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[Landy]

Simelar to "Take from a stockpile" i would like an option to take only full Bins/Barrels from a Stockpile. This would be very useful to reduce a lot of hauling tasks.

[Armok]

So, as in it waits until a bin is full and only then take it away?
Sounds good.

[Martin]

I'd like to bump this simple suggestion, for both bins and barrels.

With it, a lot of efficiency can be added to goods hauling by putting small stockpiles near workshops and having them hauled, when full, to near the trade depot or wherever you are working. Just doing this with stone blocks for megaprojects would be a huge benefit, cutting hauling trips by quite a lot.

[KenboCalrissian]

Very good idea.  You would require some new stockpile options, though: "Accept Full Bins" and "Accept Partially Full or Empty Bins."  If both are enabled, the pile restricts nothing.  Aside from getting your full bins closer to the trade depot, this also frees up space in your construction pile.

Any idea how hard this might be to implement?  Is it going to hog a lot of FPS as it's constantly checking the contents of every bin in the pile, or can it be made smart enough to only check whenever the contents of a bin have been changed?

[Martin]

Should be fairly easy to code. Every time someone drops something in a bin, it checks to see if it's full or not, sets a flag, and when it checks for a take from pile, it only looks for flagged items. Depends a lot on how Toady has things set up, however.

[Pilsu]

Why would you need to restrict bins? It's just a simple command to take full bins out of a pile. Simple yet versatile

Order to take less than full bins sounds good until you consider that dwarves would then take one sock out of each bin and they'd end up all getting hauled back one by one. It's better to just let them empty them out

[KenboCalrissian]

Why would you need to restrict bins? It's just a simple command to take full bins out of a pile. Simple yet versatile

Order to take less than full bins sounds good until you consider that dwarves would then take one sock out of each bin and they'd end up all getting hauled back one by one. It's better to just let them empty them out

Ahh... yeah, good points.  An order does seem like a better solution, both in usability and in FPS consumption!

I'd still like a second order, "Remove partially full or empty bins."  Over time, your "full" pile isn't going to look very full anymore, and you'll need to refresh both piles.

[Arrkhal]

I'd say there should be a distinction between empty and partial.  It drives me crazy when those dumb dwarves leave completely empty bins on one stockpile, while another is completely overflowing with mugs.  They do that all the time, argh!

[Pilsu]

Why would you need to restrict bins? It's just a simple command to take full bins out of a pile. Simple yet versatile

Order to take less than full bins sounds good until you consider that dwarves would then take one sock out of each bin and they'd end up all getting hauled back one by one. It's better to just let them empty them out

Ahh... yeah, good points.  An order does seem like a better solution, both in usability and in FPS consumption!

I'd still like a second order, "Remove partially full or empty bins."  Over time, your "full" pile isn't going to look very full anymore, and you'll need to refresh both piles.

I didn't mean orders menu items. They'd be one shot type of deals and not useful for bin management

The problem with your bin pile isn't the fact that the lacking bins aren't cleared, it's the fact that dwarves are taking from it in the first place and creating the situation in which the bins would need to be moved. And as said, that problem would keep perpetuating itself as the dwarves take more singular items from the full bins only pile. The fact that dwarves won't empty one container at a time but instead take from all of them haphazardly contributes. I'm not aware whether empty bins take up space but that could also be a part of it. If dwarves emptied out your bins one at a time and empty bins didn't count towards occupancy full bins would automatically be fetched.

I think making dwarves avoid the pile is the biggest concern though. A setting for auto-forbidding any containers placed in the pile would work but that would prevent you from hauling your trade goods from said pile to the depot. It is however the most viable option, easily circumvented by adding a button to the trade screen that displays forbidden items. Tagging them to be brought to the depot would auto-remove the forbidden tag


I doubt the current stockpile mechanic is a major FPS hog. You'll inevitably need checks, there's no way around it without leaving orphaned bins in your production end

[KenboCalrissian]

Um... Yeah, Pilsu, I was agreeing with you that my original suggestion had a big problem.  Wasn't your counter a one-shot order to move all full bins to a different pile?  This is what I was agreeing with.  Did you mean something different?

