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[fateshaper]

Hey guys, started playing Dwarf Fortress this week and am insanely insanely addicted. Racked up about 50+ hours this week alone. Goodbye  sleeping time!

Anyway, got a question, is it fine having loads of idlers? Whenever I reach 50 pop, I get like 10-15 idlers and spend loads of time using dwarf therapist micromanaging my dwarves to do the jobs just so that I don't have idlers. Is it fine if I just have like 1 specialist for each workshop, and food,  and a lot of haulers or should I build more workshops to accomodate my idlers? :S

Any help much appreciated!

[Impudence12]

I was/am the same. My first fort had a bunch of idlers and I felt it my mission to get them all working all the time. I then reworked my hauling/production structure to keep my idlers pretty much absent. After a few forts I've made peace with the idlers. Think of idlers as a resource just like everything else. You can spend idlers to haul a lot quickly. If you keep your idlers to a minimum your move x to stockpile orders start to build up faster than the dwarves can move things unless you stop doing anything for a couple seasons. Which I can't bring myself to do.

Just be aware that idlers mingle and cry when you kill them. Build a mist maker wherever they mingle.

[JoshBrickstien]

I made all of my idlers Engravers. They are working on smoothing all of my 6 wide hallways. Keeps them busy.

[Leonidas]

Your hauling demands usually come in waves, so your idlers should come in offsetting waves.  If you try to keep your idlers at zero all the time, then you won't have the spare dwarfpower to throw at whatever new project you devise.  Lots of idlers tells you that your old project is nearly done, so your hauling pool is ready for a new big task.

It helps to be clear with yourself on what your goal is.  Are you building up a military?  Working on a megaproject?  Amassing wealth?  If your goal doesn't currently need hauling, then there's no reason to worry about idlers.

[Particleman]

Idle dwarves will hang out in meeting areas and talk to each other, thereby making friends.

Now, if you don't mind tantrum spirals, or if you're REALLY good at keeping the stupid little bastards alive, this isn't a problem. If you don't want a tantrum spiral the first time a dwarf dies, though, you're going to want to try to keep them as busy as possible so they don't have time to make friends. Personally, I accomplish this with having them haul stuff. In my current fort this means hauling green glass goblets (my primary export) up from the magma glass forges, food, blocks, and collecting sand, mostly.

As Leonidas said, your hauling needs will tend to come in waves. When I hit a low point, I just set some loose stones to be dumped to keep them busy. I also periodically have my most recent wave of immigrants all head to the drowning chamber.

Edit: Regarding dwarves making friends. Normally this is a problem because a dwarves will spend enough time talking to make friends, but not enough time to get thier social skills up very high. Consequently, when one of a dwarf's friends dies, his other friends won't have the skills needed to improve his mood enough to prevent a tantrum. So, basically you have two options:

1: Make sure your dwarves have NO downtime (aside from eating/sleeping/drinking/breaks)
2: Give your dwarves LOTS of downtime (i.e. everybody gets to take winter off every year, or something. You'll have to make sure each dwarf periodically gets some extended downtime to keep thier social skills from rusting into uselessness.)

[Psieye]

Anyone who isn't a dedicated soldier or artisan is an interchangeable Drone in my forts. That means they have 30 labours enabled for jobs where skill only affects speed, not quality. I then build 10 stills, 15 magma smelters, 9 farmer's workshops... you get the idea.

[Hyndis]

Anyone who isn't a dedicated soldier or artisan is an interchangeable Drone in my forts. That means they have 30 labours enabled for jobs where skill only affects speed, not quality. I then build 10 stills, 15 magma smelters, 9 farmer's workshops... you get the idea.

I do the same. The general purpose interchangeable dwarves are then recruited into my military as needed. The vast majority of my fortress is made up of these common dwarves who do all of the grunt work and spear catching. The good soldiers who manage to survive end up being career soldiers. The bad soldiers are replaced with new common dwarves until I find a good soldier.

