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[Orange-of-Cthulhu]

I personally find it tedious to have to designate trees to be cut down in a repetitive fashion, whenever the log stock is depleted, over and over and over again.

And then I look how wonderfully automatic my herbalists work. I create the zone when I embark, and fruits are picked by the dwarves for the rest of the game, with no need for me to bother about it.

I would LOVE if you could make a woodcutting zone, so the woodcutters simply go and cut trees in this zone forever after the zone is created.

The woodcutting zone should have options - it should be a list of the tree species in the zone, and you should be able to specify which trees you want cut and which you don't want cut. This is because, if the trees you want to log are mixed up with fruit trees you don't want cut as your booze comes from them, it would be tedious to create a bunch of small zones around the trees you want to cut - much easier to create a big one and then remove the fruit trees. (Or whatever else trees the player is not into cutting. Some people are maybe very picky about what types of wood they make beds from?)

I'd love this, as it would remove one of these boring repetitive things from the game. You'd still have to manage your logging, the same way you have to manage the herbalist zones by throwing more or fewer dwarves into and and by sometimes changing the zones if your need changes.

(No reason not to keep the d method of cutting trees as well, maybe some players like it for some reason.)

[A_Curious_Cat]

Have you tried autochop?

[Shonai_Dweller]

Have you tried autochop?

That's not a vanilla game option, so not really relevant to a thread asking Toady to consider chopping zones.

Sounds like a pretty reasonable idea. Especially underground where trees seem to grow back pretty quickly.

[Ulfarr]

I'd love to see such an option in the game!

As a player that like to build above ground forts, keeping my fort's perimeter clean of trees is almost always a chore.

[Uthimienure]

The zones need to be 3-dimensional too! 
Designating for each z-level on a mountainside would be tedious.

[Azerty]

And could some trees be protected?

[muldrake]

And could some trees be protected?

The autochop dashboard allows for protecting fruit generating trees, edible product generating trees, and I believe nut generating trees.  It's a mod, and it's based on burrows rather than zones, with the nuisances burrows offer.  However, it's a reasonably good management tool, cuts trees only when you're lower than a certain level, and stops when you hit max.  In actual practice, it's efficient for keeping wood around especially if you consume it with things like job manager directed ash/charcoal/pearlash production processes automatically.

I'd hope if it were placed directly into the game, though, it would be zone-based.  I find burrows buggy and confusing.

[Shonai_Dweller]

And could some trees be protected?

The autochop dashboard allows for protecting fruit generating trees, edible product generating trees, and I believe nut generating trees.  It's a mod, and it's based on burrows rather than zones, with the nuisances burrows offer.  However, it's a reasonably good management tool, cuts trees only when you're lower than a certain level, and stops when you hit max.  In actual practice, it's efficient for keeping wood around especially if you consume it with things like job manager directed ash/charcoal/pearlash production processes automatically.

I'd hope if it were placed directly into the game, though, it would be zone-based.  I find burrows buggy and confusing.

Mods aren't ever placed into the game. With all the work in zones recently and basically none in burrows, I can't imagine Toady choosing burrows as a way to make a zone.

[muldrake]

Mods aren't ever placed into the game. With all the work in zones recently and basically none in burrows, I can't imagine Toady choosing burrows as a way to make a zone.

I should have been more clear, when I said "should be put into the game," I mean a similar feature, not literally transplanting the mod into the game (which I don't even know is possible).  But that's what I said so I'll take the correction.  If there is something similar to autocut actually implemented in the game it should be a zone and not a burrow.  IMO of course.  (I think I'm right though or I wouldn't have said it.)

My opinion is also that zones are generally good and burrows are generally bad.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Mods aren't ever placed into the game. With all the work in zones recently and basically none in burrows, I can't imagine Toady choosing burrows as a way to make a zone.

I should have been more clear, when I said "should be put into the game," I mean a similar feature, not literally transplanting the mod into the game (which I don't even know is possible).  But that's what I said so I'll take the correction.  If there is something similar to autocut actually implemented in the game it should be a zone and not a burrow.  IMO of course.  (I think I'm right though or I wouldn't have said it.)

My opinion is also that zones are generally good and burrows are generally bad.

Oh yes, you're not wrong. Zones over burrows for sure.

[Splint]

I'd love to see such an option in the game!

As a player that like to build above ground forts, keeping my fort's perimeter clean of trees is almost always a chore.

+1 for the same reasons. I've given up on keeping the vicinity of my walls and roads clear of trees because of how tedious it often is.

It'd definitely help with keeping supplies of charcoal up as well, reducing the amount of oversight a non-magma metalworking industry needs from the player.

[Starver]

And then I look how wonderfully automatic my herbalists work.

...first thought was "But they are the same. You need to (re)designate for plant-gathering."

I create the zone when I embark, and fruits are picked by the dwarves for the rest of the game, with no need for me to bother about it.

Then I realised you didn't mean ground-herbalism, but tree-harvesting.

(I would designate a 3D box of Gather Plants (if necessary, due to terrain not being flat), and can always do it again regularly. Multi-level trees meant I no longer felt safe doing that with Woodcutting (was there an early bug that meant choosing to cut part way up did something bad?  ...I can't remember why, but I just have a bad feeling akin to cave-in aversion which means that for a long time now I pick and choose tiles individually). Yes, Autochop might help, but as I'm so used to using Designation Priorities to quick-clear places where I need trees cleared ASAP to make the ground easier to dig through/under.)


Given how much other micromanagement I do, I don't entirely miss a sand-gathering style zone-sourcing. But I could see its use (with appropriate additional config options, like priority/tree-type candidates/specific-workers) being useful for others.

[Maximum Spin]

(was there an early bug that meant choosing to cut part way up did something bad?

Yes, I remember it distinctly.

Personally, I don't like using zones and would prefer to keep using the old UI.

[Bumber]

was there an early bug that meant choosing to cut part way up did something bad?

The only issue I'm aware of is that only one tile can be designated for chopping per tree, and if they can't reach it, they won't chop the tree. Designating via 3D box prioritizes the top northwest tile of the tree, which tends to be unreachable.

There were crashes for building stuff on them, vanishing trees when roots were mined, and collapses that happened regardless (due to cave-in info not being updated when trees were chopped.)

[Starver]

My habitual embark these days is a totally flat plain (sunken pools are a pain, rivers are avoided), anyway. So I could just single-Z (d)esignate(t)reecutting the trees away over the planned trench-digging, wall-building and road-laying zones (plus buffer tiles each side of the exact footprint - Progressively paint Priority N+1 for N tiles over-width for 3-ish down to 0, like I do with (d)(p)lantgathering...) But I like to check what trees they are, there and within possible enclosable orchard areas, in case it changes my overall designs. And if I find I have a lot of (say) featherwood in those footprints, I'll make that my community's 'signature' wood for all beds and anything else that could be generic wood and not (similarly artificially fixated to a single type) generic stone/metal/whatever, and thus probably target every other featherwood on the map (outside necessary felling) for lowest-priority cutting down.

So while I'm sure there were problems, as Spin suggests confirmed even if Bumber suggests something not really as actively dangerous as I half recall (and if digging in immediate subsurface, I'll stop any soil (d)esignate(d)ig that is revealed to have roots until I remove the tree, for hole-in-ground avoidance reasons, as well as actual possible cave-ins), I think the particular issue was fixed... But once(/twice/a handful of times at most)-bitten, twice(/...) shy.