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[Dizzerp]

the reason I'm trying to spread out professions between dwarves is because I do not want as many idlers as possible. early when i was creating the fortress, they kept making these annoying parties and some foods were withering and lots of work was undone. I also would rather have 2-3 dwarves making doors altogether than 1 at a time. i may not get legends anytime soon but it helps speed up the process for more serious projects. and I totally agree about the best miner for the important jobs. y best one dug out most of the new roomspace and I now have lots of orthoclase chunks.

as for the claiming thing i meant the dwarves running out there and getting the stuff was the taking long part. not manually selecting it all.

[Tcei]

Use "i" and make a meeting zone, rather than set up a statue/cage/table as a meeting zone, then they wont party and interrupt your important jobs that way. Any idlers sitting at your meeting zone will now go get item x as soon as it becomes available (provided they have the correct job).
You'll still occasionally get rotting food in your farms, especially if you're doing any mass dumping or collecting stuff from a killed caravan, these jobs seem to be considered more important.
Also set up multiple of the same workshops, this is great for (example) when you need to set a carpenter to make barrels on repeat to keep up with your food/drink production, but need extra bins for your crafts or beds or what have you.

Try experimenting with 'd'esignate 'o' for traffic areas and using a combination of 'h'igh traffic and 'l'ow traffic areas to improve effeicency and (to a small extent)speed to/from places.

[Dizzerp]

at my current situation is not so bad, I have 2 breweries, 3 kitchens, 3 craftsdwarves shop, 2 mason, 2 carpentry, 1 of the smelting stuff, and a mechanics shop. at ground level I also have a trade depot and kennel as well. once I find out a way to post screenshots here i will do just that. the Only problem I had before was due to the 2 jewelcrafters hosting parties, which put a halt on all the mining and farming I had desperately needed

edit: seeing as this current game was just to learn the basics of Dwarf fortress. I decided to abandon it and start on a brand new fortress of my own

[Albedo]

the reason I'm trying to spread out professions between dwarves is because I do not want as many idlers as possible.

Idlers are not from lack of skills, but from lack of jobs.  You want specialists doing the important work - no-skill dorfs can pick up the out-of-workshop slack.

If you have a lot of idlers, then you need to add another industry chain to your program.

I've yet to see a fortress under 50 that needs 2 breweries, kitchens or carpenters, tho' the first 2 may run at 100% during peak periods.  Maybe even masons, tho' that depends on your playstyle and how aggressive you are at constructions.

Keep experimenting, the learning curve goes fast.

[Dizzerp]

my fortress was above 50. and the reason i had 2 breweries and 3 kitchens was because i was growing plump helms at an alarming rate in additions to strawberries and prickle berries, so i had 2 kitchens making lavish meals and supposedly had breweries on repeat as well, i guess i slipped up because near the end of the fortress I noticed lots of dwarves running to the river for drinks.


edit: so would it be best to just have one person doing tasks on repeat, 3 miners + 1 legendary miner for digging and ores and the rest as idlers or haulers?

[Albedo]

If you need 2 kitchens to cook all the PH's, then you've probably got way too big farm plots.  Watch your food stores - if you start getting scores and scores of extra food, reduce the size or your plots, and/or let the harvest rot a bit.  Since you've got several growers, try turning on "only growers harvest" (under <o>rders), which means the dwarfs near your kitchens/farms will do the work there, and the dwarfs busy across the map won't hike over to pull some turnips for a few minutes.

re edit -

Let's look at the alternatives. 

1) You have many people doing many jobs.  They get the jobs done, and if they're lucky all end up gaining 1 skill level in each labour - maybe from No skill to Novice, maybe from Novice to (Unlabeled), whatever - but that doesn't change very much.

2) You have one or two dwarfs dedicated to each job.  They do the same thing all day, all season long.  They gain massive experience in that one labour, and soon are on their way toward Legendary.  As the fortress grows, they're tasks are speeding up, and/or they're producing significantly higher quality products, which are keeping your dwarves happier.

Also, if you have a limited number of people in the kitchens, or making booze, you know right away if 1 or 2 are enough, and if not you can add 1 more dwarf, which could be 100% or 50%  or 33% more labor and see if that solves the problem.  You start to get a feel for exactly what's going on, instead of "stuff".

For the rest, essentially yes, but there should be more jobs than just "hauling".  If you have ores, then you should have a metal industry.  Forging an item is MUCH faster than smelting the ores (esp the multiple smelting needed for steel), so a several dedicated smelters ("Furnace Operators") per working forge.  (I have 3-4/, one extra for melting down rejects and reclaims from sieges, and other metals I find like galena or... that nickel ore). 

Since those furnace operators are becoming specialized labour, you don't want them wasting their time hauling - so you've trained some peasants in your pump gym or mines to a high Strong and Agile attribute, and they haul stone, and only stone.  No running off to help with food - they're the heavy lifters, and orbit exclusively around the stone industry.

Some go into your military fitness and training program.  Some go into support industries like the butcher/tanner/leather/bone/bowyer cycle, or the weave/dye/clothier cycle - if you're not excited about those, then 1 dwarf could cover many parts, since they won't be doing any one full time.  But, for what they do, they'll be the go-to guy when it happens.

