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[Tamren]

One annoying thing about knocking out big rooms is getting the stone out, you can leave it in but it gets in the way of construction leading to a lot of suspended tasks.

And of course with the stone there you cannot see the floor.

So it would be neat if we could set areas to clear. The way it would work is you paint down an area just as if you were going to engrave it. But instead it saves what you designate as 1 single clear order.

The dwarves will then give priority to hauling the objects in that area to stockpiles or will simply move them all to the nearest empty spot outside the area.

If you want to, you can also designate a specific area for the stuff to go in, such as from the inside of one room to the corridor outside.

Voila clean floor!

[Core Xii]

quote:Originally posted by Tamren:
<STRONG>it gets in the way of construction leading to a lot of suspended tasks.</STRONG>

Not if you don't make a huge stone stockpile. Any stone not tasked for something else (like hauling) will just be moved out of a construction's way.

[Tamren]

The point is to clear the floor.

If you tell your dwarves to construct a 5x5 building like a shop in a room that is packed wall to wall with loose stone, he will have to move them all himself which takes too much time and the job might get suspended anyway.

In very dense fortress layouts there is nowhere for the stone to go anyway.

[elkna]

This will also help if a dwarf happens to dump stone into a doorway (which happened to me when making double-doors to my farm, which I realize probably wasn't a good idea). I had to wait nearly a season just to get a dwarf to move that single stone, and in the end they had cleaned out most of the fortress before even looking at it. =/ A designation would be excellent for this kind of problem.

[Keiseth]

I'm all for this. There are some rooms that should be cleaned out (Dining rooms, fancy stuff) and some that are probably less important (Barracks? The stones are like beds!)

[Janus]

That, and it'd be nice to have all of the stone cleared out of my farming area. Having stacks of several stones per square shuffled around from one queued farm plot back onto another is a tad annoying. :-)

 

quote:Originally posted by elkna:
<STRONG>This will also help if a dwarf happens to dump stone into a doorway (which happened to me when making double-doors to my farm, which I realize probably wasn't a good idea). I had to wait nearly a season just to get a dwarf to move that single stone, and in the end they had cleaned out most of the fortress before even looking at it. =/ A designation would be excellent for this kind of problem.</STRONG>

Here's a tip, don't rely on doors to close off your farm area. Besides the stuck door problem you've encountered, you could still end up with a permaflood if not careful. Instead, always close off the floodable area with safety channels to make absolutely sure the flood waters don't go beyond your designated area.
I actually just use channels to divide the farm area from my main food stockpile (both in the same big "room"), with no doors leading directly into the farm section. Maybe not the prettiest solution, but works quite well.

[ May 28, 2007: Message edited by: Janus ]

[Tamren]

The major reason this is needed is that items tagged for a task are ignored by other dwarves.

So if a dwarf decides to move a block of stone, but halfway there decides he wants a drink. The stone is still tagged for hauling.

If you then ask dwarves to construct a workshop over that stone, they will suspend the task because that one stone is not movable, at least by them.

Pretty annoying huh? well if you designate the area to be cleared it gives you finer control over what goes and what stays and also puts priority on the task to make sure it is done quickly.

But from what i hear this is a feature in the next update, so yeah, sweet!  

[Grek]

quote:Originally posted by Janus:
<STRONG>Here's a tip, don't rely on doors to close off your farm area.  Instead, always close off the floodable area with safety channels to make absolutely sure the flood waters don't go beyond your designated area.
</STRONG>

Use both just in case. Channels to prevent flooding, doors to keep dwarfs out while it happens.

[Angela Christine]

This would be handy.  I'm not sure how it would work though, because if an item is flagged for hauling putting another job in the same place might fail.  

Stone stockpiles are death.  A little pile of limestone next to a smelter or a small pile of light and dark stone next to a craftdwarf's workshop, OK, those work.  But general stone stockpiles just gum up the works and create a labour shortage, and eventually may contribute to food and booze shortages.

Fastest and easiest way I've found to get unsightly boulders out of my farms and dining rooms is to use temporary mason's and mechanic's workshops.  Drop a workshop in the middle of the area to be cleared (but at least 6 squares from the nearest bed) and let them gobble up all the stone.  There are usually more mechanic immigrants than one really needs, so having a few mechanic's workshops set on repeat doesn't divert anyone from more important jobs.  There's always room for more traps, so you don't even have to worry about long-term mechanism storage.  When the mechanic is walking an unreasonably long distance to haul in new stone, just destroy his workshop and build a new one farther along.  The same thing for the masons' shop.  Plunk down a masonry workshop in the middle of your dining room to be, and maybe set a furniture stockpile next to it.  Now set that workshop making tables and chairs, you can probably use up all or at least most of the stone in the dining room manufacturing furniture for the dining room.  It makes a lot more sense than hauling the stone out of the dining room to a workshop, converting it to furniture, and then hauling it all the way back to the dining room.

[ May 30, 2007: Message edited by: Angela Christine ]

[slMagnvox]

quote:Fastest and easiest way I've found to get unsightly boulders out of my farms and dining rooms is to use temporary mason's and mechanic's workshops.

I heartily endorse this method.

However, Craftdwarves making Rock Toys has alot of advantages over a Mechanic making mechanisms.

1 rock becomes 1 rock toy (weight 5)
20 rock toys in a single bin

Mechanisms weigh more and cannot be binned.  Sure, you can make traps and stuff out of them, heh, but I can't imagine placing as many traps as I've made chalk mini-forges in my most recent fort.  That'd be alot of traps.

A Mason making furniture and rock blocks is also excellent.  And blocks are just as fun to put in bins.

Go bins!

In the future, we probably will have a way to designate an area to be cleared of rock and debris.  But short of chasming it all, we'll still have to put it somewhere.  Familiarize yourself with good stone management today!

[Zereth]

quote:Originally posted by slMagnvox:
<STRONG>
In the future, we probably will have a way to designate an area to be cleared of rock and debris.  But short of chasming it all, we'll still have to put it somewhere.  Familiarize yourself with good stone management today!</STRONG>

Hopefully we'll be able to designate 3-d stockpiles so we can dig a big damn pit (outside, in the dirt so it doesn't just generate more) and throw all our unessecary rock in it.

EDIT: Further thoughts: maybe a setting on a stockpile, "this stockpile automatically generates hauling jobs", and you could turn it off on your stone stockpile and use the "haul stuff here" designation to raise the priority of existing hauling jobs inside it, or generate hauling jobs for things without them, like stone.

[ May 30, 2007: Message edited by: Zereth ]

[Behrooz Wolf]

Take your legendary miner and turn him into a catapult operator nearby.  After 300 stones worth of clearing, he's a legendary operator and shoots 'em off faster than five haulers could move them.  Stone-B-Gone.

[Tamren]

Possible solution to our massive stone problem, this would still work after the new update.

Make "rough" blocks stackable without a bin. And then on top of that, allow blocks to be used for everything that a boulder can. (is that a pun?)

The way it works is pretty simple. Miners knock out a huge area leaving a big pile of stone.

Your masons gather these up and turn them into ROUGH blocks. These can then be stacked in a pyramid shape 3 to a square in the appropriate stockpile.

Making a rough block takes very little time and reduces the weight of the stone. From there, you can use the rough block for everything a boulder can be used for, it just takes up less room and can be stored easier.

If you need smooth stone blocks you simply take a rough one and put a little more effort into it. A smooth block would have to be stored in a bin because you would not want to damage the clean edges.

This would cut the storage space required for raw stone by two thirds with just a little extra effort from your mason.