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[meto30]

Carving the blocks from stone is a very good practice for masons, so people should have all their stoneworker dwarves making blocks when there are no tasks pending.

What if I don't care whether my masons are skilled or not and they NEVER have no tasks pending once I enter the "cover the map with megaprojects" phase?

If I were you, I'd designate 1/3 of the masons as dedicated block carvers and restrict their movement to the workshop vicinity via burrows. Seeing as most megaproject labors are hauling material to site rather than the actual construction, the masons actually building the stuff don't need high skill, so those with high masonry are more suited to the specialized workshop masons. However, the sheer amount of rock needed in megaprojects(mostly in the units of thousands and tens of thousands) often renders the whole point of efficiency moot, so it is correct that any micromanagement mostly looses meaning by this point. The only difference is that when not using blocks you employ a giant corps of miners and masons moving across the entire map, while when using blocks you have miners, hauler-masons, and carver-masons restricted to their respective work zones. The choice is up to you - although I'd still go for blocks, because the prior method causes traffic jams, which I abhor.

The fact that most of my megaprojects up to this point were more concerned with digging and casting obsidian rather than building is a side point that should be .... ahem... put aside?

To make the long story short, my argument DOES come down to personal preference once you're talking about megaprojects. The sheer amount of labor makes all small-scale considerations negligible.

[meto30]

Okay, seeing as this conversation (constructive or not) can take on forever, I think I'll run a test for everyone's benifit. I have a pretty large construction pending that is of semi-megaproject scale, so I'll just do it in my current fort.

At the current stage there are around twenty thousand units of dimension-stone quality rocks lying around the bottom levels of the 'great pit' my miners have been digging for the last 11 dwarf years. There is also a rock tower (empty, as it is a scaffolding to contain the obsidian casting to come) rising towards the sky above the pit. Both are hopelessly incomplete at this point. Until now I had too few dwarves to do any division of labor (9 dwarves... two of whom are childeren) but with the migrant wave that arrived last spring I now have considerable dwarfpower at my disposal (34 dwarves!).

What I propose is this:

• I will first set up a working layout for an efficient block-building-and-hauling labor system,
• then I'll savescum (for SCIENCE, so I hope you guys don't mind)
• first I'll build up 3 levels using the all-dwarf-stone method and see how long that takes
• then I'll do the same thing using the some-blockbuild-some-blockassemble method and compare the time taken to the first method

Hopefully the actual application of both methods will give us new insight into the economics of stone construction

[Internet Kraken]

-snip-

Who cares about how long it takes for bridges to be built though?

But seeing as blocks are much lighter than their raw block counterparts, hauling blocks should be much faster. Although, I have not actually tested for this.

I don't think any stone weighs enough to significant slow down a hauler. If they do, it will probably still slow down the hauler when it is a block as well.

Keep masons' workshops near the quarries. Your statement is based on the asumption that the workshops are far from the original path dwarves should've taken when building with rough rock. This shouldn't be so from the beginning - when the masons are working in the same area as miners, the hauling labor generated(assuming the stockpile is also present) will only be across a short distance. If the masons are working in a secluded or otherwise not-so-easy-to-access place, such as somewhere near other industries, hauling becomes a serious problem(and causes traffic jams!), but if I remember correctly masonry output is unrelated to any industry I know of, so there is no reason to place masons' workshops near other workshops in the first place.

This is an ideal scenario. Like I mentioned earlier, due to the way my forts are built the masons workshops can not be built near the mines. But eithe way, I still doubt that blocks would be more efficient. When you factor in the time it takes to haul and then make the block, it probably would have been quicker just to have a mason haul the rough stone and skip the middle man. The fact that blocks weigh less doesn't count for much when the majority of the dwarves traveling will be going through the mines back to the surface.

[meto30]

If Leonidas was correct in his hypothesis that heavy load makes for tired dwarves, then weight of the block compared to stone will have tremendous impact on overall construction time. Still, cannot be said for sure without testing. Results will be posted as soon as I'm done.

and If I remember correctly, legendary masons take like 0.5 seconds to build a block. But they don't haul any faster then unskilled masons. Thus, putting highly skilled masons to long-haul construction tasks should be considered a waste of skilled labor. And masonry is easy to train, since the training method involves BUILDING BLOCKS.

[Tsarwash]

When you are walling up caverns, faster construction time certainly can be a great advantage. Additionally, I think that blocks can be hauled ten at a time which reduces the need for extra haulers. A legendary mason can churn out blocks really quickly. I have not tested this, but if you had the masons next to the quarry, then hauled the blocks to a stockpile next to a mega project, it would seem that a lot of time can be saved. Of course a major disadvantage is that blocks cannot be used for anything apart from constructions, pumps and wells.

[BigJake]

-snip-

Who cares about how long it takes for bridges to be built though?

But seeing as blocks are much lighter than their raw block counterparts, hauling blocks should be much faster. Although, I have not actually tested for this.

I don't think any stone weighs enough to significant slow down a hauler. If they do, it will probably still slow down the hauler when it is a block as well.

Keep masons' workshops near the quarries. Your statement is based on the asumption that the workshops are far from the original path dwarves should've taken when building with rough rock. This shouldn't be so from the beginning - when the masons are working in the same area as miners, the hauling labor generated(assuming the stockpile is also present) will only be across a short distance. If the masons are working in a secluded or otherwise not-so-easy-to-access place, such as somewhere near other industries, hauling becomes a serious problem(and causes traffic jams!), but if I remember correctly masonry output is unrelated to any industry I know of, so there is no reason to place masons' workshops near other workshops in the first place.

