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[Pan]

So, my fortress is at a pop of 150. I have organized stockpiles, a huge fortress dug out (miners are more or less retired for life now), and all the stone quantum dumped next to the mason workshops. However, I now face the problem - the haulers now have nothing to do. The 30 haulers I employ will occasionally carry the stuff my workshops produce, and occasionally during the aftermath of a siege, they will go and haul the goblinite and their clothes back into the fortress. However, mostly they just sit around, making friends and getting fat. My 40 man military is not accepting any members, and all the other industries have competent enough members that I won't be adding any trainees to them. What should I do with the idle haulers?

The problem at the moments is only with the haulers. I fear the engravers will be next, with my fortress being fully engraved soon, and the furnace ops soon after (running out of tetrahedrite and the other decoration metal ores).

[Scruga]

Search for megaproject on the wiki

[AutomataKittay]

You'll always need the furnace to melt down goblinite! Sounds like megaproject time, or since you mentioned miners being retired, running an obsidian farm. Or does you already have that and tree farm to keep your miners and woodiers busy? You'll always need a bunch of haulers around for bursts of activity, such as goblinite harvesting 

If nothing else, you can run experiments or abuse the haulers in creative ways to test things out.

[Pan]

...furnace to melt down goblinite!...

I'm such an idiot for forgetting that...

Sounds like megaproject time

Search for megaproject on the wiki

Not much megaprojects. No one to show off to, and I prefer invasions ON.

You'll always need a bunch of haulers around for bursts of activity, such as goblinite harvesting 

Yes, but I really prefer them working steadily, at all times whenever they are not eating, sleeping or on break, cuz I usually keep DF running in the background, checking every now and then for ambushes or siege alerts. I don't really like supervising each and every one of them. Something about the idlers bar showing more than 10 idlers at one time irks me very much.

[Soapalope]

Use them for something constructive: Get them to Legendary Swimmer status. Then, we shall see if the Sturgeon and Carp are to be feared...

[Jake]

Draft them into the militia and set up training so that you always have a squad on stag at the entrance.

[NecroRebel]

Train them all in your military, then assault the depths! 70 soldiers will only be somewhat outnumbered when the circus comes to town!

[Thatdude]

Well if you aren't going to do any mega projects when it seems that you have everything else covered, what else is there to do?

Anyway, if you think invaders stop you from creating mega-projects, then what kind of dwarf are you? If the goblins come while you're outside building then they're just going to have to wait until your done before you fight! Invaders make mega-projects more !!fun!! so embrace it!

[Zaroua]

Micro manage their skills and item/material preferences in order to have them create highly desirable artifacts. Urist McHerbalist likes Adamantine and Battle Axes while Rigoth McCook likes Platinum and Whips...

[McDwarf]

Have all your haulers be pump operators and build a gym (dry screw pumps).
Then they can build up their strength and endurance and become better haulers.

[celem]

Train them to novice weaponsmith (not engravers). I do this with anyone who doesnt do a moodable job.  May as well be of some use.

By all means find more work, training seige ops could work.  Non-moodable stuff

[Quadricwan]

Draft them into "gladiator" squads and hurl them, untrained, against whatever monsters you can capture.  If you're lucky, they'll tantrum spiral and you'll have found something to occupy your fortress!

[Poch]

Build a few levels high hole on top of your hospital. Build retracting bridges on every Z level from the top of the hole down to the hospital floor. Assign your haulers to squads and make them move, put a squad on every bridge you built.

Now, build a lever to control all those cool retracting bridges. Ask someone casual to pull that lever. Watch those little creatures fly for a while before they heavily land on the masterfully-detailed-hospital-floor.

Good points :

• It will train the medics to legendary eventually. Might be usefull to save your precious, no-hauling things, dwarves
• If they loose their legs, after a while you will have very fast, legendary, crutch walker. Then make a Fast Intervention Beer-powered-squad
• You will discover how many levels-high a dwarf can fall to be sure he will die. !!SCIENCE!!
• Eventually, you will discover the unbreakable dwarf, the one who can survive anything, and you'll can start a genetic enhancement program

[GabrielSev]

You could sacrifice them to the blood god, preferably in a stylish way? Make a huge pit, put dwarves at bottom, either put a titan in there or drop magma/rocks on them. Gday.

[Dakk]

I draft anyone that doesn't carry skills i'm interested in, half the time. Other half I turn them into miners/engravers/mason/architect/stonecrafters, since those are aways in high demand in my forts. Alternatively, people to make charcoal en masse when I don't have magma.