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[Doppel]

Dunno, never really had this problem, and i generally play with a maximum of 60 something dwarves.
I just naturally tend to kill whatever sieges me at my front door, not far from the trade depot, moving (dumping) all the junk safely next to my trade depot after playtime takes me maybe an in game week, if not less. Then i just re dump all the iron stuff (which likely takes a bit longer, due to the distance) near my forges and melt it all down. Its a bit of a chore to mark it all for trading, although its not that hard to quickly spot the narrow/large goods. Lastly i tend to order a whole lot of potential highly valuable goods, its not uncommon for me to order some steel toys or something, bolts, plate mails (why try to make them yourself at first, when you can simply buy them and wait for a weapon/armor smith to get a mood), doesn't matter. So, thats the best advice i could give you, try to kill your foes near the trade depot, and just order a ton of valuable stuff. (you can melt down all those steel trinkets if you want anyways, at least if i remember right).
Oh yeah, the last thing i would advice against though is trying to store all that gobbo junk in containers and such, its not worth the trouble, time and wood/metal imo. (i do keep hold of the decorated goblin/orc stuff though, just as nice reminders/trophies

[Satarus]

If your dwarves sew an image on the goblin clothing (or otherwise decorate it) then it counts as yours.  This will add to your fortress created wealth and export wealth if you sell it.  Plus since cloth and silk a elf kosher, you can sell it to those good-fer-nuthin hippies for their worthless animals, plants, booze, wooden weapons, cloth, or the moderalty useful logs.

[milaga]

If your dwarves sew an image on the goblin clothing (or otherwise decorate it) then it counts as yours.  This will add to your fortress created wealth and export wealth if you sell it.  Plus since cloth and silk a elf kosher, you can sell it to those good-fer-nuthin hippies for their worthless animals, plants, booze, wooden weapons, cloth, or the moderalty useful logs.

Ah, that's good to know. But it still seems kinda cheap. And yeah, it's not hard to clear out an elven caravan's inventory. The loot of one goblin with armor and a few GCS pieces will be more than enough. My current elf civilization I'm trading with loves the GCS stuff. I can get 1100 for some pieces. They usually leave in an ecstatic trading state just because I wanna unload the stuff.

All my dwarves without useful professions are first set to be miners, then engravers.

I've been asking for wood, tin (because both my baron and consort have a tin fetish and cassiterite is pretty much the only ore I haven't found) and bauxite. Bauxite only because everything I've read about magma has conditioned me as such. And besides, I haven't found any red stones yet, so at worst I can use it for decoration.

The queen showed up last night, and during a dry run demonstrating how my megaproject worked I discovered a few flaws. There were some cave-ins, but the only casualties were a bunch of goblins I had in cages. The one thing I learned is bridge-bridge-bridge is okay, but once you pull the switch that middle bridge is going to drill all the way down to the basement and destroy those masterwork engravings.

Thanks for all the replies, some good ideas in here. Glad to see I'm not the only one with this problem, too.

[milaga]

So I finished the flusher. It works like this:

Code: [Select]

Top level:
F..._...F
F..HHH..F
F..HHH..F
F..HHH..F
F..._...F

Bottom level (bridges flat):
||||X||||
|BBB_BBB|
|BBB_BBB|
|BBB_BBB|
||||X||||

Bottom leel (bridges raised)
||||X||||
|__|_|__|
|__|_|__|
|__|_|__|
||||X||||

| = wall
. = empty space
_ = floor
F = fortification to shoot through
H = retractable bridge to drop the gobbos
B = raising bridges that raise to create a 1 tile corridor
X = top floodgate is water entry, bottom is water exit and passage to the chasm

The water is fed by pumping water up 7 zlevels and dropped off a waterfall into a 7x7 cistern. This gives it a nice 7 zlevel positive water pressure and about 300 tiles of 7/7 water under pressure.
For a trial run I released a caged goblin in the bottom, bridges raised so it was just a corridor. He ran around looking for an exit. I pulled the lever to open the floodgate. The water shot out with such force ... the wall of water would, every step, fill the next tile with 7/7 water. The goblin, however, was not moved. He sat there until he drowned.

