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[Maximus]

I've got a drink stockpile near my smithies but there's a barrel in it that dwarves keep hauling seeds and seed bags to.  It's listed as "owned" by a seed stockpile <83> but I don't have a lot of item haulers (or is it furniture?) so it has been stuck on the wrong pile for months.

A bit of a tweak is in order: can you prohibit dwarves from moving items into barrels/bins/bags if the container is not actually on the stockpile which owns it?

[Toady One]

Is this a bug?  Your food haulers are hauling food to a designated food barrel -- if the barrel doesn't get hauled but your food starts rotting, I'm sure there'd be complaints in that situation as well.  It might make the haul times longer if the barrel doesn't get hauled eventually, to the point where rotting food gets overshadowed, but it's another of those situations that would demand careful optimization rather than just making it one way or the other.

[Maximus]

Well, it's a throwback to the problem of "rogue" barrels and bins, and defeats the function of stockpile specialization.  And of stockpile placement in general, really.

I certainly don't want the food to rot, but having all my food haulers trekking across the fortress to put one seed at a time in bags in my magma glass furnace (formerly sand bags) creates tremendous rot.  It takes them 2+ days to haul each seed and meanwhile the kitchen, trade depot, and butcher's shop get neglected and do a very convincing rendition of "Purple Haze".

Think of it: if you told a person in real life "store these seeds right here, in barrels", and they walked halfway through the building again and again and again rather than move the barrel to the desired place first, you'd smack them in the head.

[ January 13, 2007: Message edited by: Maximus ]

[axus]

I've had that too, I think they do it to barrels in the furniture pile as well.  Will have to double check.  Shouldn't they be bringing it to the empty barrels in the first stockpile that takes seeds?  I'm not sure how an empty barrel first gets to a stockpile, but I'd prefer they move the barrel to the stockpile, then start filling it.

[Toady One]

I suspect we'll see a complaint the other way once a configuration arises where it causes some rot ("there was a designated food barrel RIGHT THERE!  and they NEVER used it!"), but it's probably best to change it for now.  I don't think it is as clear-cut as you are suggesting though (I wouldn't smack them in the head if the food would rot otherwise), unless there's an unstated implication that the food haulers stop what they are doing and haul the empty barrel itself first, which is an additional matter.  Perhaps haulers within a given profession should handle empty containers for those piles in addition to the stored items themselves.

[Maximus]

quote:Originally posted by Toady One:
I don't think it is as clear-cut as you are suggesting though (I wouldn't smack them in the head if the food would rot otherwise)

Since food can be stored "naked" on a stockpile, the absence of a barrel there doesn't create rot.  Maybe barrels will become a food-storage requirement at some point.  I could deal with that, although dwarves better learn to haul things with the shortest time-to-rot first.  

quote:Perhaps haulers within a given profession should handle empty containers for those piles in addition to the stored items themselves.

Yeah, I think that would simplfy hauling management for the player.  Right now I believe I need item haulers for the barrels, but furniture haulers for the bags.  And in both cases I'm just seeking food hauling/storage.

[Toady One]

As a sidenote, the barrels decrease loss of food to rats, lizards and large roaches by a large factor, so food loss (to the extent that it is a problem at all) is still something to look out for.

Also, things rot in shops, and food piles fill up faster without barrels.  Not that you can store prepared food in barrels half the time anyway...

[ January 15, 2007: Message edited by: Toady One ]

[Aquillion]

Hmm...  do barrels also help you avoid attracting vermin in the first place?  That'd be nice to know, since vermin are a constant happiness-hit and it's nice to know of a way to deal with them a little...

[Toady One]

Yeah, food in barrels is not considered during "eater" (rat etc.) placement.  All properly stored food (as long as it isn't rotten, barrel or not) is not considered when it thinks about making flies.  It will place flies by the swamps if it doesn't find something rotten or misplaced for them.

[Maximus]

Is vermin-consumed food reported in any way?  This has been an invisible factor for me so far.  Maybe you could change whatever food gets eaten into "infested <food>".

Separately: do dwarves ever consolidate stockpiles into containers?  By this I mean if a stockpile has 10 food and a barrel gets added to it, will that food get moved into the barrel sooner or later?

[axus]

If I could set a priority list for items, I could set barrel hauling over other kinds of furniture, and over seed priority :-D

The dwarves just seem to take forever to move the foreign barrel once its being used to store things, its almost like the haul jobs are tasking the barrel.  They don't seem slow about moving the empty barrels back to the furniture stockpile when you are burning through your food supply.  

[Toady One]

Yeah, a piece of food that is in a stockpile but not in a barrel will go into a barrel if it fits.  The vermin aren't microscopic -- they are the rats, lizards and roaches, so the food is consumed completely.  It doesn't report it.  It could report it at around the spam level of a macaque taking your shirt.  People will want message filters if they have large unbarreled stockpiles, because it will occur fairly frequently.

It's hard to make job priorities fluid.  We've had a few threads on this.  I know about what I want to try, but it will take a while.

[Aquillion]

Maybe some status screen somewhere could just give the player an overall indicator of their vermin problem, telling them how much food was lost to vermin in the past season or whatever?

Actually, it would be real nice to have a general 'problems in the fortress' screen that indicates what the main issues you're facing at the moment are...  that could be one of the things listed there, if you're losing a significent amount of food (or happiness) to vermin.

[Maximus]

I'd like to elaborate on my idea of "infested" food some more, as I think it's a good solution.  The food would be inedible as soon as it turned infested, and would disappear a few days later.  To give players a fast overview of how much infestation they're experiencing, maybe infested food could be given a new icon (brown superscript 2?).  No announcements would need to be made.

[Nakar]

quote:Originally posted by Toady One:
<STRONG>Yeah, a piece of food that is in a stockpile but not in a barrel will go into a barrel if it fits.</STRONG>

What if it DOESN'T fit? Most prepared meal stacks are too large for barrels.