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[Skeeblix]

Say you want something done, and it's not getting there. Annoying, eh? Tired of your stone hauling pulling all your dwarves from every other job they could be doing? Why should you have to screw with labor settings every time you want to get some stone out of the way without making your more important dwarves unavailable because they're off hauling?

I think Toady should code in a method of allowing the player to set different priorities for tasks that are considered important to them, instead of important to the game, because the code says so. As it stands, low priority (to the game, I know I sure as hell don't like looking at miasma) jobs like cleaning and handling stockpiles rarely gets done if there is other work, but oftentimes, these things are the stuff you really want done (At least I do, anyways).

I propose possibly adding a general job priority adjustment screen, with 3-5 settings for each job that would allow players to prioritize tasks based on their personal view of how important that task is. Higher priority tasks would obviously be chosen from the job list by idlers more frequently, but lower priority tasks should not be completely ignored (maybe some kind of system of choosing, based on how many workers are already handling a specific task of a certain priority).

I don't know if this is feasible, but it certainly would save a lot of hair-pulling on the parts of those of us who like to see our fortresses without half-empty barrels laying around in stock while completely empty ones are being partly filled and taking up more space, and without stinking clouds of miasma hovering over piles of slain goblins/ratmen/what have you that nobody in the fort gives enough of a damn about to clean.

[ August 29, 2007: Message edited by: Skeeblix ]

[Tamren]

Frankly im wondering why we do not have this already. Actually we sort of do, but the problem is we can only control priority by deactivating jobs entirely.

The settlers 2 revamp has this sort of thing, there is a screen with tiles on it, each tile represents a resource. The order you place the tiles in controls which resources are given priority. Unfortunatly it works out horribly.

We would need tighter control, not only over the order of priority but also which areas of the fortress are affected. The main corridor should have a higher cleaning priority than some tiny storage room in a forgotten corner.

[MickEfinn]

an easy re use of existing code would be form when the head merchant prince meets your broker.

You know, where you can choose what items you wont brought next year? With them there sliding scales. Now imagine that all the things a dwarf could do jobwise, had that sliding scale with Off, Low, Normal, High, NOW.
Stone Hauling? Low
Cleaning? Normal
Masonry? High

Flexibility and character specialization!

[BurnedToast]

IMO once the economy starts you should control this with the wages menu (the one only the mayor can adjust now).

Dwarves should always seek out the highest paying job they have enabled - want that food hauled? jack the wages up for it! don't care about those rocks so much? put the price for hauling rocks down to 1, and they only get hauled when a dwarf has nothing else to do. This would also let you pay all dwarves a decent living wage (if you want to).

there should, of course, be some sort of penalty for not having enough coins minted to pay the dwarves. that can wait till coin clutter gets fixed though.

Hooray for capitalism!

[0x517A5D]

I think my preferred implemenation would be a new (d)esignation that simply says "do the jobs associated with this area first."  That would solve all the problems that I have with the job system.

0x517A5D

[kuro_suna]

i believe the problem is that jobs created from tasks find dwarf instead of dwarfs finding tasks,

but what if instead the jobs went onto a master list and a dwarf with no job would pick one, the criteria could be:

manual prioritization,
the player could set importance of a job to increse its weight

time,
the longer a job is undone the higher its weight would become

skill,
effectively all dwarfs have all labours enabled but will weigh jobs they are skilled at higher, a legendary mason will haul rock but will do masonry as soon as the job is avalibel

distance,
especially for minor jobs like levers pulling and hauling they will put weight on jobs sites closer to their present position, this will greatly imporve efficiency as the fort grows