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[Malenfant]

Now I know this is probably going to be unpopular but can we do away with job micromanagement? Seriously, it's driving me nuts, I love DF but having to constantly set my unemployed dwarves to mining, then smoothing, then farming, then whatever other task is getting tiresome.

Just a little bit of AI behind the task management would take all the pain out of it, if you're a bowyer and there are no bows needing to be made but plenty of mining and farming then go do that for a bit. The moment a bow-making job pops up he should put away his pick and go make some bows.

This feature would really shine at the start where the starting dwarves are asked to be jack of all trades, instead of repeatedly setting the architecture tag or the making everyone a farmer before winter hits they will just do what they need to do. Like I said, this is probably an unpopular request, we're all fans of have fine level control but this is just tiresome micromanagement.

[Sir Edmund]

i dont think getting rid of micromanagment is a good idea but the ability to set priotiy of work within each dwarf would be handy such as

1 represents low priority and 5 high

Bowyer 5
engraving 4
mining 3
farming 2
hauling 1

i think this kind of feature would be rather awesome, but i do enjoy micromanagment though it does get a tad annoying when your waiting for your next migrant wave/caravan and you have to keep pausing to tell folk what to do

[Malenfant]

Another possibility would be the ability to set primary and secondary roles, if you have no work to do in your primary, get to work on your secondary. Even if you become legendary in that secondary don't change your job title until that secondary gets set as the primary.

A good example of why this is a problem was last winter in my fortress, I had run out of wood so my carpenters were unemployed. I set them to stone smoothing and by summer they were engravers. Now I can't find my carpenters in amongst all the other engravers, troublesome  

I think that’d probably be the neatest/simplest solution.

[Freddybear]

You can give them custom job titles, and then they won't change titles as their skill sets change.

[I3erent]

Micromanagement is a playstyle not a requirement.

[Zurai]

quote:Originally posted by berent:
<STRONG>Micromanagement is a playstyle not a requirement.</STRONG>

Seconded. I never micro the vast majority of my dwarves. When the immigrate, I give them a custom job title and a custom set of activities, then never touch them again. Only a few dwarves (mostly from the initial 7) get micro'd to any degree at all. The only real micro I've done in my last two forts was having my initial miner mine to legendary, then engrave to legendary, now siege operating to legendary, and will then be drafted and train to talented wrestler/marksdwarf and then legendary weapon/armor/shield, then be promoted to Captain of the Guard.

Persistent micro isn't neccesary at all.

[mickel]

I don't even give them custom job titles or change their settings. I go with what I get and consider it part of the challenge. Because, frankly, it's easier to do that than to pause and go through every dwarf and select/deselect jobs... over and over...

So, as long as you have the appropriate skills represented in your beginning crew, you don't really have to meddle with stuff. Of course, my fortresses don't run as efficiently as most other's, but I don't really see efficiency in job management as an interesting challenge until I can do it more effectively anyway. I just design around the job shortages instead - it's easier for me.

[ November 15, 2007: Message edited by: mickel ]

[qalnor]

I've never personally used it but I think there is a program which helps with micro on the wiki.

That being said, I have to agree with what others have said. Having units dedicated to the most essential tasks is important, especially early on, but going beyond this is pretty much a waste of time.

Later on it is just more efficient to let all dwarves do most things. You want to keep your best dwarves doing just one thing, so you get quality merchandise, but turning every dwarf into a master is just pointless.

The only value of micromanagement that I can see is mining and engraving vast areas to pump stats for future troops. And this isn't exactly challenging.

I do like the idea someone mentioned of allowing you to set priorities to dwarves. This would make micromanagement actually fairly useful, and not very cumbersome.

[Lightning4]

I agree with the post with job priorities. Would be helpful with setting some dwarves to do tasks without removing their other jobs.
Would be good at keeping dwarves you don't want hauling stone from doing so.

Additionally there could be universal priority options, so you could set it so dwarves would prefer any task over an item hauling task, but if they have farming, pick that over, say, furniture making.

