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Author Topic: Reverse the "barrel before stockpile" rule  (Read 358 times)

TheBeardyMan

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Reverse the "barrel before stockpile" rule
« on: January 22, 2024, 05:42:06 am »

Workshop jobs that use plants don't have a details button to specify what kind of plant to use. This suggestion isn't a request for that button, which I'm fairly sure has already been suggested - it's a request to reverse a rule that's breaking the only workaround.

We can work around plant using jobs lacking details buttons by building many workshops, giving them links from stockpiles that only accept a single type of plant, and making the work orders specific to each workshop, so problem solved, right?

Umm ... sort of. It works, but it goes wrong a lot.

Consider a situation where the new rope reed stockpile - accepting only rope reeds - doesn't have any barrels yet, the old plump helmet stockpile - accepting only plump helmets - just had a second barrel become empty and unbind, and Urist McHerbalist has just gathered some rope reeds. Where's he going to store them? Loose in the rope reed stockpile? No, he's going to store them in the unbound barrel in the plump helmet stockpile 100% of the time. So your dwarven wine work order produces river spirits and your rope reed thread work order produces cancel spam.

That's the "barrel before stockpile" rule, and it causes items to be stored in stockpiles that don't accept them, so the workaround for workshop jobs not having details buttons probably isn't the only thing that it breaks. Reversing it to "stockpile before barrel" would be better.
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mikekchar

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Re: Reverse the "barrel before stockpile" rule
« Reply #1 on: January 22, 2024, 10:06:27 pm »

I agree, but there is a slight problem with the suggestion.  That's the way it worked originally and there were problems that barrels never got filled :-)  I can't remember what version this problem was introduced in, but it was a fix for the previous problem.

While I prefer stockpile before barrel, personally, this could be worked around if giving from a stockpile that allowed containers to a stockpile that didn't allow containers worked.  At the moment it doesn't.  So if you have a stockpile that allows barrels and you want to distribute the contents to a stockpile that doesn't allow barrels, nothing will happen until *all* of the barrels are full in the first stockpile.  If that were fixed, you could have a general stockpile that allowed barrels and feeder stockpiles that only had 1 or 2 tiles and didn't allow barrels.

In the meantime, the work around is to never use barrels.  It's not as horrible as it sounds as long as you aren't over producing plants.  Also you can use barrels for *some* things.  For example, if you have a plant that you *only* use for brewing, you can put it in a barrel no problem.  Same for plants that you will only use for grinding in a quern or mill.  Just set up a stockpile for that one thing and distribute it to the one worksation that needs it.  You can always distribute from stockpile that doesn't allow barrels to one that does, so as long as your general stockpile doesn't allow barrels, you will be fine.

Normally, I make specific kitchens with linked stockpiles of specific ingredients.  Those are my cooking ingredients and they can not be in barrels.  As long as I make sure to use each plant for only one thing, that's the only thing that can't use barrels.
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