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[ibanix]

Problem: Urist McSandbagFiller cancels Collect Sand: Job Item lost or destroyed. For dozens of dwarves, almost constantly. See the image.

Things that ARE NOT PROBLEMS:

1) The sand pick-up zone is large. Like 5x5.
2) There are dozens and dozens of free, unused bags.
3) There are four different workshops all running sand collection jobs at once.
4) No, those bags are not forbidden.
4a) No, those bags are not inaccessible.
4b) No, the dwarves are not inside burrows preventing access to bags or workshops.
4d) No, seriously, it's not the bags.
5) One single stockpile exists for sand bag collection. It allows collection from everywhere, and it has no wheelbarrows defined.
6) No stockpile exists for regular bags. They sit wherever they are last used (usually glass furnaces) for pickup.


Does anyone have a good explanation of why this happens? I'm starting to believe sand collection is fundamentally buggy.

[carnivorn]

Could it be the zone? I usually use a 1x1 zone on top of a grate, to ensure no grass or plants grow there, and have never run into this problem. But, on the other hand, I've never run into this problem, so this is pure guesswork on my part.

Theory:
Urist McSandCollector accepts job Collect Sand, knowing there is a bare sand tile at (coordinates inside collection zone). Urist McSandCollector goes to get a bag. By the time Urist McSandCollector picks up a bag, grass has grown at (coordinates). Ignoring the other sand tiles inside the collection zone, Urist McSandCollector complains that the sand has gone away, and drops the bag.

If nothing's growing in your collection zone though, I have no idea. The only other thing I can think of is a traffic jam causing them to drop the bags while dodging around other dwarves. Sorry if neither of those are the answer to your problem!

[ibanix]

There doesn't appear to be any plants, but I may as well put a grate down and see if it helps.

My dwarves don't *seem* to be running into each other, but I might try some different locations. Thanks for the idea.

[PatrikLundell]

It could be the same problem I had with pond filling: a particular container DF had allocated for a job had in fact been destroyed (a fire snake had destroyed a bucket), and it appears it tried to use that particular bucket for the job only to cancel (or, in fact, just deallocate) it when the bucket didn't exist, only to assign the same job (and bucket) again at the next opportunity. Removing the pond filling tasks and recreating them again cleared the cancellation. In your case you could try to remove the sand filling jobs from all your workshops, let DF run for a second (might not even be needed) and then recreate those jobs again. That should cause DF to allocate (still) existing bags for the jobs.

Of course, you may well be suffering from something different, but it's worth trying.

As carnivorn mentioned, a grate over the sand collection tile (or all of them if you use more than one) is the standard protection against growth blocking access to the sand/clay, so it's worth doing to counter that problem in the future. I don't know if mud or ash can cause an issue, but I'd recommend avoiding those contaminants unless you want to find out if it causes problems.

[anewaname]

I don't know specifically what the problem is, but I can describe my functioning sand-collection site. It is a one-tile zone that is diagonally adjacent to a sand tile with floor grate. Like this:
ix              i=the one tile zone for sand collection, x=some floor, s=floor grate over sand
xs
My point is to show that many of the "could the problem be caused by this" points that you listed do not matter. A one-tile zone next to a grated sand tile, and empty bags... that should be all you need.

I have four glass furnaces to trigger sand collection jobs and two glass furnaces to use the sand. There are a few small monthly jobs but the system handles large furniture production jobs without complaint. The only empty bag stockpile is a 10 tile stockpile near the querns, but there are about 60 bags in circulation, outside of seed bags, so empty bags accumulate in the glass furnaces, dyers, and kitchen. The sand bags sit in the sand-collection zone until the glassworker takes them.

[ibanix]

Why would you not just have the sand collection zone on top of the sand?

[anewaname]

By accident more than anything else, but once I realized it was working, I left it that way, because they drop the sandbags one tile closer to the magma glass furnaces, which are about 20 tiles away.

It is part of the cavern layer near the magma, that was exposed after a fire passed through, so there were only a few sand tiles in the area and I grated it and walled it in as soon as possible to prevent cave moss regrowth.

[ibanix]

So I switched to a grated sand pickup, but this is still happening. Still no idea what is going on.

[anewaname]

That log message is usually an indicator of competition for empty bags.  When there are only a few empty bags available and the dwarfs are competing for them... A dwarf starts a job that needs the dwarf to carry an empty bag to another location, the dwarf starts walking to the bag, but another dwarf gets to the bag first, or another dwarf TSKs the bag because they want to put stuff in it. The only other reason I know of for that log message is, it is being moved around by water ("someone dropped an empty bag on the shore and the ocean waves keep moving it around").

You are saying that there are many empty bags available. That is probably true in the context of your entire fort. The log message indicates otherwise. So, take a look at the following questions...

You also said the burrows are not in use. But, are the sand-collecting furnaces within a burrow where the burrow is set to 'w'orkshop restricted? That setting doesn't care if the burrow is active or not, and it would limit the available empty bags to the ones currently in that burrow area.

All of these empty bags you have, are they accumulating in certain workshops? It could be that those workshops are linked to "only give to" certain stockpiles but there is no empty bag stockpile to "release" the bags from that workshop.

If it is not a "'w'orkshop restricted burrow" or the "linked workshop with no outlet for empty bags" issue, then, find where the empty bags are accumulating and work on the question from there and/or post the info... There is something limiting the perceived available empty bags.

[ibanix]

That log message is usually an indicator of competition for empty bags. 

So much no. I tried to answer this before, but I spent days on it as a bag problem. There are DOZENS OF FREE BAGS. Check the attached photo; there are approximately 60 free pig tail bags.

You also said the burrows are not in use. But, are the sand-collecting furnaces within a burrow where the burrow is set to 'w'orkshop restricted?

No. My dwarves are not burrowed. The burrows exist for keeping kids in their rooms and aren't including non-kid citizens.

All of these empty bags you have, are they accumulating in certain workshops?

They seem to mostly end up in the glass workshops, because the dwarves use the sand, and then the bags are left there.

It could be that those workshops are linked to "only give to" certain stockpiles but there is no empty bag stockpile to "release" the bags from that workshop.

Nope. No linking done for the glass workshops.

[Loci]

There are DOZENS OF FREE BAGS.

Irrelevant. If the bag that the job has selected is unavailable, the game will post a "job item" error each and every time that job attempts to run. Have you tried canceling and recreating the collection jobs like PatrikLundell suggested? Or using the manager to automate collection instead of repeating jobs?

[ibanix]

Or using the manager to automate collection instead of repeating jobs?

I thought the manager was broken for sand bag collection? What parameters does one use?

[Loci]

My manager issues work orders for sand collection just fine. What parameters does one need?

[carnivorn]

For repeating orders that stop automatically when there aren't enough bags or there's too much sand, you can use something like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(this example will keep between 10 and 20 sandbags at any given time, as long as the bags aren't snatched by other industries. you may wish to set a higher number of empty bags to leave enough for flour, dye, and gypsum plaster production, and to account for bags being taken up by seeds)

Use (t)raits to define "sand bearing items", which will account for all bags of sand in your fortress.
Use (i)tems to define "boxes and bags", (m)aterial to set your bag material of choice (since it looks like you're exclusively using pigtail bags), and (t)raits to set it to count only empty ones. If you were using a mix of bags, I've heard you can use the trait "sewn-imageless" and leave the material blank. This should count all cloth/silk/yarn/leather bags (that haven't been decorated with more textiles) while preventing it from counting coffers/chests/boxes. I haven't tried this myself though.

Hope your initial issue gets fixed! Glassmaking is a fun industry once you've got it set up.