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[Crossroads Inc.]

Personally I am a bit obsessive, If I ever see more then 15 Dwarfs at one time idle, I'll tend to assign lists to as many workshops as possible or build a few more levels on whatever Megaprojct Im working on. keep in mind thats usually with 100+ fortresses

how many people will you let sit around just doing nutten?

[DaJonkel]

Ever since I discovered the 1 tile meeting zone area with no other meeting areas/dining rooms for mad social (and thus stats) gains, I tend to idle as many as possible.

I just like having my dwarfs not die after just hearing an orc fart or all be slow lazy bums.

[bluea]

I have a fort with 225 dwarves. I managed to get 100 idlers, but it wasn't easy. A fair number of routine things don't count as "idle." And I have sixty kids.

(I was trying to see if I could get anyone to pick up their freaking clothing by making everyone have a massive amount of free time. While also assigning chests and cabinets for everyone. I did get a fair chunk of clothing relocated. But Champions are irritating.)

[KenboCalrissian]

Not me, I hate to see even 1 idler.  It means somebody isn't doing their job, and I send the Hammerer.

It sucks to be one of my dwarves

[Limul Thak]

I rarely pay attention to the specific number, but if I notice it go up I do something about it. Some dwarves I let stay idle because their skills aren't necessary quite yet, and I'd like to have them ready for when they are.

[darkflagrance]

I have a fort with 225 dwarves. I managed to get 100 idlers, but it wasn't easy. A fair number of routine things don't count as "idle." And I have sixty kids.

(I was trying to see if I could get anyone to pick up their freaking clothing by making everyone have a massive amount of free time. While also assigning chests and cabinets for everyone. I did get a fair chunk of clothing relocated. But Champions are irritating.)

Just execute your Champions and recruit children, who are born innocent and without clothing. Naked Champions ahoy!

[Quantum Toast]

I tend to have quite a lot, I just don't have much for all of them to do. Though if there's something that's not getting done (like wall smoothing or brewing), I tend to activate the necessary labour on a bunch of them, so I guess they're handy as short-notice spare workers. Plus I can recruit a bunch of them if I lose military dwarves, though I don't let them spar with the existing soldiers until they're up to champion level.

I should probably tweak the popcap a bit though, I don't want to end up with 100+ idlers sitting around in the meeting hall drinking all my booze.

[Hyndis]

All of my dwarves perform all tasks, except for specialized metalworkers, mechanics, jewelers, and engravers.

Everyone else does everything else.

This means that my workforce is extremely flexible. I also build each type of building out of a different material. Thus, if I want all labor to go to construction I forbid all other types of buildings through the stocks menu. No new tasks will be added to these buildings until I reclaim those blocks that the workshops are made out of.

Food/farming buildings are made out of platinum blocks.
Furnaces and forges are made out of iron blocks.
Crafting workshops are made out of steel blocks.

If a task is piling up and I want it done now, such as to get all of my dwarves hauling for cleanup duty after the annual goblinite delivery, I will forbid all platinum, iron, and steel blocks. The current task for each workshop will finish up, no new tasks will be added, and the entire population of my fort (sans the specialized guys, but there's no more than 10 of them in a fort) will haul in the goblinite delivery.


You generally want a few idle dwarves. If you never have any idle dwarves you are creating tasks faster than they can be completed, which means you will have an ever increasing backlog of tasks. Let that go too long and it can take literally years of game time to clear up that backlog.

[darthbob88]

If I see more than 1/3 of my dwarves idle, I get cranky and check. Often they simply have nothing to do right now, because we have enough food/booze/whatever for a while, or because the crafters have gotten ahead of their raw materials, and in those cases I let them slack off in the 1x1 meeting area next to an awesome statue. In other cases, they simply haven't been told that they do have work to do, typically plant processing that stopped when they ran out of the plants that we now have piles of. And in a few cases, the idle dwarves are peasants who have no skills and no hauling jobs to do. Those get retrained, either as civilians or military.

[Grimlocke]

I usualy cap my population at 80 or 100, to save fps but also to not have to have a hard time finding everyone something to do.

As such, my forts usualy have only a few idlers. Soap/cheese/lye makers, peasant, and just about everything else I cant use I either draft into my army or add them to the masons, which are the only dwarves tasked with non-food hauling. I usualy have a only a few dwarves practising other crafts.

My glassmakers, stonecrafters, clothworkers or leatherworkers usualy dont to idle, as they constantly churn out building materials or merchant fodder. My metalworkers are all set to furnace opperating, so those rarely idle either even when I dont have any metal objects I need them to make.

About backlogs, I dont have much of those. All large task orders like block, craft, glass, etc. production is ordered by setting workshops on repeat with only a few orders, thus only creating only that few uncompleted tasks per workshop. More specialised tasks as well as construcions are only designated after the previous ones are completed.

Getting the hauling tasks done is a bit of a hassle, as I have to adjust my block production for it.

With this little idlers, my lack of party-able rooms, and my fairly large meeting area my dwarves hardly care about eachother, and portion of them being killed is relativelly safe. For the fortress as a whole, that is...

Strangly the dwarves dont seem to mind being slaved to death with merciless efficiency. They are usualy quite contect/happy/estatic when nothing particularly miserable happened to them. Guess they must realy like all the high-value dining rooms, quarters and other fancy stuff.


ps. The building material thing is pretty clever, I think ill try that in my current fort.

[XSI]

If I see idlers in my forts, it's time to dump another load of stone next to the masons that are set to make blocks/R.

Up to 10 is fine with me, any more is just asking for the 'Flood the dining room'-lever to be pulled, or have them otherwise forcefully relocated.

[silhouette]

HOW MANY IDLE DWARVES DOES IT TAKE TO FILL THE CENTER OF A BOTTOMLESS PIT?!?!?!
400! and 3000 goblins crossbred with elves.

[Rozenbuddy]

Any idlers I dont have a job for I just assign to the military, send to the farming metropolis, send to a temple, or send them to the mines/quarrys.

Sometimes if i get bored I'll send them to the temple of blood for a nice gladiator session with whatever beast I might have, of course sending them nude with elven wood weapons. Sometimes if I don't have any beasts I'll somehow enrage one slave gladiator dwarf to fight another one that is also enraged. Actualy, I'm working on a new temple called the temple of survival in which a single dwarf, armed only with a hammer may try to survive by using the "basecamp" level for slaughtering the wild beasts I throw at him, if said dwarf dies I send in a group of soldiers to kill the beasts or trap them and start over. It will be fun... wow tangent.

[The_Kakaze]

I try to train all my useless idlers in weapon or armorsmithing, so they can produce a useful artifact.  I set a few magma forges to only allow people below competent and have them make trap components out of some useless metal like copper.  If I run out of copper, I melt down my 40 large menacing spikes down and start again.

[roboticus]

i keep a large group of rotating workers who's labors change according to what i need.  if i need more masons for a huge building project, i set the entire group to masonry.  if i need walls smoothed, i set them all to detailing.  doesn't exactly spell out 'quality' for my fortress, but it gets things done and cuts down on idlers.  you just have to make sure to keep projects going all the time but it really cuts down on micro-management.