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[Sparrowhawk]

Hi all,

Quick question. A common theme of my fortresses is that as they grow in population roughly 1/4 to 1/5 of the population is idle at any one time. Normally I would blame my own organisational skills (dabbling at best) but I was curious if this is a common issue. A lot of them are the more 'niche' workers like soap makers, cheese makers, milkers and so on, and essentially they serve as a useful labour corps but I wonder if this is the norm?

[Boingboingsplat]

They just don't have anything to do at that moment in time. It's not really a problem, your fortress can get along fine even if only 12 dwarves are doing any real work.

[AncientEnemy]

yeah, that's normal. actually if only 1/5th of your fort is idle at any given time you're probably running a pretty efficient fort. it's good to have some idlers available anyway, so if for some reason a ton of hauling labor becomes necessary all at once (such as butchering a big critter) you have dwarves available to do it.

[Slappy Moose]

They just don't have anything to do at that moment in time. It's not really a problem, your fortress can get along fine even if only 12 dwarves are doing any real work.

WRONG.

At least 95% must be working at all times, the other ten dwarves can be sleeping, eating, drinking, or dead.

[AncientEnemy]

They just don't have anything to do at that moment in time. It's not really a problem, your fortress can get along fine even if only 12 dwarves are doing any real work.

WRONG.

At least 95% must be working at all times, the other ten dwarves can be sleeping, eating, drinking, or dead.

*does math*

oh god, the logistics of getting 190 dwarves all working at the same time....

[Deathworks]

Hi!

AncientEnemy is right: you do want to have idle dwarves available to handle emergency situations (like recovering wounded, hauling urgent supplies/trade goods, pulling that lever). Actually, if all your dwarves are busy all the time, then you are in for trouble - after all, there may be jobs that are never done as there is no free labor to do them.

However, if you see that it is always the same dwarves who are idle, you may wish to give them additional labors (activate additional labors), so that they can gain skill in some job you really need around your fortress. Just give them the labor and wait for someone doing that job at the time going for sleeping/drinking/eating, so they can take a shift.

The only dwarf you may want to have idling ALL the time would be the mayor: Currently, nobles are broken so that mayors keep the power to make mandates even once they lose the post. And you can't see those illegal mandates, but they still end with punishment for random dwarves if not fulfilled. Given that mayors are elected on popularity, having your mayor idle all the time gives him/her enough time to get in touch with the voters and ensure a re-election.

Deathworks

[Max White]

Or you could just have a mayor/broker and let him train social skills via trading.

Idlers make friends, friends die, dead friends make dwarfs unhappy, therefor friends make dwarfs unhappy.

My advice? 20 stone crafters all making mugs, every other labor disabled. The massive influx of mugs will ensure
1) Your haulers always have work to do.
2) You never need to give the traders anything useful or valuable to buy them out.
3) It gets rid of all that stone clutter in the halls.

[Snall]

I also like making rock crafts...and fishing...though that brings a LOT of vermin right now. 

[Urist McDepravity]

Lately i keep having 0 idle with 100 dorfs pop. And i wouldn't say its something good -- all hospital residents but baron (ex-soldier who lost his lower limbs so hes impaled forever and therefore was promoted to nobility) died from thirst.
Funny thing is i have no idea wtf are they all doing. Not like i have any major industries going besides stone/wood/basic metal.

Anyway, good practice is to enable some other labors for those migrants. I enable stuff like brewing, furnace operating, wood burning and other labors which produce no-quality goods for nearly everyone.
Half of fortress has stone detailing, with regular 'smooth that whole cave' orders. Everyone has masonry enabled, due to high amount of construction jobs. About 40 of them have mechanics enabled due to lots of traps which need maintenance

[Safe-Keeper]

Download Dwarf Manager or Dwarf Therapist. You'll never have a problem with idlers again.

[Sparrowhawk]

I've seen Dwarf Manager, etc at work and it's similar to a botched piece of elective surgery: Horrifying, yet difficult to look away from. I shall take another look and see what it can do for me. Many thanks to you all. Much as I'd like them to be all working all the time (sleep is for the dead), I shall have to content myself as being a dwarven deity who turns a blind eye to the occasional lazy bugger.

[Urist McPenguin]

First post on the forums, been lurking for a while though, hi all

I like to take a bit of a different approach to handling idle dwarves. At the start of a fort, I'm meticulous about having everyone working at all times (no hauling), even if its enabling planting/gathering. If any of them become idle, and I don't need the tasks they're set to do to be performed, I assign them additional labours that are needed. If (any only if) there is nothing else to do, I set them mining to help dig out the fortress faster. This continues after the first wave of migrants (usually taking me to 14 or 15 dwarves), perhaps ending up with a couple of dedicated haulers with stone set to ignore. This means they'll be consolidating wood for all of the beds I'm about to make.

Once the population numbers rise, I use Dwarf Therapist to choose the dwarf(s) with the highest skill for each job, trying to limit each dwarf to one labour set. If supplies are plentiful I set about skilling them up on repeat. I also set all of their custom profession names to the enabled skill, which allows me to quickly {u} and see what any idlers should be doing.

My haulers are the ones that have 99% of the strange moods, so I make sure that they're given skills (usually a crafting one) to get up enough so I get a free legendary crafter once they've completed the object.

At this point (60+ dwarves) I'll generally have some idlers. After all, my cheesemaker doesn't always have milk etc, and as such I turn on mining for any dwarves who have enough of whatever they produce stockpiled. I'm always digging, giving my smelters plenty of ores to melt down.

[tehc]

When i'm at a 100+ dwarves fort and I have loads of idlers, I usually just get about 10-20 of them as newby masons and get them to craft rock blocks non-stop

Then once theres not much rock left, start crafting some big fancy tower or entrance or something.

[Hyndis]

If I have idlers that means my megaprojects are not big enough or my military is not on proper war footing.

I never have any amount of idlers for long. So much to do! So little time to do it.

[opsneakie]

I've got about 50 dwarves right now, and they're all busy pretty much all the time. I like having my dwarves always getting something done, even if it's just re-organizing stockpiles or something like that. Right now I'm trying to get the glass industry I required for a huge emerald fortress constructed, so I need all the workers I can get.

Yeah, recruit chronic idlers into the military or megaproject construction