40d Talk:Stockpile

Stockpile categories

Ore
Ore will be brought here. This is one of the simpler stockpiles.

Is it just me, or is this incorrect? I don't see an option in the new version for ore piles. I'm at work and so cannot double-check at this time, but I'll check when I get home and if I confirm it then, I'll remove Ore from the Stockpile categories.

You're correct. Ore is now included in the stone stockpile and there is no mining stockpile. I've made the change. -Valdemar

Should this page be retitled "Stockpile" to keep in line with the title style rules? --BahamutZERO 17:44, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

Done. --Peristarkawan 18:15, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

Custom Catastrophe

According to the forums, and my own experiences, the "Custom" category doesn't actually work. Removing the unused stockpile and replacing it with one of the standard type, then editing it to your specifications will work. Also types can be safely changed after they're assigned. (I turned a wood stockpile to a bed stockpile with successful stocking). I came across this after a great deal of kitchen rebuilding because my cook wouldn't fill the stockpiles. If someone more familiar with the wiki, and the game, could confirm this and edit the page it would be appreciated, it's something that should be out there. Scribbler 14:24, 26 September 2008 (EDT)

I have not had this problem, although I do need to be careful making sure that I actually adjust the custom stockpile settings before placing the stockpile, and then being sure that I'm still placing a custom stockpile. This menu is one of the least-intuitive to my mind, but the settings work, AFAIK. --RomeoFalling 20:48, 4 November 2008 (EST)

Custom stockpiles work perfectly for me, and have for a logn time. Maybe the original poster overlooked the "prepared food" option under the food submenu?--Maximus 18:53, 5 November 2008 (EST)

probably as simple as not allowing the 'material'/'core quality'/'total quality' options to be on. maybe even the 'metals' one if you want a metal-stuff stockpile.
i've had lots of trouble with it, too x] usually done by blocking all, and just selecting the item on it's own. everything has to be made out of something! --DJ Devil 13:01, 7 March 2009 (EST)

For me, dwarves ignore custom stockpiles as long as there is an unfilled existing stockpile that accepts whatever the custom stockpile accepts. Once that stockpile fills (and the dwarves are forced to begin using the custom pile) the custom stockpile is used normally--even if the other stockpile empties.--Zipdog 21:26, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm having a similar problem. Whenever I have two stockpiles of the same type but different things accepted (like two refuse piles where one accepts only bones, shells, and skulls and the other accepts all except those), only one gets used. Individually, either one will get them correctly, but when I have both, one gets ignored. Greep 04:01, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Regarding custom stockpiles: I'm pretty sure that setting one up using the custom menu is 100% identical to setting up a standard one and then editing it. Caveats: You're more likely to mess up the selection when using custom (because it remembers your prior one), whereas you're more likely to mess up the barrels / bins settings when editing an existing one (because those are only set at creation time).

Remember also that items must match ALL filters. That means you must allow some or all "metals" / "materials" selections; some or all "core quality" and "total quality" modifiers; "usable" and/or "unusable" for weapons/armour; etc. Selecting "weapons, bolts, steel, masterful, usable" will get you only masterful steel bolts, and that's also the minimum needed to get them. Even something as broad as "weapons, bolts, all materials/metals, all qualities" will get you exactly nothing if you accidentally uncheck "usable".

Also, remember that dwarves may not move items in barrels/bins between stockpiles unless the new stockpile also accepts barrels/bins. To truly unbarrel / unbin stuff, you may have to dump it and reclaim it.

Regarding the scenario of a more selective stockpile accepting a subset of what a broader stockpile accepts: This will typically not work unless you use "take from stockpile" (from broad to selective) or simply turn off some stuff in the broader one so there's no longer an overlap. There is no rule that says "put items in the most specific stockpile".

Regarding not being able to use multiple refuse piles: Remember that dwarves will not collect outdoor refuse unless you enable it. That means you cannot create a stockpile for corpses / bodyparts (not bones) outdoors, and a stockpile for bones (not corpses) indoors, and expect your dwarves to take the bones indoors once the corpses rot away. You must use o-r-o to enable outdoor refuse collection.

