(Searched Under Factories, Workshops, Larger Workshops, nothing really showed up that I liked or was truly related to.)
So, as we all know as of now this game is a LAG fest once you get a larger amount of dwarves, and "courtrooms" and "trials" and detectives and ect. couldn't happen as it would take up half of your population. So I'd like to present the idea of factories.
Let's Say that you want to build a fortress of, I don't know, a thousand dwarves. Dwarves going to Dwarves to and from workshops for 1 meter for materials certainly causes a massive amount of LAG, due to the amount of calculations. So here are my thoughts on how this would work. Hear me out, as a little bit of it sounds insane.
A second idea
And perhaps it would be easiest if a factory was a 7X9 building that could have 4 dwarves in it at once, requiring 4 dwarves for it to work (Schedules)
I'm going to use smithing as an example.
So, the factory would make 2 lower quality items a batch. A smithing factory would have a large smelter and 2 forge areas. In order to make let's say Iron swords, the smelter areas of the factory would be loaded from it's back room (Storage, the end 1X7 area) with maybe 20 iron (To minimize travel), and the iron would come out at the same pace it was being used up by the forgers, the flow of the bars directed by the smelters. Once the smelter reached lower than 5, the smiths would try and refill it. Once a barrel amount of the item has been made (Not sure how much) the items would be barreled and put into the end 1X7 storage.
This would require minimal movement. It would require only-
The Ore storage to be loaded with bins of ore. (Possibly by haulers between work cycles)
The Finished product area to be loaded with empty bins (Possibly by haulers between work cycles)
The Dwarves to go to the workstation
The Dwarves to take their positions
(They do their work, not needing to move, could take a while)
The Dwarves retire to leave, after several weeks of making goods straight, taking a long nap.
The finished products are taken to stockpiles.
What you guys think? Would require by far less movement than now, along with less fortress mess in general.
1. You dig out an empty room, remove everything from it. Then you would place doors to the room. Now that all sections are cut off from the outside, part 2 would begin.
2. Then you would place an anvil in the room (As a placeholder, maybe a flag or whatever) and do f to designate the room as a factory. It would expand to all walls automatically.
3. Once this happens, the game will detect if the factory has access to warm/damp stone, which will affect what functions it can do, it will also detect the amount of room it has.
4. You will then choose what function the factory does. So if I want my factory to do smithing/smelting, then it would say YES to warm stone, meaning it can 'wire' forges to heat. What would then happen is the entire thing will become a square with the title of the factory over it. Let's say this factory has 200 'room' in it. Right now I don't have much to do, so I'll only devote 10 of those to forging, and 10 to smelting. What this will do is give me 5 forges and 5 smelting areas, each one costing 2 room. The reason why it costs so little is because the rest of it would be the Factories storage, which is normally included in the workshop. So in this case, I would have 180 'room' for storage, which without barrels would be 180 spots to store stuff. Because it is one building, it would take no lag to pick up something from one side and place it in the other.
5. As of then, dwarves would come down with the necessary reasorces to build this factory, along with masons to wire it and architects to designate (You won't be able to see the inside of the factory, just a square with the function over it) To make it simple on everyone, once you make a factory you can't change it. Then if you designated work, a person would head down to inform the factory to begin production, and they would. Once they produced the item, it would remain in the factory, and a hauler would have to go inside to take stuff.
Now, factories are very efficient and all but there will be several major disadvantages compared to workshops. Workshops would be required by legendary dwarves, along with goods made from a workshop are slower to be made but also tend to be better. Also, you wouldn't be able to see a factories insides, besides the stuff in the T menu for items and the V menu for dwarves.
I'm certain there's an easier way to think of this, but that's what you guys are for. Maybe instead of being a room it could be a construction.