Maybe we're getting hung up on the terminology... I agree that a persistent dedication to this condition is bad, but a one-time order to move everything, that could be re-executed every once in a while at the player's discretion, would be more feasible.

[sproingie]

I'd also like the reciprocal idea as well, to take only empty bins from a stockpile.   That would make resupply a snap, with the upstream stockpile taking empty bins and distributing full ones.

[Astramancer]

I think it's safe to say that everyone would like a hauling overhaul.  It generates an absurd number of jobs and dwarves handle it very, very stupidly.

I would like to see several more stockpile options added, this is just one of them.  Here's what I would like to see:

Allow/Disallow Full Bins - allow by default. If disallowed, full bins generate a hauling jobs, assuming there's somewhere else to put it.

Allow/Disallow Less than Full Bins - allow by default. If disallowed, then empty/partially full bins generate hauling jobs, assuming there's somewhere else to put it.

"Mark for Melting" - any non-bin object held on the stockpile is automatically marked for melting once it gets there.  So you can set up a stockpile that only accepts goblinite, and it automatically gets marked for melting.

I would say auto-dump orders as well, but with quantum stockpiling, that would get pretty ridiculous.  Once dump zones work differently, this may be worthwhile to consider.

Expanded "Take From" options - namely, allow multiple stockpiles to take from a single stockpile  (i.e. have 3 food stockpiles take from your master food stockpile near the farms).  Jobs would be worked in order of proximity, as normal (i.e. the nearest secondary stockpile would fill first).  This would mostly be useful for having multiple specialty stockpiles pulling from one general stockpile (like a steel stockpile next to a forge pulling from the master bar stockpile, whilst a gold stockpile next to a different forge pulls from the same master bar stockpile).

On a similar note, workshops should both be able to issue and be subject to "Take From" orders.  This way you can always ensure that you're making mechanisms from bauxite and thrones from obsidian.  If the workshop order cannot be currently fulfilled by the contents of the linked stockpile (or workshop!) then it should be temporarily suspended until such time as there's sufficient supplies, at which time the order would be automatically unsuspended - perhaps it would cancel the order unless you have a manager, who then has to approve the unsuspension.  This would make managers more useful to those who don't utilize orders (such as myself, given that I'd much rather overproduce so I can just stick the order on repeat)

[KenboCalrissian]

I would like to see several more stockpile options added, this is just one of them.  Here's what I would like to see:

Allow/Disallow Full Bins - allow by default. If disallowed, full bins generate a hauling jobs, assuming there's somewhere else to put it.

Allow/Disallow Less than Full Bins - allow by default. If disallowed, then empty/partially full bins generate hauling jobs, assuming there's somewhere else to put it.

Heh... this was my suggestion, but for good reason, it was shot down.

This is the most I've ever had to repeat that I was wrong about something!

[Martin]

"Mark for Melting" - any non-bin object held on the stockpile is automatically marked for melting once it gets there.  So you can set up a stockpile that only accepts goblinite, and it automatically gets marked for melting.

I don't really have a problem with this one. I just build a stockpile that only accepts stuff to get melted and then every so often I mass designate it.

Alternatively, I think a 'Marked for Melting' would be more useful - it takes any object that has been designated to be melted, so you could mass designate your battlefield and everything and anything that can be melted and designated goes there. You could instead blast through your stocks screen and melt off all of the low-quality stuff that's stuffed in bins all over your fortress and it'll get collected next to the furnace.

The specific job I'm trying to solve with the full bins is when I need to make 25,000 blocks and haul them across the map. Inevitably it turns into closer to 25,000 hauling jobs rather than the 2,500 than it could be.

Sort of the converse to your idea.

[Pilsu]

Um... Yeah, Pilsu, I was agreeing with you that my original suggestion had a big problem.  Wasn't your counter a one-shot order to move all full bins to a different pile?  This is what I was agreeing with.  Did you mean something different?

Maybe we're getting hung up on the terminology... I agree that a persistent dedication to this condition is bad, but a one-time order to move everything, that could be re-executed every once in a while at the player's discretion, would be more feasible.

While an order is certainly functional, an automated measure to move full bins out and replace them with empty ones would generally be more useful. Needing to micro the emptying of piles would get tedious and seems unnecessary