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[Sir Finkus]

I love dwarf fortress, but the one thing that drives me nuts is micro-managing all the dwarves' jobs and such.  This led to an idea.  Instead of having each dwarf very specialized and skilled in their labor, why not just have every dwarf do everything (enable all labors on every dwarf)?  I know that the quality of my goods probably won't be amazing, but I think I'll experiment with using proximity to manage jobs instead of the labor list. 

Has anyone else tried this?  If so, what are your results?

My prediction is that a lot of jobs will go faster, but large engraving/smoothing designations could be problematic because they'll pretty much tie up the entire population.  I'll also need to concentrate on getting enough picks/axes so that the mining and woodcutting gets done by everyone as well.

[alway]

Well, one negative to this which I have come across in my game (over half my population has carpentry, mason, mechanic, architect enabled) is that if you do a massive designation, all their pathfindings going off initially will cause a temporary FPS drop. On the upside, megaprojects get done TONS faster.

[Sir Finkus]

Well, one negative to this which I have come across in my game (over half my population has carpentry, mason, mechanic, architect enabled) is that if you do a massive designation, all their pathfindings going off initially will cause a temporary FPS drop. On the upside, megaprojects get done TONS faster.

Well I'm hoping to kind of avoid that.  It probably won't be too bad since I don't plan on any megaprojects, just a "normal" fort.

[alway]

It shouldn't be any worse than the lag you get if you have a bunch of idlers and suddenly reclaim a battlefield of goblin armor.

Edit: No megaprojects? Well that's boring... 

[Sir Finkus]

It shouldn't be any worse than the lag you get if you have a bunch of idlers and suddenly reclaim a battlefield of goblin armor.

Edit: No megaprojects? Well that's boring... 

Maybe if the fort works out.  I've embarked, and enabled all the labors, of course everyone immediately went off and started trying to wrestle horses.  Apparently hunting is a pretty high priority for these dwarves, I'll have to take that labor, and perhaps fishing off.

[alway]

Hehe, ya. Every idle dwarf always seems to want to hunt if that is turned on.

[Emmanovi]

I made a commune fort myself once. Maybe it was my biome, but the citizens went out and killed all the local wildlife, butchered it, then there was nothing left for a few seasons, and they got on with the rest of the fort. It worked rather well, as jobs got done much more quickly than they normally would. Only problem at first was mining tunnels through rock, which was taking ages as one dabbling miner clinks through.

Fishing will eventually cause all the fish to run out, but disabling it is advised.

[Albedo]

Has anyone else tried this?  If so, what are your results?

My prediction is that a lot of jobs will go faster...

Not exactly.  The jobs will get assigned more quickly, but two things will follow.  1, low-priority jobs will never get done, because no one is dedicated to filling them, and 2, as the game progresses you'll have no one specialized in the no-quality skills, who has improved skill levels to complete the job faster. Butchering and tanning will still take as long as day one (even if the job gets assigned a bit faster), because you'll have 50 dabbling butchers and tanners instead of 2 or 3 competent ones. 

Also, I find that you can assign some dwarfs "local" tasks - esp. food hauling, for instance, goes hand-in-hand with farming skills - those dwarfs never have far to walk to find their jobs. 

[Mzbundifund]

Note that mining and woodcutting are mutually exclusive, since dwarves can't carry a pick and an axe at the same time.  It is also to your advantage to train at least one miner up to legendary, so you can use him to mine gems and mineral veins without wasting ore (less skilled miners have a chance to mine without leaving rock/ore/raw gems behind).

If you haven't tried it yet, try the dwarf manager utility - it helps with dwarf, uh, management.

http://dwarfmanager.sourceforge.net

[Sir Finkus]

Note that mining and woodcutting are mutually exclusive, since dwarves can't carry a pick and an axe at the same time.  It is also to your advantage to train at least one miner up to legendary, so you can use him to mine gems and mineral veins without wasting ore (less skilled miners have a chance to mine without leaving rock/ore/raw gems behind).

If you haven't tried it yet, try the dwarf manager utility - it helps with dwarf, uh, management.

http://dwarfmanager.sourceforge.net

Oh sweet, it works with d11 now.  Should make things a lot easier.

For mining and woodcutting, I'm just alternating when I do my assignments.  Of course all my dwarves can't really do that yet because I don't have a metal industry yet, so I have 3 miners and 2 woodcutters.

[Sir Finkus]

Just an update, everything seems to be working out very well.

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-5832-combineblockades

I've lost a few dwarves due to moods (I can't find ANY gems on the map) and goblins, but everyone seems pretty happy.  In retrospect, I should have started building on the other side of the river, but can't fix that now. 

My main concern (low quality engravings) doesn't seem to be a problem.  The higher-skilled engravers engrave much faster than the dabblers, so I get a respectable ratio of good to bad engravings.  Biggest problem is when I designate a huge job all at once the framerate plummets for a bit.

[geoduck]

I've lost a few dwarves due to moods (I can't find ANY gems on the map) and goblins, but everyone seems pretty happy. 

Don't forget you can buy gems off of caravans.

[Sir Finkus]

I've lost a few dwarves due to moods (I can't find ANY gems on the map) and goblins, but everyone seems pretty happy. 

Don't forget you can buy gems off of caravans.

Not rough ones as far as I know.  I think glass counts as a rough gem though, haven't had an chance to check yet though.

[Derakon]

Raw glass is indeed a rough gem.