many dwarfs that are assigned to multiple burrows? Do you find the need to add/remove dwarfs from the permanent burrows? Do you ensure all dwarfs are assigned to at least one burrow?

@Romeofalling
Heheh, it was not mine to begin with!

[Starver]

@Starver
About how many permanent burrows and how many temporary burrows do you maintain? Do you have many dwarfs that are assigned to multiple burrows? Do you find the need to add/remove dwarfs from the permanent burrows? Do you ensure all dwarfs are assigned to at least one burrow?

It varies.  But unless I maintain the separate Food And Drink (And Sleep?) burrow for a dwarf to have (or not have, when I'd prefer otherwise, rather than paint out/in-again to the work-burrow) joint membership to have of, it's generally a burrow per individual who needs that priority, plus a "inside" burrow slapped down as a cuboid over the fortress internal footprint (and nibbled away as I encounter caverns, and aboveground structure added on).

The priority burrows might have multiple dwarves, once I've got (say) more miners and can safely increase those assigned to that priority activity.

The Inside burrow, if I want to use it, requires that I add in everybody and remove (say) any remaining ditch-miners from their ditch-digging burrow, upon 'manual alert'. But it's trivial to do, as you just cursor-select(, cursor-select...) everyone on the Inside (ignoring known Priority-That-Is-Internal members) and then edit out.individuals with membership the offending non-Inside burrows. And usually when I need to I've already ditch-dug and wall-built sufficient to enact my defensive/enforced-murder-zone-corridor plans, and I'm utterly familiar with who is where.

Once I've dug out (for example) the full extent of underground/sunken¹ farmland, the burrow that is created to expedite the farmland digging is removed, so is 'temporary' in that respect. The Exploratory burrow generally just changes shape (and maybe swapping out and replacing the incumbant every now and then) as a new digging column gets designated, if I haven't covered that area already, and if/when I set up a priority MagmaDuct-and-Forges/Well-And-Cistern/Luxury-Marble-Bedrooms dig-out I might remove that area from the Exploratory one as I form the new priority burrow ready (maybe not immediately) for whoever I assign to pursue this new task.

It's far simpler to do than to explain. After as much practice as I've given myself, at least.

Apart from when I deliberately and globally (to all burrow-assigned dwarves, but not to wholely dwarf-free ones) give a needs-satisfiying burrow, rather than personalise the priority ones, genererally it's each dwarf who is assigned a burrow has membership of just the one, so I don't get confused about those being restricted more than they should and others effectively having a multiple burrow.

(What I have mentioned as useful, in the dim and distant past, would be the ability to define burrows as a Union, Intersection, Differences of other burrows, or flash paint/depaint a burrow with the extent of another burrow's painting on demand. Then the crinkly bits of my fort could be micromanaged better with 'negative burrows' representing cavern extents, magmaduct areas, uncontrolled outside surfaces, etc. But, in the absence of that, I just use my current method, adjusting as I see more magma-sea to work round, if something like that affects any aspect of anything.)


¹ My solution to ∞-blocking of aboveground soils is to channel down a layer in soil to create aboveground farmplots on the same level as the unexposed subsurface farms, then roof over those gaps. Handy farmspace ready for assigning to the various seeds of appropriate polarity.

[PatrikLundell]

@Starver: The bug with assigning a particular kind of wood to beds is purely a display one. The designation takes effect, but the job's name doesn't change (at least it works when done from workshops: I don't use the manager). All the beds in my current fortress are made from mahogany, for instance (that will soon change, as I'm running out of it).

[Starver]

@Starver: The bug with assigning a particular kind of wood to beds is purely a display one. The designation takes effect, but the job's name doesn't change (at least it works when done from workshops: I don't use the manager). All the beds in my current fortress are made from mahogany, for instance (that will soon change, as I'm running out of it).

Well, my current forts (44.02) have mixed-wood beds from early "build (this wood) beds whilst there's less than (so many) unused" tests, but it's possible that having seen no apparent change that I unselected the reagent specification again, and now it is too late to reOCD it back on.

I'm about to start up another fort on another worldgen copy (experimentation, in parallel) so I'll definitely stick with that one, regardless, to see if it does as (not) advertised anyway.