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[spacedwarf]

I have 3 medium sized dining rooms in my current fortress, each with ~12 tables and twice that number of chairs.  (The chairs are on the left and right of the tables, if that makes a difference.)  All 150 of the dwarves ignore the dining rooms and tend to eat in the food stockpiles.  I have managed to pull off functional dining rooms in the past and can't figure out what I'm doing wrong this time.  In each dining room, I have designated one table as a dining room and a meeting hall, and sized the room to fit all of the other tables.  Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong / tips for getting the dwarves to eat in the dining rooms?

Thanks in advance.

[Quietust]

Are your dwarves capable of pathing into the dining rooms (i.e. are all of the doors unlocked)?

Do you have any burrow restrictions in effect that might be preventing your dwarves from entering the dining rooms?

Have you accidentally forbidden the chairs and/or tables making up those dining rooms?

[nomad_delta]

Also are you sure they're eating at the stockpiles and not drinking?  It's normal for dwarves to drink at the stockpile, which I think they do more frequently than they eat, so you'll always see a bunch of dwarves hanging out at your beverages pile up-ending barrels into their faces.

--nomad_delta

[spacedwarf]

Thanks for the suggestions.  Double-checked the doors and made sure none of the tables/chairs were forbidden.  You seem to be right about the drinking; they seem only to drink at the stockpiles.  I've managed to catch a few eating at the tables since then.  I guess I just expected that with 150 dwarves the dining rooms would be packed 24/7.

[Poindexterity]

once those goblets you've been making can actually be used to drink liquor from, i think they will.

[treczoks]

I have 3 medium sized dining rooms in my current fortress, each with ~12 tables and twice that number of chairs.

Just to be safe: Have you made the rooms "dining rooms" or did you just set up tables and chairs? Have you marked the room as a publich meeting room?

No offence meant, but sometimes it is the simple things...

Treczoks

[Diicc Tater]

Am I wrong or will having 2 chairs per table cause some problem? Dwarfs don't like crowding, right?

[MiniMacker]

Am I wrong or will having 2 chairs per table cause some problem? Dwarfs don't like crowding, right?

Aye, Dwarves like having an entire table for themselves. If they have to share it with another Dorf, they'll get a bad thought of the lack of tables.

[knutor]

I have 3 medium sized dining rooms in my current fortress, each with ~12 tables and twice that number of chairs.

Just to be safe: Have you made the rooms "dining rooms" or did you just set up tables and chairs? Have you marked the room as a publich meeting room?

No offence meant, but sometimes it is the simple things...

Treczoks

Don't think that matters.  Way I understand it, is the meeting area settings on stuff are for partying, not eating.  Any free table will work to satisfy an eat request.  It'll work better with a free chair next to it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I remove my table meeting settings, once I have a Well.  A Well has two options to produce happy thoughts.  Bucket and Rope.  A Table has just the one, Table.  A good designed Well also has Hatches and Grates to produce even more happiness.  Along with Soap, and Waterfalls, its the place to hangout in, ha! 

Glad ya started this thread because I forgot to do that in my present game.  Doh!

Knutor

edit: spoilerize

[i2amroy]

If a dwarf eats at a table that is not in a dining room, they will fail to get the "ate in a legendary dining room recently" thought, regardless of how nice their surroundings are. Personally I view having to deal with the occasional party well worth it for keeping my dwarves all ecstatic and tantrum free. Plus having 10-20 dwarves partying hardly ever makes a difference when you have 190 dwarves with several redundants for each job.

[Starver]

I never have parties.  (Well, last time I remember one was in a 40d fortress.)  I put this down to not setting meeting areas.  My dining rooms are merely dining rooms, my wells are merely wells.  No (intentional) water-cooler moments and no parties, but everything else seems to work just fine.  Immigrants map into the natural centre of the complex (not sure how they decided that, and I'm not going to investigate this, next time it happens), and then lose their flashing 'X', without a meeting area, either.

Sorry, OP's original problem in the OP now having seemingly been solved, I just thought I'd add this personal view after reading the last post.

[spacedwarf]

I have 3 medium sized dining rooms in my current fortress, each with ~12 tables and twice that number of chairs.

Just to be safe: Have you made the rooms "dining rooms" or did you just set up tables and chairs? Have you marked the room as a publich meeting room?

No offence meant, but sometimes it is the simple things...

Treczoks

Yup, they are officially dining rooms and also are meeting halls.  It seems that the dwarves at the stockpiles are just drinking, like nomad_delta pointed out.

(Sorry, but I can't help myself from the following snarkiness, and it's intended in good humor:)

No offense meant, but sometimes the simple things, like reading past the first sentence, can be quite revealing:

I have 3 medium sized dining rooms in my current fortress, each with ~12 tables and twice that number of chairs. [...]  In each dining room, I have designated one table as a dining room and a meeting hall, and sized the room to fit all of the other tables.

 

once those goblets you've been making can actually be used to drink liquor from, i think they will.

 

Didn't realize the goblets could actually be used to drink from.  I've never made them before.  Is this a current or future feature?

Thanks again for all of the quick replies.

[i2amroy]

once those goblets you've been making can actually be used to drink liquor from, i think they will.

Didn't realize the goblets could actually be used to drink from.  I've never made them before.  Is this a current or future feature?

Future feature. Currently the only thing that mugs and goblets are useful for is trading them to the caravans for actual useful things.

[khearn]

I also never end up with parties. I don't designate meeting halls from my tables. I set up "Meeting Area" zones in my dining halls with the 'i' zone tool, and then use 'm' to make it a meeting area. Dwarves with no jobs will still congregate there, new migrants will go there upon arrival, but I never get parties.

[Endiqua]

I only have parties when I set up a statue garden or a dining room that is also a meeting hall.  No garden or hall, no parties.  I usually set up a party place once I get a big enough population to still get work done despite a bunch of slackers.