Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Stonefish]

I'm not sure if this has been requested yet, I used Search but found nothing, so if it has been, I apologise.

Anyway, it would be nice if I could place a job in a building to be done, and set an option to "keep" for that job.  If the job is impossible due to, for example, lack of raw materials, the job is ignored by the worker, no message is posted that the job was impossible (to avoid spamming), and the job is moved to the bottom of the queue instead of being deleted.  If this would bog things down too much, perhaps the job would be checked only every couple of minutes realtime (or so) from the time it was last deemed impossible.

This way, you could have for example tanners, butchers, etc. that are only useful when a kill is brought in, only work when necessary, yet not require constant monitoring when you have other things to do.

The reason I'd make it seperate from (R)epeat is that perhaps you want a job done only once, you want it done as soon as the material comes in, but you have other things to watch out for (for example, making a few weapons when you don't yet have the right metals).

[ August 20, 2006: Message edited by: Stonefish ]

[Oboro]

My dwarves tan hides, butcher corpses, and make cloth out of thread as soon as it's available.

Don't know why yours don't.

EDIT: I mean, they queue these jobs on their own and do them without my involvement.

[ August 20, 2006: Message edited by: Oboro ]

[Stonefish]

You mean they automatically add a job to the building queue?  That doesn't happen for me, the animal skins rot away if I don't add the job manually.  This is without nobles of any kind, if that's what it might be.

If I add a stack of the same job when the raw materials aren't available, and set each to repeat, I get a bunch of spam about it, and each one is deleted anyway, even though it's on repeat.

[Arcanum]

They do it for some things, but not others.  They'll automatically tan hides, produce thread and cloth from spider silk, and butcher corpses.  They won't (as far as I can tell) automatically cook meals, block rocks, brew alcohol, or clean fish.  It's somewhat annoying.

[Griz]

the material/corpse has to be fairly close to the shop to get the automatic order.

the range seems to be <30 tiles, I had a cave crocodile corpse dropped in the hallway and the butcher wouldn't get it, but when it was moved to the refuse pile ~10 tiles from the shop it automatically added the order and butchered it. my tannery is next to the butcher shop and adds a tan hide order every time a skin is produced.

[Solara]

My dwarves will tan hides automatically, and my weavers will walk all the way to the other end of the fortress to gather webs, but no one ever wants to butcher unless I specifically tell them too. (And even then I have to go in and manually switch off most other jobs since even when we're dangerously low on food they'd much rather pick up a stone or a piece of refuse than haul their hairy behinds over to the butcher shop and process a corpse before it rots....)

Another thing I find annoying, especially in the early game is the fishery. A dwarf will fish and fish and fish until I remember to get around to turn his fishing off and set up a repeatable fish cleaning job, which he then cancels when he runs out of fish.

It'd be nice if fisherdwarves had something like the hunter's 'return kill', and just took two steps over to the conveniently located fishery and cleaned a fish right after catching it. (Though the problem is at least a little more bearable now that I've moved the turtle barrels next to the river and fishery, but I still have to remember to check once in awhile in case the raw one gets stolen by a brewer or whatever after all the turtles are cleaned...

[ August 20, 2006: Message edited by: Solara ]

[GauHelldragon]

Can you do anything with raw fish besides prepare it? Maybe if there is a use for it beyond cleaning, there's a reason why it isn't done automatticaly.

[Aquillion]

You can slap people with it.

...well, you can throw it at them, anyway.  In adventurer mode.

[Toady One]

"at" or "through"?

Building automatic was part of that transportation/automation programming arc that has yet to be done.  The current building automations were just tests to see how things might work.

[Janne Joensuu]

quote:Originally posted by GauHelldragon:
<STRONG>Can you do anything with raw fish besides prepare it? Maybe if there is a use for it beyond cleaning, there's a reason why it isn't done automatticaly.</STRONG>

Actually, there is a command for Extracting from wishes. I don't know what it's used for, if anything.

[Arcanum]

quote:Originally posted by Solara:
<STRONG>no one ever wants to butcher unless I specifically tell them too. (And even then I have to go in and manually switch off most other jobs since even when we're dangerously low on food they'd much rather pick up a stone or a piece of refuse than haul their hairy behinds over to the butcher shop and process a corpse before it rots....)</STRONG>

I've found two things that helps with that.  First, build a refuse heap inside your fortress with doors to keep in the miasma.  It makes a number of professions for efficient.  (You may already be doing that.)

The second thing is to turn off stone, food, and/or wood hauling for any dwarves you expect to be very busy.  I get good efficiency if my miners and masons haul none of the three, carpenters haul wood only, and farmers/fisherdwarves haul food only.  Once other professions start having jobs almost constantly, do the same thing with them.

It works wonders for getting stuff done in the fortress.  I just wish you could assign such behavior on a profession-wide basis (overridden by individual behavior) instead of having to set each individual dwarf (hint, hint).

quote:<STRONG>Another thing I find annoying, especially in the early game is the fishery. A dwarf will fish and fish and fish until I remember to get around to turn his fishing off and set up a repeatable fish cleaning job, which he then cancels when he runs out of fish.</STRONG>

The simplest solution I've found is to have one group of fisherdwarves that fish, and another group that does nothing but clean the fish.  Not ideal, but it works.

[ August 21, 2006: Message edited by: Arcanum ]