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[Teeto_K]

I'm in the first year of a new fort: I'm digging out a 22x22 column of rooms for my main work/meeting/storage areas, with ancilliary rooms, such as bedrooms, tombs, offices, plumbing, and so on, branching off the sides.

Now, I have 3 levels devoted to stockpiles: 1 for food/booze, 2 for "everything else".

In these 3 levels I have 1200 stone, because my 2 miners hit legendary.

And, the dwarves won't use this space for storage: So, I ask.

What do I do, with only 7 dorfs, to quickly and efficiently clear this space for use as storage?

Some will say (d)-{b}-(h), which works well at keeping stone out of sight in bed/dining/office rooms, except that the dorfs still won't store in stockpiles on those spaces. Some will say "1 tile garbage dump", or "drawbridge" which certainly works, but is often called "cheap" in discussions of the strategy. Some will say "Magma or Chasm", but that isn't an option for everybody, and especially me right now since I haven't breached my magma and don't remember where it is. I hope I'm not building right above my pipe. Or maybe I hope I am...

So, aside from those options, what do you "purist" dwarfers do with your excess stone? I ask because I've heard a lot of discussion about the easiest techniques being too easy, but not a lot of discussion about what a "fair AND effective" way to deal with it is.

I'm interested in "playing fair", and also, I've been burned by a quantum stockpile being in the way of construction in the past, and 1200 tiles worth of stone being piled into a single tile DOES seem a touch, well, unrealistic. So whaddo I do?

[Kishmond]

... 2 tile dump?


But seriously I have no idea, I just dump it.

[Teeto_K]

I did that in my last fort, and it worked great, don't get me wrong.

Then, one day, I wanted to reorganize my farming level. PURELY for aesthetics.

I absentmindedly placed a farm plot or 10, and went back to designing the emergency cave-in device for my {spoilers} mining, while directing my fledgling metalworking industry in the production of high-grade weapons and armors.

3 seasons later, my legendary grower hadn't planted hardly ANYTHING, and was just walking back and forth, hauling stones. All 1500 of them. He was halfway done, and there were 750 stones laying around the farm plot. Signifigant numbers of them on soon to be queued farm plots.

Head-to-desk soon followed.

[THLawrence]

Massive out door constructions work very well. Personally I haven't been using this because my fortress design makes it very difficult to operate outside. However whenever I did use outdoor constructions I kept running out of stone. It's a scary message you get too.

[toast]

i sometimes use catapults.

I take the immigrants, set them to seige operator and turn everything else off. build a catapult in the room you want to clear, and set it to fire at will. When you are done, take down the catapult, and kill the workers if you dont want them. Although they may make nice soldiers cuz they good and strong after cleaning a big room.

[sbr]

Catapults to train legendary Siege operators.

Mobile workshops for Masons, Stonecrafters, mechanics etc.  Build a workshop or three in the middle of the stone and let them go at it.  I had a legendary Stonecrafter completely clear a 32x20 area in a matter of weeks.

Huge retaining walls outside the fort.

I just personally do the 1 tile dump thing then occasionally reclaim the pile so it can be used by my dwarfs if needed.

[Marlowe]

Catapults again. Lots of fun on a flat map. I once broke a siege with catapult fire.

[Lexender]

The best way without cheating would be, in my opinion, to mass produce stone crafts, which can be stored in bins (ten crafts per bin, I think, so ten times les storage space). Every time you buy something from a caravan, just pay with a huge load of crafts, it should empty fast enough.

You could also make a big dump area outside (or pretend it is big). It's not cheating, as you are actually just making a huge pile of dirt and stone outside, as is done nowadays.

Better yet! Train your mason and build a floor on every single tile of your fortress. You miss on the engravings, but you'll never be short of storage space.

[sbr]

Better yet! Train your mason and build a floor on every single tile of your fortress. You miss on the engravings, but you'll never be short of storage space.

Oh nice one, I didn't think about reflooring the entire fort.

[bombcar]

The best way without cheating would be, in my opinion, to mass produce stone crafts, which can be stored in bins (ten crafts per bin, I think, so ten times les storage space). Every time you buy something from a caravan, just pay with a huge load of crafts, it should empty fast enough.

My problem is that my single Stonecrafter went Legendary and produced in a single year enough goods to buy all caravans for the next 6 years (and counting).

[sbr]

The best way without cheating would be, in my opinion, to mass produce stone crafts, which can be stored in bins (ten crafts per bin, I think, so ten times les storage space). Every time you buy something from a caravan, just pay with a huge load of crafts, it should empty fast enough.

My problem is that my single Stonecrafter went Legendary and produced in a single year enough goods to buy all caravans for the next 6 years (and counting).

At least crafts can be stored in bins and gets the stone off of the floor.

You could have your mason build blocks too, they can be stored in bins.

I have a feeling that what you want isn't possible.  It will be very hard to use every piece of stone 2 legendary miners produce in a "realistic" way and produce something valuable/worthwile with all of it.

[Zorgn]

Megaprojects.  If I want an upside down pyramid that spans the map, by Armok, I will have one.

Huge defenses. Besides massive walls, if you care little about the outside world, a massive maze leading to your front door does fine. Bonus points if it's multiple levels. Anything that slows down the enemy and looks awesome at the same time.

In short, create a need for it.

[Teeto_K]

The best way without cheating would be, in my opinion, to mass produce stone crafts, which can be stored in bins (ten crafts per bin, I think, so ten times les storage space). Every time you buy something from a caravan, just pay with a huge load of crafts, it should empty fast enough.

My problem is that my single Stonecrafter went Legendary and produced in a single year enough goods to buy all caravans for the next 6 years (and counting).

Some advice on trade caravans: If you're producing more than the minimum to buy them out, trade away at a huge loss anyway.

Simply MASSIVE profits will summon simply MASSIVE caravans. Who cares if you bought a 1000 unit anvil for 100,000, if that 100,000 is only 1/3 of what you can produce in a year?

As for the other posts. thanks, all, for the advice. I'll see what I can do with it. My starting 7 may be about to have a brief stint as masons, which will be nice for moods: Mason moods are probably the coolest, next to Weapon and Armor. GOTTA love obsidian beds.

[Hague]

Use the hide designation: [d] [h]. It will allow you to hide excess stone so that it doesn't appear to be on the map. Dwarves will still interact with it, you simply won't see it. When it is in a stockpile it will still be invisible though, so if your stockpiles look empty, it's probably hidden stones.

I make lots of blocks with my stones in the mean-time. I have 8 mason's workshops working constantly with huge block bin stockpiles.

Thinking of making some reactions to make bins out of stone, though, since my pile is getting so large. There's something I find unsettling about how you can make chests, tables, chairs and generally anything out of stone except bins, which remain mostly stationary. Some might say it's unrealistic but if you see a dwarf carry a wooden bin full of blocks that weighs the equivalent of roughly 4.5 raw stone piles you'd say that was unrealistic too. What's wrong with going a step further?

[Dadamh]

He said specifically that he was not using hide, because the area is for stockpile space and he wants the dorfs to actually use it.

My advice is mostly the stonecrafter thing.  If you like blocks, then ok, those work too.  Just make sure you have plenty of bins.

Catapult for siege operators is a little goofy, as siege operators are worthless.  Five marksdwarves trained in ten minutes can easily out-kill five legendary siege operators that took literally years to train.