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[NRDL]

Draft them all in to the military. Every single one of them.

This is a good idea.   

[Puresowns]

Draft them all in to the military. Every single one of them.

This is a good idea.   

Then, if you ever feel really NICE you could take them all to the circus to meet the clowns and ride in the clowncars.

[malroth]

have them live of surface crops in a slum inside a pit underneith your walkway,  when siegers come they'll waste all their ammuniton cleaning out your ghetto for you

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Migrants?  Don't talk to me about migrants.

Wait till you see children.

[Unholy_Pariah]

simple 3 step anti useless elf migrant system
1)build 2 large bridges over a chasm and have them meet in the middle
2)set a meeting zone on the external bridge and raise internal bridge
3)raise bridge while migrants are idling on bridge (works better if you have a magma pit basketball hoop at the end of their flight path)

also works for sieges if you manage to lure enemies on

[ThatAussieGuy]

Migrants?  Don't talk to me about migrants.

Wait till you see children.

If you're VERY lucky, they do tasks.  I've got about 10-15 kids working on my dwarven water reactor right now.

[Saeldanya]

I usually have an average of about 10 idlers with a 70 dwarf fort. Are you using dwarf therapist? Very, very useful tool for handling jobs and professions, in fact, the game is nearly unplayable without it. It shows you what each dwarf is good at and what they are currently set to do - sometimes migrants come with useful skills at high levels that are just not enabled for them. It helps you identify idlers, I usually compare their skills to others to make sure I have everything covered, then draft the most useless ones into the military or make them masons to work on my fortified walls and watchtowers.

[CriticallyAshamed]

I maintain 0 idlers pretty much always... If they aren't caging poults they are hauling food, if they aren't hauling food they are hauling crafts, if they aren't hauling crafts they are quantam stockpiling. Then when everything has been hauled they are Military or builders.

[Urist Da Vinci]

If you have enough equipment to go around and a big meat industry, make like five squads of marksdwarves and bone bolts. An enormous hail of inaccurate fire is surprisingly effective at incapacitating a siege for your melee troops to clean up. You don't even need to bother with them training, really, they'll get plenty of experience from shooting at goblins.

This, except no bone bolts, because bones currently clutter workshops. Use wood or metal bolts instead.

[Number4]

This, except no bone bolts, because bones currently clutter workshops. Use wood or metal bolts instead.

Don't listen to that elf. Now manpower is NOT a concern here, simply plop down 10 workshops and use the valuable stuff for better things.

[RAKninja]

you guys who kill your migrants... you must have a booming coffin/slab industry.  or a lot of ghosts.

i've got over two hundred dwarves.  even the siege operator who lost the ability to stand and grasp things is not idle.  only the king and duchess are idle, and they only because i force them to be.

i've still got at least nine years of uninterrupted hauling waiting for me on the surface.  i've had at least three smelters metling goblinite year round for five or more years.... just expanded to eight.

the catapults help keep everyone working.  they make a lot of stone hauling.

i still have yet to expand on my construction in the final quadrant of the map.  i have a settlement of sorts at the other three.

so yea, send me 20-30 migrants.  i will promptly enable masonry on them all and start constructing.  or i'll hollow out more stockpile space and shoot out a few hundred bins.  then i'll haul another chunk of goblinite.

[Sutremaine]

My idlers are in the 70s in an 80 person fort. What am I doing wrong here?

Do you mean the idler count, or the number of dwarves not doing work? The former counts only dwarves with No Job, so if fewer than nine of your dwarves are eating, sleeping, drinking, or on break... congratulations, now make them go do something. If you really have no use for a number of dwarves, give them a barracks (plus a shield and an armour item if you're feeling nice) and let them train in their clothes. They'll learn something eventually.

[Haedrian]

What I do is mark all useless migrants with a job say "a"

Then I set their mason/engraving jobs. And I put them to work. I like above-ground construction, and I hate stones running around - so there's always a lot to do. Break stones into blocks, build stuff, smooth stuff, make everyone happy.

Then when I need a new dwarf to do something (say I need a new jeweler after the last one fell off a bridge he was deconstructing), I take from that group. Same for soldiers.

[Urist Imiknorris]

I assign my useless migrants most of the labors that need to be done en masse or that aren't moodable and don't have quality modifiers (also known as most of the farming jobs). Any plant processing, cheese making, wood burning, butchering, tanning (I have a bunch of tanner's workshops to keep up with the slaughter), etc. gets done by unskilled serfs.

[UristMcHuman]

I find no migrants useless (other than children, as they can't do anything save the basic necessities). If I get a milker, I change his labours to something (more) useful, like growing. If I get a gem setter, I put him to work mining IF I have extra picks. If I get a peasant, I conscript him.