Print

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

[dehodson]

Recently re-discovered dwarf fortress, been playing for the last two weeks.
My problem is that after a few migrant waves, I find my dwarves professions to become a tad unmanageable.
With more than 50% of my dwarves idle, even with tons of new construction, smoothing, engraving, woodcutting, crafting, and hauling going on, I feel this is far less than optimal.

All my dwarves are happy and healty, but I'd still like to increase productivity. Any tips?

[Ferrus]

Idlers are the norm in any well-stocked fort, really.

The only thing I can think of is mass-dumping stones or other stuff to keep them occupied or a mega construction with lots and lots of masons.

Having a filthy horde of Novice Cheese Makers stand around with their thumbs up their rear ends only to have one suddenly rush off and craft some weird artifact with images of cheese in donkey bone on it is what makes DF special.

[lorb]

Maybe Dwarftherapist can help you to manage professions?

Also: Start cloth industrie, metal industrie (if you can), food industrie ....
Also: You can draft them into military if there is really no use for them

[Quietust]

Don't think of the idle dwarves count as a number of dwarves who don't have anything to do - think of it as a number of dwarves that are immediately available to perform any sort of task. If you have 0 idle dwarves and you need to get something important done (e.g. gather up goblinite from a recent siege so that kobolds don't come by and steal it, making them brave enough to ambush you), then you're screwed, but if you have dozens of idle dwarves available, then they're the ones that'll get the job done for you.

[Bererez]

This is an easy problem to deal with if you select two or more synergistic industries and tasks on which to strongly focus. I like glass production, masonry, and food production. These three ensure that my mega project keeps growing and my dwarfs stay fed. If I get idlers I give them one or more of my preferred labors and the problem is solved. If you still have more idlers and don't want any more workers for your core industries just draft them into the military. That'll show those lazy bastards.

This is how I'm keeping my ~130 dwarf strong fort running at 0 idle.

[Jelle]

I've been playing dwarf fortress again as well recently, and yes I do think the migrants come to fast personally.
If it troubles you there's always the option of setting a new max amount of dwarves in your fortress and changing it to a higher number once you think you're ready to manage.
Or you could play a microfort and leave the number low if you prefer.

[malimbar04]

Four options I like to employ:
- mass masons  to create huge towers etc
- drop them a few floors for doctoring practice
- massive military training - a half dozen squads of wrestlers is better than several dozen talkers competing for mayor
- Let them party in a statue-garden in a mist generator.

[Lamphare]

it's pretty much why there are megaprojects.
the other fun thing i do is to mass dump stones between too dump sites, if i dont have a megaproject at the moment, which is quite unlikely, but,
all hail bureaucracy!

[plisskin]

Another solution is to scale back your max population from the number of idlers you have. I think you need a minimum of 80 to get sieges but I'm always quite satisfied with a max of 60. I still get enough ambushes to make things interesting. This also helps your FPS stay in good shape.

Out of all suggestions offered here, I'd go with this plan since you have something like half of your pop. standing around bored: start an ambitious construction project to occupy 1/3 of them, and assign another 1/3 of them to military squads for training. Give the remaining dwarves new labors they aren't trained in, such as masonry, and have them do something like construct rock blocks on repeat. And leave 3 - 6 idlers, ideally lazy nobles who will improve their social skills, free for random tasks depending on the size of the fort.