Hope these help. Maybe they should be in the article, dunno. I've never seen any of the problems mentioned in this section, and I use custom stockpiles a lot. — Wisq (talk) 03:14, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I think some of it may also be in the way dwarfs decide what to do where first. In mining, they'll gravitate toward the top left every time. Set up a huge stockpile, maybe 20x20, and they'll fill the top row from the left first, then go to the second row, walking over the closer ones to get to that top row. It's possible that stockpiles are being treated the same, or something parallel. If you have your custom piles draw from the generic ones, that might solve it, if after a wasted task to put the items in the generic stockpile the first time. But either way, bottom line is: if you want a custom stockpile with X in it, your generic stockpiles have to be tweaked to NOT accept X.--Albedo 16:50, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Bins

how do I make my bins get to the "right" stockpiles (ie i want to put stone in bins to compact it but so far my bin is sitting in a "finished goods" stockpile)GarrieIrons 09:40, 4 January 2008 (EST)

Raw objects generally can't be put in bins, only "processed" goods. For instance, blocks can be put in bins, but not raw stone. The best way to get a compact stone store is to create a dump, though I haven't fiddled with that technique yet.--Maximus 12:51, 4 January 2008 (EST)

Stone designated for dumping (individually which is a pain no matter how you do it) can all end up on a single dump activity zone and then reclaimed, this is much more space-efficient than stone stockpiles.GarrieIrons 01:42, 8 July 2008 (EDT)

You can now mass designate items for dumping by selecting large amounts of stone, or any other object, really. Schm0 15:46, 3 January 2009 (EST)

Is my problem similar to what you mean, GarrieIrons? I have a clothing/leather stockpile that is filled to the brink with individual items. I want to put them in bins so that I can have more room (as there are more items to be stored) but whenever I find a way to make room in the stockpile, more non-bin items are added until it is full again. On top of that, there is already one bin on the stockpile and no one will store anything in it. FJH 21:30, 17 February 2009 (EST)

i had the same problem, and was just about to post it, then found an answer! :D
set your stockpile to accept bins/barrels/whatever (mine's a stone block stockpile way outside of my fort, from which the peasants were carting one block at a time into a free bin. now it's a bin and block stockpile (Note: DO NOT TURN OFF 'core quality', 'total quality' etc. if you do, NO bins/barrels will be accepted)), press query(?) over the stockpile, then press take from a pile. go to your finished goods stockpile (the one containing the bins/barrels), and hit Enter. your peasants will immediately start running over to it with bins/barrels. sorted :D
note: they'll take all your bins over! remember to q over your new stockpile, and set the maximum amount of bins/barrels with c (more) and v (fewer). mine's set to 10.
thinking about it... you may just be able to set your finished goods stockpile max to 10 bins/barrels, and any others will be taken somewhere else (probably not a good thing; they may get left clogging up your workspace) --DJ Devil 12:45, 7 March 2009 (EST)

Usable/Unusable Weapons/Armour?

Anyone knows exactly what this does? It seems that stockpiles set to "unusable" will only collect things that dwarfs can't possibly ever use, not even in Adventure mode (ex: big human two-handed weapons such as a halberd), but while technically things like whips and scimitars aren't unusable, dwarfs in Fortress mode will never equip them - no such option in the Military screen. Or will they use, for example, a scimitar if set to use swords? Will that use the Swordsdwarf skill? IMO it would be more useful if it included any weapon not in the Military screen. --Sergius 12:44, 12 January 2008 (EST)

I use this when I kill kobolds etc - all the weapons my dwarf collect of hostile creatures then go into the same bin. I can't use them, but I can drag one bin all at once to the visiting merchant - ker-ching! They sell pretty well.

But I agree, it should be that any weapon dwarves cannot use should end up there.GarrieIrons 02:53, 14 February 2008 (EST)

my dear cook

preparing food stacks larger than *ten* - on what depends the number? my cook sometimes does it, sometimes not, both with lavish and simple meals. Is it from the stack size? --Koltom 02:36, 14 February 2008 (EST)

The biggest question here though is - what is the appropriate setting for a stockpile for cooked food?

