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[dj_ryan]

I'm having problems managing my stock piles.  The basic stuff is working, wood goes in the wood, and things seem to be ok.  But I am having a hard time getting my dwarves to store bars in the proper stockpiles.  I have just gotten my metal industry underway and I wanted to store my fuel in a stockpile so I can (a) count it with 'k' mode and (b) keep that smelter clear for workshop efficiency. 

So I created a stockpile using custom, and being wary of the 'allow all' 'block all' feature I created a bar stockpile for charcoal/etc only.  I then created another one for metal bars only.  They remain annoyingly clear.  I have spare bins. From my stone days I have a bar stockpile for stone, but includes all other types as well... some bars end up there, but many just hang out in the workshop.  I even tried using the take feature, and nothing is moving.  So I finally created an all bar stockpile and everything moved there - all the coke and iron bars from the workshops (that are about 5 away), and ALL the stone blocks as well.  Getting the flow to reverse with 't' proves impossible as well.

My fortress has 50-some dwarves (and a mayor too!), and nearly all the dwarves have hauling on (Except for a few like brewers).  They will dump stone, haul wood, and do all their other jobs though.

I also have a small problem with food stockpiles... my fields are filling up with food!  I can't get them to harvest... I deleted a few food stockpiles and re-created them, and that helped, but they still wont collect every last item.  In fact I still have some bags and possibly leather at the trade depot as well!  Creating what I think is the appropriate stockpiles doesnt seem to coerce them in to carrying it.  They had left finished meals in the kitchen until it hit max cluttered capacity!  I also tried a seed only stockpile and 'taking' things to that pile, but still nothing.  I have bags, bins, barrels. 

Some of the trips are pretty far, like 40-50, but come on dwarves, dont be so lazy!

This is a pretty persistent issue, ongoing for probably 6 game months.  With 30-50 dwarves not all of them are doing work and many of them are 'no job'.

This is all on 0.31.14, on OSX if that makes a difference.  I ported the save game from windows where I think the problems may have started.  It's a major bummer since this is a pretty awesome fort so far, but this stockpile management is going to make efficient metal industry very difficult.

[Astramancer]

From your descriptions, it sounds like part of your problem is you don't have enough dwarves laboring.  Do you ever have an idlers?  Do you have a massive mega-construction that you're building and everyone has masonry enabled?  Do you have a massive stoneclearing Dump in progress?

Any/all of these will result in at least some of the behaviors you're experiences.  Another issue that I've noticed is that dwarves tend to suck at taking stuff that's already being stored in a bin and moving it to the correct stockpile when you change the setting.  For example: if you have a bar/block stockpile and decide to remove Coke as an option for something stored there, and you then create another stockpile that's Coke-only, then I've noticed it takes forever for the dwarves to remove the Coke from the first stockpile.  If possible, it's best to try to make them separate in the first place.

You may want to consider having a few dedicated haulers -- like getting a dwarf or two with no labors except food hauling.  Assuming you have the stockpile space, this should keep your kitchen from cluttering up.

Also, seeing how much fuel you have using 'k' is probably the most inefficient way possible.  Assuming you have a bookkeeper who's done the work, you can just look in the z-stocks screen and get a count of all the fuel you have.

[dj_ryan]

Like I said, i have 50 dwarves with only 3 of them with labour turned off.  I have idlers all the time sometimes even 10-20 idlers.  There is no mega building project, no massive stone dump projects.  When I do stone dumps, they get on it and make it happen, then get back to drinking and generally being lazy.

The dedicated haulers for food sounds like a great idea.  I'll do that sometimes.

I have been experimenting with deleting stockpiles and moving them to allow them to move items around.  Even so, I am unable to create a bar only stockpile that gets filled, they seem to prefer the general stockpiles first.  The 't'ake feature just doesnt seem to work to get metal bars to flow to a metal-bar only stockpile.  Actually I can't get the seeds to flow to a seed-only stockpile - gotta get that planting efficiency up.  I suspect bug at this point.

But aside from the 'k' issue, getting that fuel out of the workshop is important or else I'll end up with clutter and reduced efficiency.  Bad bad bad.

[varangian]

Re the fuel stockpile this should work as it did for me. Initially I had a generic bar/block pile where everything went. As things developed I decided to make a fuel only one near the forges and smelters so I set up a custom one nearby and disallowed everything except the Bar/Blocks->Bars->Coal path. What I noticed was nothing went there until I changed the setting on the first stockpile to disallow coal. It seems that dwarves prefer to put stuff on the oldest created pile, when there's a choice, even if that means a longer walk.