[Turgid Bolk]

quote:Originally posted by qalnor:
<STRONG>I've never personally used it but I think there is a program which helps with micro on the wiki.</STRONG>

The Dwarf Foreman and LabourDF programs help immensely, but this kind of functionality really should be integrated into DF at some point. I agree 100% with this thread. However, I can see why it hasn't been done yet. Unfortunately it probably won't be a focus for quite awhile.

In the meantime, the wiki page of utilities can help some.

[Capntastic]

I would hate it if some random unskilled dwarf started messing up all my mining/crafting jobs.   Furthermore, it would suck if they took a mining job away from a skilled miner who decided to go do a terrible job farming or something.  

Basically, dwarves doing stuff I don't want/need them to be doing would be terrible.

[Geofferic]

You already CAN set secondary jobs with priorities...

That's what the 'p' command does!

You set your carpenter to also chop wood.

So what he does is carpentry until he runs out of wood, then he does chopping, then carpentry, etc.  Once there is no carpentry to do, he fills up the wood store and then takes a break.

If you /must/ have him do a third task, make it engraving.  Sure he will occasionally run off to do that when there is carpentry work, but if you have full time engravers and all your carpenters doing the smoothing ... it won't take long and they'll be back on task doing the carpentry.

[Abyssal Squid]

Those are neither secondary, nor priorities.  They're "do the first of these things that catches your attention, then do it forever until you run out of work or get thirsty GOTO 10"

Some sort of functionality like I imagine Dwarf Foreman has, or some sort of priority assignment system, or both would be great additions for fortress management.  Better yet, you could have job postings and dwarves sign up for those jobs as their skills and personalities dictate.  Say "Yo I need 4 miners, 2 carpenters, 3 masons, 2 engravers, etc" and then they assign themselves to that work, although multiple jobs (like workshop farming, or furnace operating) might be difficult to deal with, and there's still the issue of assigning the most-skilled workers where you need them, but that's another issue.

[RPB]

quote:Originally posted by qalnor:
<STRONG>Later on it is just more efficient to let all dwarves do most things. You want to keep your best dwarves doing just one thing, so you get quality merchandise, but turning every dwarf into a master is just pointless.</STRONG>

Sacrilege! Legendary dwarves are shiny and blinky, therefore they are good. Q.E.D.

(On topic: Fine-level controls are essential for proper macromanagement. Having an additional level of "secondary" tasks would make for even better fine-level control, though. Ideally of course you've set everything up so your production can run by itself without needing any input from you to keep it going smoothly, but secondary tasks would still help for the hiccups that inevitably happen now and then. Especially with things like wood, where you have to periodically re-designate trees to chop.)

[ November 15, 2007: Message edited by: RPB ]

[Aquillion]

I would disagree with the idea that micromanagment is merely a "playstyle".  At the moment, it's pretty difficult to manage a fortress without micromanaging jobs occasionally.

I think what we need instead is a better interface for it.  I would like to be able to have a management screen where I can specify, say, that I want to maintain around X primary craftdwarves, Y primary growers, Z primary brewers, and so on.  The game would then automatically adjust work priorities to try and keep that many dwarves available, picking the most skilled dwarves for each task.

Rating every individual job sounds like horrible micromanagement, and I'm opposed to it.  However, it would be nice to be able to set a dwarf's primary job.  A dwarf with a primary job will wait briefly before accepting anything else, will cancel other jobs midway through if their primary job becomes available, and won't accept any other job if one of their primary jobs is available at the moment.  (Dwarves with no primary job behave the way they do now.)

This essentially lets players have a 'dedicated' weaponsmith or whatever who can still do other work occasionally when there is no demand for weaponsmithing.  That, I think, is the main source of micromanagement...  constantly turning dwarves' other skills on and off to make them focus exclusively on their 'primary' job when it is available, while doing other things when it isn't.  I think it would be relatively simple to do this, without forcing people to rate every job for every dwarf or over-complicated things like that.

Having primary jobs would also make a much simpler way for dwarves to be sorted and examined, which could be taken advantage of elsewhere.

[ November 15, 2007: Message edited by: Aquillion ]