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[Girlinhat]

Why should I care?  Why do you care?  Why do I have an entire windmill precariously balanced upon a single rock bucket, aside from the obvious?

[orbcontrolled]

I suppose it would make more sense if querns tired dwarves out the same way pumps do.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Why should I care?  Why do you care?  Why do I have an entire windmill precariously balanced upon a single rock bucket, aside from the obvious?

Obvious? AFAIK, no one has done any science to see if there are any benefits to either a quern or a millstone. There is speculation, some of which is said over and over again, such as "millstones are faster", but I can't find any proof/testing/Toady quotes on the forums.

[white_darkness]

How would you go about testing this?  Just getting the jobs to start up at the same time would be a nightmare in and of itself to have them race and see who wins. (on speed).

There's the obvious advantage though, there's not a dwarf standing there working while the cave wheat is ground up with a millstone.

[Patchy]

There's the obvious advantage though, there's not a dwarf standing there working while the cave wheat is ground up with a millstone.

Yeah, but who doesn't have several dozen lazy migrants loafing around that have other things to do than stand at a quern for awhile. And you can make several dozen querns if you really need to anyways, just costs a stone each and again who doesn't have several thousand of those lying around. I rarely make millstones until the fort is pretty much done.

[orbcontrolled]

There's the obvious advantage though, there's not a dwarf standing there working while the cave wheat is ground up with a millstone.

Is that new? Last time I used millstones (probably back in 40d, admittedly) the dwarf had to stand there for the duration of the task anyway, just like any other workshop.

[Malibu Stacey]

There's the obvious advantage though, there's not a dwarf standing there working while the cave wheat is ground up with a millstone.

Is that new? Last time I used millstones (probably back in 40d, admittedly) the dwarf had to stand there for the duration of the task anyway, just like any other workshop.

I used millstones in 40d & they'd load them up & leave them to work.

Never used a Quern since Windmills are so easy to set up for the trivial amount of power a millstone requires.

[white_darkness]

Never saw a dwarf stand by a millstone in 40d either.  They'd load it up and then run off to do whatever...maybe pull a lever somewhere or something.

But is it more efficient?  Does skill have an impact?

[Urist Da Vinci]

Just tested millstones vs querns:

In both cases, the dwarf will put the plant on the workshop, and then get a bag and put it on the workshop. They will then stand at the workshop for a few seconds, and then you have flour/sugar/dye and some seeds.

The same dwarf, with a novice skill level, used both types of milling workshops. He DID take less time to mill the plants at the powered millstone than at the quern. I didn't count ticks, but it took around two times as much time to do the job on the quern as on the millstone.

The plant doesn't turn into flour/sugar/dye unless there is a dwarf standing there, so the dwarves don't "leave them to work"

[Naryar]

Bah, millstones are not worth it. Quern gives your useless migrants something to do.

[white_darkness]

those sneaky dwarves, sneaking off all this time to go drink and socialize rather than do work.

Sounds like a job for giving the dwarves access to the whip skill and creating an appoint-able "noble" called the "overseer" who "encourages" idle dwarves to get to work.

The little slackers...

[ThrowerOfStones]

Wait a second... people use querns and millstones?

The only time I've ever built either was when I got an artifact quern.

[Uristocrat]

Wait a second... people use querns and millstones?

The only time I've ever built either was when I got an artifact quern.

Yeah, you use them to make dye (among other things) and have your otherwise useless migrants dye cloth & thread.

[Edosurist]

Bah, millstones are not worth it. Quern gives your useless migrants something to do.

Ya, but if each dwarf just has to fill it then empty it, and you have multiple millstones powered by one windmill (2 or 4 millstones) or waterwheel (10 millstones), multiply it by each miller-dwarf, then you get a whole production line, and you can sell milled goods as your main source of income to all traders, allowing you to take the whole caravan, and even more for donations to become a monarchy faster (donations are a requirement, right?)

[white_darkness]

Except they actually have to be monitored by a dwarf unlike what a lot of us thought.

Oh well, flour is still a cooking ingredient.