It seems to be, "forbid" everything but make sure "Prepared food" is turned on. But "prepared food" seems to be turned on as the default, and it allows even unprocessed fish etc to be placed in the stockpile. So this doesn't make much sense to me.GarrieIrons 05:40, 27 February 2008 (EST)

well, you could use a refuse pile with only prepared meals enabled...--Koltom 14:39, 29 February 2008 (EST)

to be more precise, a custom stockpile (t) with only prepared meals enabled under 'Refuse' - works and is not even called a refuse pile. Havent seen someone eat from it yet though.--Koltom 22:03, 3 March 2008 (EST)

I think in general, the number of prepared meals in the stack is based on the number of ingredients used. The biggest stacks of ingredients are generally quarry bush leaves, but depending on the animal, stacks of tallow can equal or exceed them. I have mini-stockpiles for quarry bush leaves and tallow adjacent to my kitchen, and if a stack smaller than 20 gets made, it generally means those mini-stockpiles are out. Darekun 22:03, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Stone Stockpiles

Currently my dwarves are not hauling ores of iron, zinc and lignite which I have disabled for my other stone stockpiles. I have over 8000 stone in somewhat organized stockpiles since I thought my wealth would generate more slowly with everyone hauling them all around the map with the more common stones, siltstone and phyllite, creating common crafts, statues, hatch covers, flood gates, mechanisms and use in stone fall traps. I now have over 333 stockpiles. I went and mined all ores used in creating fuels and metals and it seems that the storage space I've made might not be that big enough. What's the problem?--Seaneat 21:35, 9 July 2008 (EDT)

Just got it, I had ignore minerals. Sorry.--Seaneat 21:35, 9 July 2008 (EDT)

Take From Stockpile

While we're adding information to this section, Can someone who has used this successfully give a more concrete example? --RomeoFalling 18:22, 6 November 2008 (EST)

Well, I gave it a shot --LegacyCWAL 14:27, 7 March 2009 (EST)

Clear stone to replace with stockpile?

Is there any way to clear the stone out of the way so I can build a stock pile for something that ISN'T stone? Got a nice big room full of workshops and nowhere to put anything because 90% of the spots are filled with stones.

(Is it just me, or do the dwarves sometimes seem really dumb? I set up a paved road of about 10 sections from the top exit of the fortress to the edge of the map for caravans. I set up stone stockpiles next to every other segment of the road both so they didn't have to walk so far to do it and to clear some of the stone out... They started at the farthest away road segment, and will go all the way to the other end of the road, down three flights of stairs, all the way to an otherwise empty room to pick up a piece of stone to go all the way back to use it on the road, rather than use the nearby and completely full stockpiles. ) --Azaram 05:24, 27 November 2008 (EST)

Stone management. As for the road, when constructing a building, it shows you how distant the materials are, but only "as the crow flies". If the nearest stone is one z-level away and you unwittingly select it, they'll walk however long a path they have to actually fetch it. Same thing for workshops -- they'll go huge distances to get the item that's just above their heads.--Maximus 12:01, 27 November 2008 (EST)

That may explain it... I set up the stockpiles after designating the road, so (after everyone dropped everything to fill the stockpiles), they went to the stone that I apparently designated when I set up the road. Would be nice if you could just tell them 'take THIS item and put it THERE'... --Azaram 21:16, 28 November 2008 (EST)

Dumping more or less allows you to do that.--Maximus 23:59, 28 November 2008 (EST)

Seems less than more. :-p I've got a leftover iron knife sitting on the remains of a two dimensional goblin in a stonefall trap... I set everything to dump, and they took everything but his body and his knife. (I sold all his crap to the elves that showed up shortly thereafter). I ended up going with the catapult version...had a peasant build three catapult parts then set it up and toss rocks across the room into a channel... he's now a siege engineer. So I had him build another and started another peasant on it, and they're happily banging away at the wall... --Azaram 23:01, 29 November 2008 (EST)

Armor bin capacity

I have a bin in my armor stockpile that has 17 items in it, so unless something really weird is going on the statement in the article that bins in armor stockpiles can consolidate up to 10 items is probably false. Anyone know what the truth is? MJSS 20:51, 16 December 2008 (EST)

