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[alphawolf29]

How many of you make Quarrys? I (Usually on the first or second, due to non rock) make a hugeeee quarry to store all my rock from there on out, usually one for rock and another for usable materials.

[WCG]

How many of you make Quarrys? I (Usually on the first or second, due to non rock) make a hugeeee quarry to store all my rock from there on out, usually one for rock and another for usable materials.

I did that at first, to try to clear the rocks out of the rooms and hallways. But I decided it wasn't necessary (and a pit works MUCH better for that, anyway).

Right now, I've made a huge rock stockpile for limestone and put a mason's workshop in it, because I was trying to get nothing but limestone blocks for my paved road. That worked pretty well. But otherwise, it seems to me to require too much stone hauling for no real reason.

And for efficiency sake, I believe that you're better off with tiny stone stockpiles right next to every stone-using workshop (if, indeed, you need stockpiles at all).

Bill

[LordBucket]

I generally designate all hallways in my fortress as stone stockpiles and build masonry and craftsdwarf workshops wherever the most aesthetically displeasing piles of stone are. Usually after a few years my top z-level will be cleared, but by the time I've mined two or three levels down my miners are skilled enough that everything they mine leaves stone, and there's simply too much stone for even half a dozen full-time craftsdwarves to reasonably clear. At that point I try not to worry about it.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

In the past, I usually started with an outside quarry, but now with surface farming and other things keeping my original 7 busy, I have concluded that postponing the quarry until later is the better approach.

So, nowadays, I first make all workshops I need (meaning no siege on as I don't do them) in their final locations, and also all the other stock piles and as the last two stock pile types, I will do wood storage and stone storage. By that time, I usually have either enough labour force available to take care of things or I have enough food stored not to suffer any problems because of dwarves busy hauling stone.

Of course, I have masons and craftsdwarves constantly working on reducing the stone there is.

Deathworks

[Dadamh]

Geez, I never make stone stockpiles.  You end up with every one of your 10,000 "Granite" being moved one by one, while nothing useful ever gets done in the fort.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Well, sometimes I have oodles of otherwise useless labor force, so instead of smoothing unfinished rooms and corridors, I set them to go haul some stone. I usually dump stone though, not stockpile it.

[grelphy]

Once (and only once), back in 32d or e or something, I dumped every single rock in my fortress (by hand, mind you) into a quantum stockpile up on my workshop level.

That was after I had mined out living quarters, dining and recreation areas, stockpiles... pretty much a complete fortress, to the point where I had just begun strip mining. There were over 15,000 rocks in that fortress, and I dumped them all.

It took me nearly two hours realtime to go through the stockpile, and several years dwarf time with fifty more-or-less dedicated haulers to dump it all.

But my fort was so clean. =P


These days, I just area dump rock in stockpiles and rooms that are going to get furniture, and leave it otherwise. Stone stockpiles are pretty useless from an efficiency standpoint, though some people disapprove of the use of quantum stockpiles. It's a matter of taste, I guess.

[Ashery]

Geez, I never make stone stockpiles.  You end up with every one of your 10,000 "Granite" being moved one by one, while nothing useful ever gets done in the fort.

What else are you going to do with the legions of peasants/soap makers/etc? :p Not recruiting new melee until the current five reach legendary hammerdwarf and I can't support anymore practicing marksdwarves.

I tend to use a small flux/obsidian stockpile near my mason and a large useless stone stockpile near my catapult training area.

[Ubersoldat]

Am I the only one that uses the new 'hide' designation on all that excess rock? This, combined with the 'dump' designation are an obsessive-compulsive fort-makers best friends, I'd say.

Anyways, if I do need to pile up stone for convenience, I do the 'cheating' method and dump it all into one square. If I ever need more rock, I just dig layers into little 2x2 squares of rock. This gives me lots of stone, helps with revealing gems and such, and makes it so the entire earth doesn't collapse if the game has a sudden attack of real-world physics.

And yes, I used to be up there with the people who went and designated every single god-forsaken rock by hand for dumping. You can't appreciate the new designations until you've tried to clear a 20x20 dining room, dug out by your legendary miners, a single rock at a time.

[LegacyCWAL]

I use the "Hide" function where necessary, but there's another reason besides aesthetics to dump/chasm/magma/atom-smasher excess rock: it can take a loooooooooooooooooooong time for the "stones" part of the stocks list to come up if there's too many stones.  Trying to find out whether or not you need to dig out some more Magnetite can take forever when there's 20,000 stones for it to try to account for.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Actually, the stock screen issue is another reason for me to use quarries later on:

By specializing various stone and ores stock piles, they become an easy system to see how your raw material supplies are doing - if a stock pile is nearly empty even though you have available haulers, you can assume that your stock of that material is nearly depleted.

Another aspect people seem to forget is that stones and ores do not stack in stock piles. So, if I create a 3x3 stock pile, it will generate exactly 9 hauling jobs, no more, until one of those 9 pieces of stone/ore has been used, at which point 1 more hauling job is created.

So, how much strain such a stock pile puts on your fortress is actually in your hand - it depends on how large you make the stockpile in the beginning and later on how many jobs using stones you hand out - no stones used results in no additional hauling jobs as the stock piles will be full.

Deathworks

[Golgath]

I prefer having the excess stone bits carved into blocks, with several mason shops with their own stone stockpile.  You can complain about efficiency, but I always turn hauling off of my important dwarves once I get enough immigrants to do all the slav- err, heavy labor.  The reason for blocks is that they stack ten to a bin, and you can do lots of stuff with them.  Worst comes to worst, you can just dump them anyway and your masons gained some XP in the deal.  I prefer making huge towers with em, though.

[Impaler[WrG]]

I also try to Block all my stone, I use a small stockpile adjacent to the Masons shop and set it to infinite repeat.  An adjacent room holds bins full of blocks and the high density of bin storage makes it bearable.  When the block stockpile starts filling up I add more levels to my towers which is now MUCH easier with mass construction, a hundred blocks will be chewed up creating a 10x10 floor.  I also find the flow pattern is very efficient, stone created deep in the fort flows into the masons stockpile at a central location and then blocks flow upward to the surface so theirs little wasted movement.  My ultimate goal is to convert an entire mountain into a crenelated fortress of impregnability.

[R1ck]

I also try to Block all my stone, I use a small stockpile adjacent to the Masons shop and set it to infinite repeat.  An adjacent room holds bins full of blocks and the high density of bin storage makes it bearable.  When the block stockpile starts filling up I add more levels to my towers which is now MUCH easier with mass construction, a hundred blocks will be chewed up creating a 10x10 floor.  I also find the flow pattern is very efficient, stone created deep in the fort flows into the masons stockpile at a central location and then blocks flow upward to the surface so theirs little wasted movement.  My ultimate goal is to convert an entire mountain into a crenelated fortress of impregnability.

Dude, you read my mind through cyberspace!!!

[jp.mech]

I have occasionally made actual 'quarries' when I wanted a specific stone. Had a bunch of obsidian waiting to be mined outside of my main planning area, so I set up a mason's shop there and dug out obsidian as needed.
I use small stone stockpiles to have certain colored stones moved somewhere near a mason's shop to make blocks. I otherwise set up mason shops and craft shops in the halls of my recent digging projects and have blocks, doors, and trinkets churned out until the halls and rooms are clear. Though, stone in stockpile rooms get dumped immediately. I had tried to make quantum stacks of various colored stones in previous versions during a large indoor waterfalls project. It was tedious...

I also make a stockpile for ore near my smelters, but I imagine everyone does that.