I'm wondering if we don't need to improve the granularity of what we are asking for. What, exactly, does "improved hauling" entail. I did a quick search and couldn't find anything other than the general description of the voting item but I swear I read it somewhere on these forums. I figure the list has to exist
somewhere.
As a career programmer myself, I like to have detailed lists of issues to work from. You can't irritate me more than asking for something but not give me any specifications. So I bring this up as a professional courtesy.
When I've had an issue with DF, it was a very specific case. For example:
- I processed Rope Reed leaving 4 or so seeds. This caused one-dwarf-per-seed to rush into the room, grab a seed, and carry it three steps to the seed stockpile I placed by my farmer's workshop.
...and then there's have what I would expect to happen:
- I would expect one dwarf to rush into the room and move the seeds to the seed stockpile.
...but I have thoughts about how this could work statistically:
- If there are x number of same-typed tasks (like Move Seed to Storage) where the items and the storage location are all within a certain range of each other one dwarf will queue up several of the tasks. Since DF players really enjoy tweaking how their dwarves work the RAWs are a good place for the thresholds that would be used in such logic. Something like SINGLE_DWARF_JOB_QUEUE_DISTANCE=5, SINGLE_DWARF_JOB_QUEUE_MAX_CT=4 would allow dwarves to queue up moving up to 4 empty bags from a kitchen to a bag stockpile if the distance from middle of the kitchen to the middle of the stockpile requires 5 or less moves.
So, this could then be refined to:
Improved Hauling
- Single Dwarf Job Queueing
- I processed Rope Reed leaving 4 or so seeds. This caused one-dwarf-per-seed to grab a seed and carry it three steps to the seed stockpile I placed by my farmer's workshop.
- I would expect one dwarf to move all the seeds to the seed stockpile.
- If there are x number of same-typed tasks (like Move Seed to Storage) where the items and the storage location are all within a certain range of each other one dwarf will queue up several of the tasks. Since DF players really enjoy tweaking how their dwarves work the RAWs are a good place for the thresholds that would be used in such logic. Something like SINGLE_DWARF_JOB_QUEUE_DISTANCE=5, SINGLE_DWARF_JOB_QUEUE_MAX_CT=4 would allow dwarves to queue up moving up to 4 empty bags from a kitchen to a bag stockpile if the distance from middle of the kitchen to the middle of the stockpile requires 5 or less moves.
- Job Item TSKing
- I queued a rock table to be built expecting to get a dirorite door. My mason grabbed an olivine rock that was further away from the workshop than the diorite in the stockpile adjacent to the diorite.
- I would have expected him to take the stone from the stockpile adjacent to the workshop rather than what was closest to him when he decided he'd get around to building the door.
- When TSKing an item for a job a dwarf should pick the item of that type closest to the workshop he will be working in, not closest to him when he decides to build the workshop. This, of course, would be limited in use until pathing/distance calculating to be fixed.
So...I thought I'd just throw those out there as examples. They're very specific things which can be tested for and checked off a list. But the really good thing about them being separate items is we can decide each one's individual importance because, quite honestly - I having a wheelbarrow ain't gonna do us a darn bit of good when we have 4 dwarves with wheelbarrows run into the room to move 4 seeds, rather than 4 dwarves without wheelbarrows. Therefore I wouldn't vote for wheelbarrows themselves until "Single Dwarf Job Queueing" was in place.
Thoughts?