One or two woodcutters/plantgatherers, who do all of the outdoor stuff and never put down their axes.  Get one or more apprentice masons who help with construction but are not allowed to make anything but blocks until they're high skill.

In short, branch out, allocate specialized dwarfpower to your different areas as needed.  A fortress could run if you turned every labour on for every dwarf - but it runs better with just a little organization, whatever that word means to you.

Check out this wiki page:
http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Industry

[chaoticag]

At most, I would have a dwarf doing two jobs, but only if one or both jobs don't get that much work. Idlers are a fact of fortress life, and if you are making too much food, then you might as well turn your fort into a culinary fortress that produces lavish meals to all but the goblins.

You might want to start the following:
-Clothing industry: This needs comitment at the end of Summer and Autumn.
1.Grow pigtails
2.process at a farmers workshop (Thresher job used)
3.Looms automatically turns thread into cloth.
4.Turn cloth into products (clothes, bags, ropes)

-Metal industry:
1.Mine for Ore/metal
OR
Trade for ore/metal
2.Mine/Trade for fuel (Magma furnaces still need fuel for steel)
3.Make products.
Note: I only recomend mining if you can find tons of the stuff. Trading is more regular.

-Culinary Industry:
1.Farm, not just plump helmets, but cave wheat, quarry bushes (rock nuts) and sweet pods.

1.5)Trade for cheese, and/or make cheese (milking is bugged at the moment, trade for mammal milk)

2.Mill cave wheat and sweet pods.
Process to barrel turns sweet pods to syrup at the Farmer's workshop
Quarry bushes can be processed to bags (clothing industry overlap here)

3.Cook!

Notes: Quarry bushes can, if properly prepared, fill your your fortress with compact rations for years in on harvest. This is also one of the best sources of cash in the game.

[Albedo]

<nods>

At most, I would have a dwarf doing two jobs, but only if one or both jobs don't get that much work. Idlers are a fact of fortress life...

There is a tendency to give a dwarf skills that "make sense" - a brewer/cook, a dwarven mason-leader or weaponsmith-leader rather than a dwarven grower-leader, a cook/butcher and a tanner/leatherworker rather than a cook/weaponsmith and an armorer/tanner - whatever. 

Whether this is part story-telling, role playing, or just mental organization is unclear, and doesn't matter.  But these pairings don't always "make sense" re time spent on the tasks - neither the amount of time demanded, nor when the tasks are needed.  Often a wave of animals comes in to be processed - your cook should not be your butcher, because once that first animal is butchered you can start cooking.  If you think that's a priority.

Even if you rarely are going to make clothes, you will still probably end up with a few bins (10-30 cloth and thread) each year of caravans - one guy who takes a time out to handle all that crap can work, since it's not time critical. 

There's an advantage to having one dwarf work exclusively in one small area full time.  If they go from loom to dyer to clothier full time, year in and year out - well, they spend less time walking.  Only if they fall behind do they have "too many different jobs". 

But two guys is not a bad plan either, esp if you expect your fortress to reach the 200+ capacity.  Plan ahead.

[Dizzerp]

is it a good idea to keep a stockpile near specific workshops? I had been planning on making small 3-4 tile stockpile near certain workshops like carpenters/masons, so they wouldn't have to run to the storage for more supplies.at the moment i'm just trying to learn how to maintain my fortress safe from invaders and angry elves and keeping my dwarves well fed, drunk, and away from rivers.
I also wanted to know how well war dogs react to goblins with ranged weapons because I may have to rely on them for protecting my place for awhile

[Albedo]

stockpiles - yes, recommended.  Have unskilled labor do the walking and hauling while your skilled labor focuses on productivity.

War dogs die when faced with ranged weapons.  Best bet is traps, and chaining (b, v) your dogs at a bend in your entryway, so gobbos can't shoot them from a distance.  Or have one sacrificial animal at the very entrance, whose death alerts you to a raid.

[Dizzerp]

stockpiles - yes, recommended.  Have unskilled labor do the walking and hauling while your skilled labor focuses on productivity.

War dogs die when faced with ranged weapons.  Best bet is traps, and chaining (b, v) your dogs at a bend in your entryway, so gobbos can't shoot them from a distance.  Or have one sacrificial animal at the very entrance, whose death alerts you to a raid.

can that sacrificial animal be about 2-3 feet tall, have a beard, need alcohol to go through the working day, and love drinking pike and carp infested rivers?

[geoduck]

can that sacrificial animal be about 2-3 feet tall, have a beard, need alcohol to go through the working day, and love drinking pike and carp infested rivers?

That probably is an accurate description of a dwarven dog.

[Dizzerp]

Then I can use my useless dwarves then, like the jeweler

[Albedo]

One man's trash is another man's sentry.

[Dizzerp]

is there a way I can link 2 things with 1 lever? i want to make a lever that 1: uses the drawbridge to catapult invaders back, while also has a hammer of armok swing down and smash my adversaries. [that is if im understanding the wiki correctly]