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[coalboat]

The useless seeds, those that you don't plan to grow, the apple seeds which can even be grown or cooked, are stored in bags, even when there's no stockpile for them. I wish in the kitchen menu there be an option: preserve seed. If you don't "preserve seed" for this particular type of fruit, dwarves don't generate seed when they eat the fruit.

If I don't grow crops however, I might be able to set seed limit to zero. Then no seed would be generated. But I still like some agriculture.

[ToadChild]

It requires manual intervention, but you can always dump the seeds you don't want to empty the bags if they can't be cooked.

[coalboat]

Yeah that's what I'm doing. I wonder if there's any trick that can automate the process. I know probably dfhack has a script for that. But I like to find out if it's possible to do it without external tools.

[anewaname]

Try a 2-tile no-barrel stockpile that accepts apple seeds, and remove apple seeds from all other seed stockpiles. As a method of dealing with the inevitable seeds, it works well, since the seed bag will eventually hit the specific seed cap and then there are no new seeds.

[delphonso]

On a sufficiently long fortress that eats fruit, it's possible that useless seeds can claim all of the available seed space, though super unlikely. Still, I think it's best practice to sell off or atom smash excess useless seeds.

[coalboat]

I find this in the d_init.txt. Seems relevant:

Alter these options to control how aggressively your dwarves place objects in a container with like items (rather than an empty container).  The default options are very aggressive.  STORE_DIST_ITEM_DECREASE controls the cap on objects it will consider -- for each object it finds in a container, one tile is removed from its apparent distance to the dwarf, up to this cap.  The others control how many tiles are removed for each combination type for any match at all.  For instance, if ITEM_DECREASE is set to 20, and SEED_COMBINE is set to 100, a dwarf carrying seeds will see a seed bag with 15 seeds as 115 tiles closer than it actually is (and thus pass up any empties within that distance), whereas a seed bag with 30 seeds would be treated as 120 tiles closer (because it hits the ITEM_DECREASE cap).  Values from 2 to 1000 are permitted.  Before these init options, the behavior was roughly ITEM_DECREASE 2, SEED_COMBINE 2 and the rest at 1000.

[STORE_DIST_ITEM_DECREASE:20]
[STORE_DIST_SEED_COMBINE:1000]
[STORE_DIST_BUCKET_COMBINE:1000]
[STORE_DIST_BARREL_COMBINE:1000]
[STORE_DIST_BIN_COMBINE:1000]

[coalboat]

It seems that I need to set the SEED_COMBINE as high as possible, but it is already at 1000. I think there's not much I can do about these options.

Now I set individual seed cap at 60 and fortress seed cap at 6000. Let's see how this works.

[Loci]

Dwarves compulsively bagging seeds is a known issue.

Thanks to another bug, you can finagle your dwarves into storing all the useless seeds in a single bag. Dump all the junk seeds into a pile, forbid all but one empty bag, then reclaim the junk seeds. If you have met the individual junk seed caps and your fortress seed cap is high enough, you shouldn't have to mess with those junk seeds again.

[coalboat]

Fantastic! Does bag protect seed from vermin? If it doesn't maybe I can even omit the bag part and just let them there on the floor.

[Hyndis]

You could set up an automatic garbage disposal.

Have a minecart route with just one stop adjacent to your garbage pit. Put a track stop on this tile pointing to the garbage pit.

Have the route stop pick up anything you want from any stockpiles in the fortress. Dwarves will haul those items to the mine cart where they are instantaneously dumped into the pit.

The bottom of the pit could be the magma ocean or an atom smasher with a repeater (wave motion repeaters are highly recommended). Either way, whatever goes in the pit is gone forever. Including wayward seeds.

As a check to make sure you're dumping only things you want to dump, try having a dumping stockpile. Make a custom stockpile that accepts all things you want disposed of. Have this custom stockpile pull from the others. Then have the garbage chute mine cart route pull from this custom stockpile.

By making a new stockpile that accepts only the things you want disposed of, your dwarves will separate out and haul the seed bags to this stockpile. They'll sit there for a bit prior to being dumped. This allows you to inspect whats being dumped so you can be sure only garbage goes down the chute.

[coalboat]

This is good otherwise but it doesn't work for seeds, because dwarf always puts seeds into bag and I don't want to destroy the bags.

[anewaname]

I am going to re-suggest the 2-tile no-barrel stockpile (that only accepts apple seeds which no other stockpile will accept). Here is why...

The stockpile will never create more than one hauling job for apple seeds (because of the d_init.txt seed settings), a bag can hold 500+ seeds, and no one will ever attempt to take seeds out. This means there are never job conflicts with the container, and often the dwarf will haul more than one seed per job, and as a bonus, it never uses more than one bag.

All these minecart or smasher methods require two hauling jobs per seed. The 2-time no-barrel stockpile method uses less than one hauling job per seed. It is efficient.

[Loci]

The stockpile will never create more than one hauling job for apple seeds (because of the d_init.txt seed settings), a bag can hold 500+ seeds, and no one will ever attempt to take seeds out. This means there are never job conflicts with the container, and often the dwarf will haul more than one seed per job, and as a bonus, it never uses more than one bag.

Sadly, that doesn't actually work. I embarked with grapes, bags, and barrels, created your recommended stockpile, and brewed one batch of grapes [5]. Five different dwarves stored one single grape seed in 5 different bags, using 5 different jobs, then hauled two of the bags to the stockpile. After brewing a second batch of grapes [5],  three dwarves stored the new seeds in the bags still sitting in the wagon. The result is exactly the same when no stockpile is defined--a bunch of wasted jobs and bags *per useless seed type*.

[anewaname]

The results you have also show that the settings in d_init.txt are not being used to combine the seeds in one bag. Why?

You set up a test where the only jobs available to be done are seed storage.

The system works in a fort that has other hauling activities.

[coalboat]

The SEED_COMBINE option doesn't force dwarf to put seed in one bag, but it only makes dwarf more likely to put seed in a bag tha already has seeds. It's difficult to say if it really works. Maybe we can try putting the empty bag stockpile more distant to dwarfs than the seed bag stockpile is.