Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Conflict]

Alright, well we all know Dwarves love alcohol. That there's a fact. But well, erm, but the beloved leader I am, I didn't exactly begin producing it for some time. I got too busy with setting up my fancy work areas 'n whatnot. Now that I have a large food industry, everyone seems to need barrels. Now this causes a problem.

I just don't seem to have enough barrels. What barrels are made are almost always taken by some other worker to be used in his industry while keeping my alcohol industry down. So, what can I do to fix this? I have two woodcraft workshops as is with a population of 50. They're set to auto make barrels Do I need more workshops?

Any help would be appeciated.

[Hyndis]

Nothing more to do except make more barrels, cut down more trees, and keep your dwarves busy producing.

You can set up a barrel reserve. I like having a reserve of about 50 barrels. Seems to always keep enough of a buffer that barrels will always be there for brewing. But in the end you simply need more barrels.

I find that once you have around 1,000 barrels it stops being a problem anymore. You still would need to make that many barrels though, and it does take time.

[Bronzebeard]

What you need is more wood and, in case you're not using the job manager, use the job manager. It tidies up and organizes tasks much better than merely designating them in their respective workshops. Also, stockpiles play a big role in food production:
-The bigger your stockpiles are, the more will go into them.
-The more goes into them, the more things other than drinks hog up the barrels to save up space.
-The less barrels you have for drinks!
That said, chop down more wood, use the job manager, and use only as much stockpile space as you need (having 50 dwarves, meaning quite little) or at least reserve a large space of your stockpiles for drinks only. This will ensure that there are enough barrels unoccupied by other food items to be filled with nice, frothy booze.

[Hyndis]

I use very small stockpiles that accept only one particular type of plant each. This means that farmed plants only use up maybe 50 barrels for each type. No more. Extra plants just rot in the fields. No other stockpiles hold plants I farm.

This frees up a huge number of barrels to store meat, roasts, and booze.

Also you can just put make barrels on repeat. No need for a job manager if you just want to make tons of the same thing. Be sure your woodcutters are always busy. Every season go out and designate the area for woodcutting to pick up any new trees that grow during the season change. If you run out of wood dig down into the caverns. Plenty of tower caps down there to chop down.

[Shogger]

In the stockpile menu (p) you can specify a number of barrels to be reserved for brewing purposes - If you specify, say, 10, then if your farmers use up all of your barrels for food, they will leave 10 barrels that you can brew with. Of course, once you have a ridiculous amount of barrels, as Hyndis said, it stops being a problem.

[loose nut]

It also helps a bit to have your kitchen cooking meals to clear out barrel space. But yeah it is more problematic in 0.31.x because dwarves aren't content to just stack prepped meals on top of barrels.

[Hyndis]

All problems in DF can be solved using one plan of action:

MORE!


Run out of barrels? Build more barrels!
Need to pump water out of your flooding fortress faster? Build more pumps!
Not enough military dwarves to defeat goblin hordes? More soldiers!
Dwarves not skillful enough? Have them do more jobs!
Invaders getting through your elaborate death traps? Make it even more elaborate!

 

[piesquared]

I take several steps to stave off (sorry) the barrel problem.

1.) Make lots of barrels. Yea, I know you already did that, make more. I spend easily half my total wood on barrels, and I buy out every caravan and request more of every kind from both human and dwarven diplomats.

2.) Separate booze and food stockpiles, limit the barrels allowed in all food stockpiles except the one for booze. When you examine a stockpile with "q" you can set a maximum number of barrels - depending on the size of my fort and just how serious my wood situation is, I might allow as few as 10 barrels for food. I also keep separate stockpiles for seeds, which never need more then one barrel. Especially if you make a bunch of bags with your leather, which you ought to do anyway.

3.) Keep a separate stockpile for empty barrels. I don't allow barrels in my "general furniture" stockpiles, preferring to keep them in a separate "barrels only" stockpile. This keeps the barrels near my stills (more efficient), and also lets me see how many I have at any given time without screwing around in the stocks menu. The only exception is that in the new version I need to make lye and store it in barrels, so there's a small stockpile near the lye making workshop that allows empty barrels.

Number three is actually part of my general "keep raw material stockpiles around every workshop" philosophy, the main intent of which is to reduce the amount of hauling done by skilled dwarfs. But with barrels in particular it's nice to see how many you have at a glance...

[Hyndis]

I mix in my barrels with my food stockpiles. The same stockpile stores both barrels and food so the barrels are always nearby to put food in. Food barrels get priority over empty barrels, and it is possible to have an empty barrel on top of a full barrel in the same square, but the dwarves don't mind this.

I also have the same stockpiles store bags, because bags are used for plant processing.

[Ampoliros]

It's also a bit gamey, but you don't have to use barrels to stockpile your food either. A non-barrel plant/meat stockpile needs to be a lot bigger (2-3x, at least), and you'll suffer some wear on your food stockpiles, but it frees up a lot of wood for use in other stuff.

Also, if your barrel shortage is pretty critical, you can pull solid items (Eg, meat/fish/plants, seed bags, other ground plant bags) out of barrels by designating a new stockpile that accepts whatever items you wish to remove, lower the accepted barrel number on the stockpile to 0, then going around to all your other food stockpiles and removing the storage of the materials in question on the stockpile - settings screen

the dwarves should come along, pull the plump helmets and whatever else out of the barrels and over to the new stockpile barrel-free

[Helmaroc]

Setting maximum number of barrels allowed to about half of the stockpile's maximum usually solves the problem for me until I can catch up on supply. I got lucky on my current fortress with a strange mood and now I have a legendary carpenter cranking them out. 

[Neurovore]

What ends up killing my barrel availability is butchering corpses. Now that there are a variety of meat by-products, and in substantial quantities, butchering just a couple animals can eat up bunches of barrel supplies.

The solution: I create a large prepared food stockpile in my dining hall that allows zero barrels. Each roast or biscuit is just dropped in it's own square. Cooking bunches of prepared meals opens up your barrel suply in a hurry.

The downside is that vermin can go through your food in a hurry. But with so many meat by-products for cooking I've never had a problem with food supply.

[Particleman]

Metal barrels.

Dig deep, make a few magma smelters and a magma forge, and turn out metal barrels from crap metals like nickel. I use aluminum and platinum for them, too, because I can. Also I don't really do metal crafts or ornamentation, so I don't really have any other use for those metals.

[Conflict]

• Make more barrels.
• Set up a barrel reserve.
• Set up bigger food stockpile for drinks.
• Get a job manager.
• Keep your woodcutter busy as well as your carpenters.
• Go to stockpile menu (p), and reserve barrels
• Limit ALL other food stocks from too many barrels.
• Build separate barrel stockpile.
• Set barrel reserve of alcohol stockpile to half.
• Investigate metal barrels

That's what I got out of it. Phew... Well, I have plenty of things to look into to try to fix the problem. Appreciate the answers, everyone!

[smokingwreckage]

Can you make glass barrels, AKA flagons?