Re your food problems I think stuff gets left on the fields if there's nowhere else to stash it. I had a similar situation which I was able to fix by:

a) Expanding a food stockpile that took everything except plant drinks (i.e. all the booze) and prepared meals. A bunch of barrels are needed for this otherwise it may rot. This started to clear the fields.
b) Setting up two kitchens and getting the chefs working full time making the best prepared meals they can with the ingredients available. Lavish in my case as I had a wide range of foodstuffs coming in from the fields, the fisherdwarves, hunting dwarves and my ever expanding donkey and cow population. This should pull stuff from the raw food stockpile and stop that filling up.
c) Ditto with stills. Set up some more stockpiles to take only prepared food and booze respectively to keep the workshops uncluttered.

Once I'd got this system established I kept an eye on the stockpiles for the end products and, when it was clear that I was not going to be running short of either, I went back to the farm plots and set them to go fallow for a season. Even so my fortress has stacks of legendary meals all over the place, which I flog for megabucks to all and sundry, whilst the dwarves are constantly ecstatic thanks to the fact they're never more than a short walk away from more booze than even they can dream of.

[FuzzyZergling]

To force the bars out of the workshop, you could zone a dump where the stockpile is, dump the bars, then kill the dump and reclame the bars that are now on their own stockpile.

If food is rotting in the fields, you may want to enable all dwarves to harvest plants. Do this in the (o)rders menu.

[Quietust]

If you have bins containing mixed materials such that no stockpile will accept all of them, dwarves won't be smart enough to actually remove the items from the bins to restock them in proper locations. In order to solve this, you must declare a stockpile which accepts all of your bars/blocks and then, one stockpile at a time, set your other stockpiles to take from the source stockpile until everything's transferred (and set the source to no longer permit the items once they're all separated out).

[Astramancer]

Huh, never noticed the oldest stockpile first tendency -- which actually makes sense depending on implementation.  If it's just a loop that goes through all the stockpiles to see where something might go, then yeah, it would go to the oldest one first.

As for mixed-item bins, I seem to recalling hearing a while ago that if you dump the bin (but not the contents), they'll come grab the bin and leave behind a pile of stuff, which can then be resorted.  Dunno if I'm remembering right, but it should be easy enough to test.

[dj_ryan]

the wiki says there is a bug in that you cant 'undesignate' a stockpile... does this mean you cant 'take things away' from the stockpile in the settings screen? ie: turn off one material type in an existing stockpile?

Maybe I'll try my savegame in windows, perhaps im seeing osx only bugs?

[FleshForge]

Something worth checking is the Orders menu: o-h (all harvest/only farmers harvest).  I have had it happen that farmers are actually too busy to harvest and they let their crops rot.  Might see if that option is enabled.

This is a fairly nasty problem when it happens, because it wastes the seeds.

[varangian]

Huh, never noticed the oldest stockpile first tendency -- which actually makes sense depending on implementation.

I had a look in the wiki but didn't find anything to confirm or refute the notion. However when I set up a custom stockpile adjacent to the relevant workshops to take doors, cabinets etc., that were only going to be used in the bedroom building operations happening a z-level below, it stayed empty as dwarves kept on hauling the stuff up a level and right across the fortress to the original generic furniture stockpile. Only when I disallowed such stuff from that stockpile did it start to go where intended. Until then I'd assumed that 'nearest first' would be the algorithm they'd use but, such is the industry of dwarves, they seem to prefer to haul it a long way in the wrong direction and back again.

[slothen]

dwarves will not store stone blocks in bar/block stockpiles unless you enable stone blocks AND enable all metal blocks and specifically disable the 'actual' metals listed there.

[pushy]

the wiki says there is a bug in that you cant 'undesignate' a stockpile... does this mean you cant 'take things away' from the stockpile in the settings screen? ie: turn off one material type in an existing stockpile?

It's likely that's just a load of shit. Looking at the bug tracker, drayath created this report on the same day that note about the supposed stockpile bug was reported...but there's no other bug in the tracker that I can see which suggests it's been happening to other people, I've never heard of it happening to other people and I've never experienced it either (and I piss around with moving stockpiles all the time). Have removed that from the wiki. If drayath or anyone else can prove that it does happen and it's not a case of human error then it should probably be re-added and a save and more details posted for the bug tracker

[Fredd]

Make sure furniture hauling is not disabled. That can cause a huge mess.