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[Hyndis]

It would be extremely helpful to be able to just type in how many items you want made, even if the number of items is larger than 30, without having to make multiple job orders each with 30.

For example, if I want 100 gold statues to be made it would be much easier to just order 100 gold statues all at once, rather than three batches of 30 jobs and one batch of 10 jobs.

Likewise you could make essentially an infinite job queue by ordering a batch of 99999999999 brew drink jobs, or something like that.

There is likely a limit due to coding, but even if the limit is 256 jobs that would still be a huge improvement over the current limit of 30.

This should be a relatively minor change, something that could probably be done in just a few minutes, but it would be a very helpful change in that it will make macromanagement for large fortresses significantly easier. 

[Granite26]

W00t

[sockless]

W00t

If you are going to comment, please make an intelligent one.

I think that this would be good if it was tied to the level of your manager, so at level 1, they may be able to only do 20 orders, but at legendary they would be able to do a lot more.

Likewise you could make essentially an infinite job queue by ordering a batch of 99999999999 brew drink jobs, or something like that.

There is likely a limit due to coding, but even if the limit is 256 jobs that would still be a huge improvement over the current limit of 30.

A limit of 255 would be more like it, since if the limit was 256, it would be 5 bits, not 4 (1111 1111 = 255). But that's just a minor detail.

[Maklak]

I think that this would be good if it was tied to the level of your manager, so at level 1, they may be able to only do 20 orders, but at legendary they would be able to do a lot more.

Good idea. Or 10 at dabbling, and 200 at legendary +5. That would give some value to having a trained manager other than how fast he processes orders.

0 to 255 for unsigend char, -128 to 127 for signed char. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits.h)

[Zalminen]

There is likely a limit due to coding, but even if the limit is 256 jobs that would still be a huge improvement over the current limit of 30.

A limit of 255 would be more like it, since if the limit was 256, it would be 5 bits, not 4 (1111 1111 = 255). But that's just a minor detail.

Well, is there ever a need to store a job order of 0 items? If not, the limit would again be 256 as we could reuse the value 0...

[G-Flex]

Why should it be tied to skill? Why does the manager need to be more highly skilled in order to keep a higher tally of jobs? It's not like they're all queued up at once or anything like that, so there's no more work involved; the jobs are created on-demand.

[Granite26]

Why should it be tied to skill? Why does the manager need to be more highly skilled in order to keep a higher tally of jobs? It's not like they're all queued up at once or anything like that, so there's no more work involved; the jobs are created on-demand.

Well, in the real world, things get dropped, emails get ignored, permits don't get filed on time, and I know I had that document around here somewhere...

Making unskilled managers occasionally drop tasks seems like a horrible idea, but force limiting their tasks to what they can keep track of seems like a fair compromise.

Because I'm a horrible person:  Why not allow skilled managers to 'hire' (a la military screen) underlings to help out.  There's a neat way to equate skill to extra capacity, and it's also lets us give jobs to more dwarves.

[Bohandas]

Because I'm a horrible person:  Why not allow skilled managers to 'hire' (a la military screen) underlings to help out.  There's a neat way to equate skill to extra capacity, and it's also lets us give jobs to more dwarves.

Don't think I can tie it to skill, but:

   [POSITION:ASSISTANT_MANAGER]
      [NAME:assistant manager:assistant managers]
      [SITE]
      [NUMBER:AS_NEEDED]
      [RESPONSIBILITY:MANAGE_PRODUCTION]
      [APPOINTED_BY:MANAGER]
      [PRECEDENCE:180]
      [DO_NOT_CULL]
      [COLOR:5:0:0]
      [DUTY_BOUND]
      [REQUIRED_OFFICE:1]

[G-Flex]

Making unskilled managers occasionally drop tasks seems like a horrible idea, but force limiting their tasks to what they can keep track of seems like a fair compromise.

My point is that there's nothing for them to keep track of. The manager's job (in an abstract sense, here) is to look at his list, see "Oh, we still need X more beds", then assign bed-making jobs to whatever carpentry shops are free. This is just as easy/hard regardless of whether X is 4 or 40.

Now, if all those jobs had to be planned out beforehand, things would be different, but that is not the case.

[Granite26]

Making unskilled managers occasionally drop tasks seems like a horrible idea, but force limiting their tasks to what they can keep track of seems like a fair compromise.

My point is that there's nothing for them to keep track of. The manager's job (in an abstract sense, here) is to look at his list, see "Oh, we still need X more beds", then assign bed-making jobs to whatever carpentry shops are free. This is just as easy/hard regardless of whether X is 4 or 40.

Now, if all those jobs had to be planned out beforehand, things would be different, but that is not the case.

See, that's why the manager skill means they need more underlings.  The problem is that they are running out of fingers.  More underlings, more fingers to count on

[G-Flex]

Once we get better fortress prioritization and automation (like standing production orders, conditional orders, etc.) then those would be perfect ways to flesh out the manager, I think.

[sockless]

Another thing we could do is make a max number of jobs that the manager can handle at a time, tied to their level of course. It would make assigning assistant managers a lot more useful too.

[blizzerd]

why not instead make jobs more organised with higher manager level?

have only 1 metalsmith and 1 weaponsmith, 2 forges, and jobs for 30 goblets and 30 spears?

normally both forges will add the spears to the que, but there is only 1 weaponsmith...

the higher the level, the better the optimisation

[Granite26]

why not instead make jobs more organised with higher manager level?

have only 1 metalsmith and 1 weaponsmith, 2 forges, and jobs for 30 goblets and 30 spears?

normally both forges will add the spears to the que, but there is only 1 weaponsmith...

the higher the level, the better the optimisation

Kinda doable with (q)workshop (P)rofiles... it's on the dwarf level, not skill level, but still.

[Hyndis]

I was thinking of a way to just improve gameplay. Realism or whatnot doesn't factor into it, its just something for the player to make things easier for the player.

Each item you queue up seems to take a finite amount of time. If you have a legendary manager this is done nearly instantly, but a dabbling manager will do an order of 1 item far faster than they will do an order of 30 items. In this case, if you do an order of, say, 200 items, then your manager will be working for quite some time in his office to queue everything up.

Again, I'm hoping to keep things simple. I'm hoping such a change like this could be ready for 31.20. Assistant managers and all of that other stuff? No thanks.

I don't know how Toady is coding the game or what the code for the manager screen is, but 30 does seem like a completely arbitrary number. The limit would be probably be 255 or 256, and even if the limit were increased to that it would be very awesome.

Its just a simple, 5 minute request for 31.20, nothing more. Its only to improve gameplay and streamline the UI in only that aspect. Simple changes can drastically improve gameplay, and in this case, it would likely be a very simple change that could be made which would significantly improve the UI for players who like to run large forts with massive industrial bases.