In practice, it might cause more problems than it solves. Nothing that's trapped in the compactor moves. Retracting the top level bridges throws debris around, as does closing the compactor. After the first siege (that is a ridiculous kill corridor for champion marksdwarves) the fortifications became clogged with armor and clothing. You can't move the clothing without dismantling the fortification.

The debris does move around in the water when I open the compactor to let the water evaporate. Then the debris settles around on top of the open compactor. Closing it tosses it around opening it again atom smashes whatever fell behind it as well as most of the water.

I'm curious as to how far the water shoots. It easily crosses the 5 tiles of the chasm and hits the back wall without dropping a zlevel.

[kuribo]

Set fire to the world.

This is always the proper solution to any Dwarf Fortress problem.

[Quatch]

I have my killing fields right on top of my stockpiles (1 Z level above, separated by retractable bridges (and drowning traps..)), so that all of the loot is deposited with the minimum walk. Then, from that general stockpile I have transfer orders to sift into stuff that can melt, and high quality stuff I'm willing to sell. After I get idle dwarves after a battle I know things are sorted, so I can mass designate the chaff for destruction. I prefer magma, but if it isn't there, it isn't there.

The other advantage to this plan is I can easily mass forbid the stuff when I want my dwarves to ignore it and be productive elsewhere.

[dornbeast]

Set fire to the world.

This is always the proper solution to any Dwarf Fortress problem.

"I have a problem...I accidentally set fire to the world..."

Answers:
MAGMA!
Set fire to the world!
Drown the world in water to put out the fire, drain the water off, then set fire to the world!

[milaga]

I have my killing fields right on top of my stockpiles (1 Z level above, separated by retractable bridges (and drowning traps..)), so that all of the loot is deposited with the minimum walk. Then, from that general stockpile I have transfer orders to sift into stuff that can melt, and high quality stuff I'm willing to sell. After I get idle dwarves after a battle I know things are sorted, so I can mass designate the chaff for destruction. I prefer magma, but if it isn't there, it isn't there.

The other advantage to this plan is I can easily mass forbid the stuff when I want my dwarves to ignore it and be productive elsewhere.

I like this idea a lot. How to you distribute items from this loot stockpile though? You can only have one stockpile taking from it, do you just have an unusuable iron armor stockpile taking from it and all your dwarves with the haul item job?

[ShadowDragon8685]

if it's really killing you, and you don't mind cheating, go into the Dwarf raw and add [SPEED:1].

BOOM. Now you'll get the hauling done much more swiftly!

[Skorpion]

I set all my haulers to do various menial, quality-less tasks, such as smelting and wood burning, to gain skills and thus stats.
Goblin loot is sorted on collection; clothing goes into a quantum dump pile, anything metallic is tagged for melting and, well, melted down for scrap iron, with the exception of anything superior or higher quality that I can make use of.
The contents of the dump pile are then reclaimed when I have room for them, stashed in bins with the skull totems and stone crafts, and exported.
Eventually, I get bored with this system, and just start toasting anything flammable of regular quality in magma.

I see my forts as a recycling center, more than anything else.

[Rowanas]

I set all my haulers to do various menial, quality-less tasks, such as smelting and wood burning, to gain skills and thus stats.
Goblin loot is sorted on collection; clothing goes into a quantum dump pile, anything metallic is tagged for melting and, well, melted down for scrap iron, with the exception of anything superior or higher quality that I can make use of.
The contents of the dump pile are then reclaimed when I have room for them, stashed in bins with the skull totems and stone crafts, and exported.
Eventually, I get bored with this system, and just start toasting anything flammable of regular quality in magma.

I see my forts as a recycling center, more than anything else.

I'm right up to the stage of getting bored. I still sell everything, but I'm thinking about forbidding/unforbidding items on a piece by piece basis, so I can just skip the hauling and move it from field to depot when the traders come.

[milaga]

I'm right up to the stage of getting bored. I still sell everything, but I'm thinking about forbidding/unforbidding items on a piece by piece basis, so I can just skip the hauling and move it from field to depot when the traders come.

The nice thing about that is that every dwarf has a "haul to depot" job which can't be switched off. I've used my trade depot as a quantum dump. It was just a bit dicey when the battles were held outside the fortress. In my new fortress I'm moving to not defend my outer fort but let everything underground and take care of it there.

I opted for magma instead of HFS this fort. I also installed the orc mod, so I have a feeling I'm in for enough surprises as it is.