40d:Stone management

Mine for long enough and you'll find yourself surrounded with various stones and ores. How do you get rid of them?

Here follows several stone management techniques.

Techniques

Catapult

Build a catapult (or three), and assign a dwarf (or five) to keep firing stones into walls, or at camels. The stones will shatter and be gone from your sight!

Construct Buildings

The building interface might be slow, but constructing stone buildings using walls and floors above ground (or underground) is a great way to handle your stone problem. Not only do you use up the stone from your excavations, but you also create usable indoor space without having to mine any additional stone.

Craftsdwarveship

Build a craftsworkshop or mason's workshop in a stone-filled area. Then add a lot of repeat jobs like making stone crafts, or doors (A fortress can never get enough doors). You can always trade away the crafts. A crafted stone counts towards the fortress value instead of being a worthless stone. The workshops will craft stones that are nearby, and soon the immediate area around the workshop will be cleared.

Dump

This is a preferred method due to the nature of its usefulness. However, it could easily be considered an exploit, and might not work in later versions. ^{v0.27.169.33a}

1. Make a zone of 1x1 or 1x2 tiles (preferably near your stone-needy workshops), and mark it as a garbage dump.
2. Press k and find a stone. Press d, and the stone will be marked for dumping.
3. A dwarf with refuse-hauling will come by, and take the stone to the garbage dump.

• Advantage: No matter how many stones you mark for dumping, they will all be placed on the same tiny garbage tile! So basically, mark all the stones you want dumped and they will be dumped. You are now able to place all the stones and ores in the fortress on 1 tile!
• Disadvantage: Every dumped stone will be marked as "Forbidden", and will not be used in stone-production. If you want to use the dumped stones, you must press 'k', find the pile of stones, and press f on every stone on the list (using +/- to navigate through the list). You can also use the designation 'reclaim items' to un-forbid a whole area at once.

Flooring

Creating stone floors using the nearest material is the fastest way for dwarves to remove stone, but requires a bit of extra effort setting individual stone floors. Use build > Constructions and then floor to build a floor. If you move down using the cursors and select it with Enter you can repeatidly press Enter to place lots of floor plans using the nearest material.

Workshops

A Mason's workshop uses stone exclusively, so is a good way of cleaning out stone in the vicinity of the workshop. Items such as rock doors, rock blocks, statues, tables, thrones, and coffins are often in short supply. Build a mason's workshop in a new excavation area and move it around when the rocks are cleared.

Additionally, if you make rock blocks (always useful in construction) they can be stacked in bins 5 to a tile, which is more efficient then storing the rock parts. A downside to this method, if overused however, is that since bins cannot be constructed from from rock, other resources will be diverted from more useful endeavors.

A craftsworkshopcould also be used to make lots of stone crafts, which can always be traded away. A crafted stone counts towards the fortress value instead of being a worthless stone.

Minimizing clutter

The easiest way to avoid stone clutter is not to produce it in the first place. Use unskilled miners for initial fortress excavation to reduce the amount of useless stone they create, and don't dig out more than necessary. Produce lots of barrels and bins to cut down on your need for stockpile space.

A shortcut you can use is the designation 'Reclaim Items', which lets you mass-reclaim items in an area.

Rock chute

You can dig a channel, and make a zone over it. Mark it as a garbage dump, and dwarves will dump stones down the channel. The stones will end up in the bottom tile.

Rock compactor

Similar to the rock chute, but build a drawbridge in the pit and a pressure plate at the entrance to the chute, linked to the bridge. Make sure you set the pressure plate to trigger on citizens. Alternately, just link it to a lever and pull it every once in a while. Mark the channel and empty tile as a dump zone. When a stone is dropped, the drawbridge will crush the stone, permanently destroying it.

Level 0:

=====
==.==
== ==
==^==

Level -1:

=====
=BBB=
=BBB=
==D==

. - Channel
= - Wall
^ - Pressure plate
B - Drawbridge - make sure to set to raise while constructing, as opposed to retract.
D - Door - keep locked to avoid accidently crushing dwarves 

Stockpile

This is not a recommended method due to space requirements. Build a large stockpile for stone away from your fortress. Dwarves will carry stones out to the stockpile, and they will no longer clutter up your fortress. The stockpile needs to be placed somewhere without stones, because only 1 stone will be placed per tile, and will result in long hauling trips.

Reasons for managing stone

Stockpiles

On some stockpiles, you will be unable to use the tiles that contain a stone. It will therefore be a good thing to clear up room for the things you want to stockpile.

Aesthetics

Many players find the fortress more enjoyable to look at if it looks nice and uniform. Random stones lying about are clutter which block the view of a tile and prevent stockpiles from being filled. Create smooth clear floor for a leaner, fitter, happier fortress.

Not Actually Necessary

You actually don't need to remove stones at all, except for the stockpile thing. Clearing out the fortress for stone is more of a personal priority rather than an essential need or requirement. However, people have had a tendency to ask about and discuss this specific subject, so here you are. A guide to stone management.