It depends on the size of the items. An armor bin can hold a lot more boots and gauntlets than it can suits of platemail. It was speculated that 10 is the minimum number of goods a bin can hold, although I think platemail bins don't even hold that many. --Squirrelloid 21:02, 16 December 2008 (EST)

I've long been curious about what the formula is for bin capacity. A question for the future, I guess.--Maximus 15:29, 17 December 2008 (EST)

Crafts fit in bins in especially large numbers; perhaps based on the "material size" of the item, with some default applying to things with no explicit material size? There's also the matter of bags of seeds. Darekun 23:52, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Core Quality vs Total Quality

What's the difference? Does core quality refer to the quality of the item while total quality somehow takes into account its decorations? If I have a standard quality sword menacing with masterwork spikes of bone, what total quality is that? Schwern 17:49, 31 December 2008 (EST)

Yes, and I have no idea. --GreyMaria 20:04, 31 December 2008 (EST)

The formula is unknown. We wish we knew.--Zchris13 15:07, 7 March 2009 (EST)

Putting things in bins higher priority than Take From Stockpile?

In most cases, Take From Stockpile works fine; however, I seem to have a situation where it does not. Stockpile A is set to accept only skull totems, zero bin maximum, and take from Stockpile B which is set to accept finished goods (incl. skull totems) and has a non-zero bin maximum. However, I find my dwarfs are moving items from A to B, when they should be moving totems from B to A.

I've only had this problem with skull totems, but I don't think it has to do with the totems themselves, but rather because this is the only time I've been attempting to move items from a stockpile that uses bins to one that does not. Has anyone else seen this? I need to do some testing, but I think the desire to put things in bins on stockpiles overrides the desire to take things from one stockpile to another. --Mattmoss 18:02, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

You could edit the priority of putting items in a bin, over just sitting on the ground. I think default is like 120 or something.--Zchris13 18:24, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

P.S. It's in the init.

Might I ask why you're allowing totems in Stockpile B at all? Seems like an easy way to do it would be to simply have the totems only end up in Pile A. I usually only use "Take from" when preparing to relocate my primary stockpile for an item elsewhere. -Edward 21:17, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Trampling of food?

Is it just my imagination, or was there once an issue (feature) whereby unbarrelled food, particularly prepared meals, would degrade over time due to trampling by dwarves going to get food? I can't find mention of it anywhere, but I've been designing trample-proof piles with diagonal "checkerboard" access for a long time now, and I'm wondering if it's still (or was ever) necessary. Maybe someone confused the vermin issue with trampling? — Wisq (talk) 01:44, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I think I've found a reference to it, in the Wear article. "Wear can be caused by heavy traffic over the location an item is stored." But my questions still stand re: whether this still/ever applied to food, whether barrels make them immune or just help, etc. — Wisq (talk) 23:23, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe it matters. If you read that article, you know that wear is a sort of lowering of quality. And you should know that raw foodstuffs have no quality - if you don't, they don't. (And that article specifically states that prepared foods are not subject to wear.) Putting these together, we get - it doesn't matter. I don't believe they do, but ~if~ the plump helmets or jaguar meat were to get worn out - they're still plump helmets or meat, and still just as edible and quality-less as before. (As to the question of where you might have gotten this idea, I got nuthin'.) I think the important phrase is "I can't find mention of it anywhere". If wear effects food, I have seen no report of it either, anywhere.--Albedo 23:38, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I suspect it was a rumour someone started a while back as an explanation for why their food was getting damaged, when in fact it was vermin doing it. At least now I can stop making wacky stockpiles for unbarrelled food. — Wisq (talk) 05:55, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Moving only items that are in a bin

This is mainly aimed at efficiently moving items to be near the Trade Depot.

What I want to do is designate a mixed stockpile but then say "only bring full bins to this stockpile".

Then I can have stockpiles near each workshop, when a bin is full a hauler comes and does the right thing for me.

It all sounds so easy and logical! Now, is there an easy way to do it? What I am noticing is, if I have

workshop -> stockpile A -> stockpile B -> trade depot

when I put "stockpile B" on "max bins: all squares", then my haulers never bother stopping at Stockpile A with inidividual items they just go

workshop -> haul item -> stockpile B.

GarrieIrons 08:31, 1 June 2009 (UTC)