v0.31:Hauling

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Hauling is the process of bringing an object to its designated place. There are several specific types of hauling, based on the type of item(s) to be hauled and determined by designating the specific Template:Ls on indivual dwarves.

Although not a term found in-game, hauler generally refers to a dwarf in Template:L who has no labors enabled other than hauling. In large fortresses where there may be great distances for haulers to travel, individual hauling tasks may take a long time to complete. Haulers are good candidates for Template:L to help improve their strength and agility Template:L, which are important attributes for moving heavy objects across a fortress quickly.

Many larger fortresses use dedicated dwarves to do much of the hauling so that other, more specialized dwarves will spend more time in their Template:Ls and less time dragging raw materials or finished products to the appropriate Template:L.

Automatic hauling

Some hauling tasks do not require any hauling Template:L:

• A dwarf working at a workshop will gather the raw materials needed to produce wanted goods. However, produced goods require the appropriate hauling Template:L to be moved out of the workshop in order to avoid Template:L. Dwarves producing goods at a workshop tend to keep producing them and will not necessarily clear their own workshops of clutter even when they have the appropriate hauling labor enabled.
• All adult civilian dwarves, including Template:Ls, will bring goods to the Template:L.
• A Template:L dwarf will gather the raw materials needed for a mysterious construction.
• A dwarf building something will move the needed materials to the construction site.
  • Before a dwarf will build something, he will need to have the appropriate labor as specified by the task. If the dwarf is building a chair or similar, the dwarf needs Furniture Hauling; if the dwarf is building a wooden wall, it's Carpentry, and so forth. Workshops are usually constructed by any dwarf that can work in that workshop.
  • A dwarf will clear the tiles where he/she builds from all scattered objects (stone !!!) before starting the build
• A Template:L will haul any successfully-gathered plant to a stockpile immediately, if there is space available in one.
• Dwarves in the midst of eating will carry their meal to a table. Military dwarves, however, will eat directly off of the floor.^[Verify]
• Dwarves who have just finished drinking booze will return their barrel to the nearest food stockpile.
• Removing constructed objects will be done by all dwarves.
• Filling pits and ponds will be done by all dwarves.
• If you have the "All dwarves harvest" option turned on, all dwarves will help bring in the harvest, even if they don't have Food Hauling enabled.

Stone hauling

Dwarves with the stone hauling Template:L enabled will haul Template:Ls, Template:Ls, and stone Template:Ls to the appropriate Template:Ls.

Note: Dwarves, being the kind fellows they are, practically insist on hauling one of the farthest stones into your stockpiles. They tend to ignore eligible, nearby stones 'for the greater good of the fortress'. This selfless act often results in terribly long journeys, carrying just one stone. See the section on Template:L for tips on combatting this problem.

Wood hauling

Dwarves with the wood hauling Template:L enabled will haul wood Template:Ls to the corresponding Template:Ls. DeforestationWood production can be sped up a lot by turning off wood hauling on your most skilled Template:L who will focus exclusively on cutting down trees. This will however expose more of your dwarves as many wood haulers will go outside to retrieve the logs.

Item hauling

Dwarves with the item hauling Template:L will haul miscellaneous items like blocks and collect Template:L for a Template:L. Finished goods (such as crafted goods) and Template:Ls (both rough and cut) are also considered Items.

Food hauling

Dwarves with the food hauling Template:L will haul food and drinks to the appropriate Template:Ls.

Refuse hauling

Dwarves with the refuse hauling Template:L will haul rotting food, and non-dwarf bodyparts to refuse Template:Ls. They will also Template:L marked items to the appropriate Template:L. Refuse hauling are subject to refuse orders (o: Set Orders and Options -> r: Refuse Orders).

Burial

Dwarves with the burial Template:L will haul dwarf and pet Template:Ls and bodyparts to corpse Template:Ls or Template:Ls.

Furniture hauling

Dwarves with the furniture hauling Template:L will haul Template:L to the appropriate Template:Ls. They will also build simple furniture items (Template:Ls, Template:Ls, Template:Ls, etc.).

Animal hauling

Dwarves with the animal hauling Template:L will haul Template:Ls and occupied Template:Ls to the appropriate Template:Ls.

Tips and issues

In order to minimize hauling trips, stockpiles should be placed with care.

• Input and ouput stockpiles should be placed near corresponding Template:Ls.
• Spoils of war: dwarves may haul entire bins full of items, or items individually. However, they are not smart enough to bin items in order to carry them, so this may end in numerous needless trips from deceased enemies to your fortress, each dwarf carrying one item at a time. To counter this:
  • Place a small Template:L stockpile and a general purpose stockpile near the battlefield.
  • When every spoil has been binned, remove the stockpiles, mark the filled bins for dumping, deactivate your usual garbage zone and create a new one in your fortress.
  • When everything has been moved, reclaim your dumped items and restore your garbage zones as usual.
• Construction preparation: when constructing something big away from your fort (e.g. a road), the dwarf assigned to the construction (or Template:L) will have to carry each item from your fort to the construction location, which can take a long time. By putting stockpiles near your construction project, many dwarves may participate in the hauling, thus dramatically increasing construction speed. Note that materials are allocated at the time of building, so be sure the stockpile is filled before placing the construction order, otherwise the materials will still have to come from afar.
• Consider specializing your haulers if possible - food haulers that orbit around the kitchen/dining room/farm area, stone haulers that orbit around the mines and furnaces, and (if possible/needed) wood haulers that do likewise with the carpenter shop. Turn off refuse hauling if that dwarf isn't going to be near areas likely to have refuse. This keeps the mine hauler from deciding to walk aaaallll the way over to the kitchens for one load, and then out to the forest for one, and then back to the smelters, and so on.
• Furthermore, you can handpick your specialized hauler, selecting them by their attributes. A wood hauler might be chosen because of his agility, since he might have to walk a lot of tiles to reach the forest, depending on the fortress and map layout. A stone hauler, on the other hand, might be chosen because of his strength so that he can pick up and carry heavy stones (such as Template:L and Template:L) more quickly.
• The Template:L profession can have a huge impact on hauling - see Template:L for a discussion.

Backlogs

To ensure that high-priority hauling tasks (like food), to clean up after get done quickly, you should employ a large number of haulers, and specialize them by having only one or two hauling Template:Ls enabled. This is most important for food hauling, where Template:Ls in the Template:L often rot while your dwarves are hauling individual seeds left behind after someone eats a plump helmet, or if your hunters bring a herd of animals in for your Template:Ls all at once.

The backlog problem is exacerbated by the fact that the hauling Template:L queue is tied to how many haulers of each type you have; if 100 dwarves have food hauling enabled, up to 100 food hauling tasks can be in the queue, even if those dwarves are busy hauling stone, doing workshop tasks, sleeping, or doing anything else.^[Verify] This is why hauling specialization is so important.

Two stockpiles are better than one

For stockpiles that use Template:Ls or Template:Ls, it is usually better to cut one large stockpile into a handful of smaller ones. This is because dwarves will only load one bin or barrel at a time, and may go idle for long periods while they wait for the next-chosen bin or barrel to actually get hauled to the stockpile before they can load it. By using several smaller stockpiles, haulers can retrieve and fill multiple bins or barrels simultaneously.