This is an ideal scenario. Like I mentioned earlier, due to the way my forts are built the masons workshops can not be built near the mines. But eithe way, I still doubt that blocks would be more efficient. When you factor in the time it takes to haul and then make the block, it probably would have been quicker just to have a mason haul the rough stone and skip the middle man. The fact that blocks weigh less doesn't count for much when the majority of the dwarves traveling will be going through the mines back to the surface.

1)  Why would only bridges build faster with blocks?  It's a good metric because they take a while to build and their build-time can then be measured more accurately.
2)  My dwarfs move significantly faster with blocks, don't know about yours.  Why don't you try it before dismissing it out of hand?
3)  If you're not willing to commit to the greater efficiency then yea, duh, it ain't gonna work for you.

If I keep my masons and a bar stockpile for stone blocks nearby your source of stone I find them wildly more efficient than raw stone.  A decently experienced mason can churn out a ton a blocks in 21 days and when you build as many walls, floors and other constructions as I do the quicker building and hauling time really start to add up.  But that's my experience, your mileage may vary.

edit:  Not that you can't throw efficiency out the window and have a successful fortress, however!  Though, it's kinda out of place in a thread about the efficiency of blocks. (And holy crap I had a lot of typos in one short post!)

[tolkafox]

I was going to refute the above points as a 'lack of creativity not lack of usefulness of blocks' but others already beat me to it

Phooey.

[meto30]

When you are walling up caverns, faster construction time certainly can be a great advantage. Additionally, I think that blocks can be hauled ten at a time which reduces the need for extra haulers. A legendary mason can churn out blocks really quickly. I have not tested this, but if you had the masons next to the quarry, then hauled the blocks to a stockpile next to a mega project, it would seem that a lot of time can be saved. Of course a major disadvantage is that blocks cannot be used for anything apart from constructions, pumps and wells.

In case of megaprojects, the blocks created will all be used in construction and stay there anyway, so no worries there.

My megaprojects, on the other hand, usually employ blocks only as scaffolding, and thus I have to get rid of all that blocks once the project is done and the outer shell is removed. I utilize trade(trash) caravans and atom-smashers.



One more thing. When using blocks you can switch between block building and block-assembling. You use blocks until you run out of them, then you build more blocks. I'm not making any speed arguments here, because I honestly don't know which is faster. That's why I'm testing, as of right now.

[brucemo]

I assign the real mason to a mason's workshop.  Then I make everyone else a mason as well.  As far as I can tell you get no masonry experience for constructing a wall or what-not, so it's not like the mason is missing out on anything.  And it's very quick to construct something when everyone in the fort does one little bit of it.

This is also a solid argument against using blocks, since there isn't really much point in moving bins of blocks to the site, when everyone can just go find a rock, build something with it, then go back to work doing what they are supposed to be doing.

Makes cleaning up excess rock pretty easy.  I run out of common stone in my forts if I make any sort of effort to avoid unnecessary mining.

[meto30]

I assign the real mason to a mason's workshop.  Then I make everyone else a mason as well.  As far as I can tell you get no masonry experience for constructing a wall or what-not, so it's not like the mason is missing out on anything.  And it's very quick to construct something when everyone in the fort does one little bit of it.

This is also a solid argument against using blocks, since there isn't really much point in moving bins of blocks to the site, when everyone can just go find a rock, build something with it, then go back to work doing what they are supposed to be doing.

Makes cleaning up excess rock pretty easy.  I run out of common stone in my forts if I make any sort of effort to avoid unnecessary mining.

Tends to be extremly counterproductive when another labor-extensive task is present in the fort... such as harvesting. Even if it wasn't so, not dividing labor was proven again and again as unproductive. Imagine a thresher going down to the shafts to pick up some gabbro, hauling it to the top of the tower or whatever construction is in progress, assembling the wall/floor, and going to the stockpiles to find some pigtails to process at the farmer's workshop, hauling it to the workshop.... the distance  covered doing multiple things with the same dwarf is too great to justify any sort of task-sharing among dwarves.

And besides, this makes for extremly slow threshing. Kind of takes away all the benifits of having a professional thresher in the first place.

[VerdantSF]

When you are walling up caverns, faster construction time certainly can be a great advantage.

Excellent point!  Kudos to the OP, too, for the contribution to dwarven !science!

[peterix]

Build the mason workshop in the quarry, attach a stone block stockpile. Dwarves will take stones, process them into blocks and *stuff them in bins*. When you're done, demolish the workshop and move the stockpile to where you want to store the stone. Dwarves will haul whole bins.


When building stuff, think *logistics*. Move the building materials closer to the building site. And that's easier done with blocks.

[Tsarwash]

So from the earlier calculations, constructing with blocks is three to four times quicker MINUS the time taken to construct blocks. And hauling materials to the site is possibly ten times quicker MINUS the time taken to haul bins to AND from the two stockpiles used. Is this correct or have I got something horribly wrong here ?

Does a dwarf haul a bin of ten blocks as quick as one stone ?

[Funtimes]

Does a dwarf haul a bin of ten blocks as quick as one stone ?

Slower, because ten blocks weigh more, but far faster than two or three stone hauling jobs.

[zilpin]

I've always used blocks for major constructions, because stockpiles of blocks can use bins, and blocks are great practice to build skill.
Outer wall/moat is usually made with whatever is immediately nearby.  Either rough stone or wood from cleared trees.
Nice to see there is also a build time bonus to that practice.