[Grimlocke]

Anyone who isn't a dedicated soldier or artisan is an interchangeable Drone in my forts. That means they have 30 labours enabled for jobs where skill only affects speed, not quality. I then build 10 stills, 15 magma smelters, 9 farmer's workshops... you get the idea.

This, except that I split up farming from other misc labours. I make only few farmers and have them plant/brew/etc constantly; they become skilled quickly and then churn out rediculous quantities of food and booze.

I also tend to leave some time-waster projects around for when my main project stalls (them finishing isnt a problem; I allways got a new one). Dumping microcline into the magma sea is my favourite but theres also cleaning up the endless piles of goblin pants, obsidian farming/block making, pointless masonry projects like paving that filthy 'nature' outside with waste granite, etc etc...

In short if theres nothing useful to do theres allways something useless to do

Also making large and numerous meeting areas prevents your dwarves from getting too chummy.

[Astramancer]

I dislike Idlers as well.  I like having a nice, clean fort, so every loose stone that isn't destined to become something is marked for dumping, so it can go to one of my many atom smashing stations.  With the realities of exploratory mining and my penchant for gigantic stockpiles, this means that I usually have thousands of dumping jobs.

To ensure that all my regular hauling actually gets done, only a relatively small percentage of my haulers and will haul refuse.  So if I have idlers, I just activate refuse hauling on some of them, and the problem goes away.  If I find I need more haulers, I just deactivate refuse hauling.

I also keep pump operator activated on my haulers, but limit the number of available pumps (this way they can get their strength up and not take 20 minutes just to dump some granite).

[Psieye]

Anyone who isn't a dedicated soldier or artisan is an interchangeable Drone in my forts. That means they have 30 labours enabled for jobs where skill only affects speed, not quality. I then build 10 stills, 15 magma smelters, 9 farmer's workshops... you get the idea.

This, except that I split up farming from other misc labours. I make only few farmers and have them plant/brew/etc constantly; they become skilled quickly and then churn out rediculous quantities of food and booze.

Planting is an art, reserved for the skilled few. Threshing (at farmer's workshops) is not.

[kapusta]

I used to consider idlers a horrible evil that needed to be exterminated at all costs, but after realising that I didn't need to keep everyone busy at all times, I got used to them. Since I never create any meeting zones in my forts, my idlers don't socialise and there's never any tantrum problems.

So, idlers are fine as long as you are able to adequately manage your dwarves' happiness, and there are several ways to do that.

[Hans Lemurson]

What's wrong with idlers?  All you are losing is the POTENTIAL to have them transform their dwarven labor into wealth for the fortress.  Given how ridiculously easy it is to create wealth (either food or trade goods) with a small amount of labor, the reason you have idle dwarves is because you don't NEED them to do anything.  The labor of one dwarf can provide food clothing and shelter to about 4-5 of his compatriots.

Since the default DF social structure is a communist utopia, there is no such thing as unemployment, only free time.  From each according to their abilities: your legendary dwarfs do all the important work, And to each according to their needs: everybody has food when they are hungry, drink when they thirst, a bed to sleep on when tired, and a doctor to [eventually] mend their bones when injured.

[Zidane]

I use them as engravers, or Woodcutters. I need wood for all the god damn beds, so I just clear cut my map ever few years, THEN IT'S OFF TO MILITARY SCHOOL.

[87]

A few artisan dorfs per profession with all hauling disabled and then a fleet of haulers to bring mugs barrels and statues to the stockpiles.  Once i start getting overflow from that i devise some massive structure to be made and set them all to masonry.

[slothen]

at the moment I have a very inneficient system for getting rid of dead invader items, and for various reasons I have a small population.  cleaning and refuse dumping jobs are slowing me down so much I've had to slow down some of my industries as well as certain projects to try and keep everything organized.  I would kill for an extra 20 or so haulers.  When dwarves are idle, new jobs get done faster, stuff doesn't rot all over the place, and there are more dwarves ready and able to train in the military and do special projects.

I don't mind having idle dwarves at all.