Smelters wont use fuel

[Endemonadia]

So all my Smelters stopped using Charcoal and coke and i cant see why :/

Basically my 2 smelters close to the surface are pulling charcoal from the surface and making coke but the smelters/metalcrafters deeper down wont take either charcoal or coke.

Can i force them to take this somehow?

[Holyvision]

Screenshots?

[Endemonadia]

Originally posted by Holyvision:

Screenshots?

Screenies of what?

u wanna see 10 workshops that wont allow any selections off the list cos theyre all redded out with [Requires Fuel] ?

[LastChime]

Bars and blocks in bins?

[Holyvision]

Originally posted by LastChime:

Bars and blocks in bins?

This.

[Endemonadia]

Originally posted by LastChime:

Bars and blocks in bins?

The charcoal is sitting in an Wood Furnace on the surface and the Coke is on 2 Smelters near the surface. None of this is being shipped to a Stockpile. But, the 2 Smelters close to the top are happy to take the Charcoal direct from the Wood Furnace.

There is about 100 individual Charcoal lying on the surface after a tantrum destroyed another Wood Furnace but thats been there for a year and im guessing nobody will use it or move it so thats classed as dead.

[LastChime]

Hmm, maybe try a pause, mass forbid, unpause for a tick or 2 then pause and mass reclaim. If that don't do it maybe a dump order? Wonder if the tantrum broke some kind of hauling task.

[kheftel]

Check your stockpile links. If you link a workshop to stockpile(s), it must get EVERYTHING it needs from them, including fuel. It will no longer find items anywhere else.

[Thorene]

Most likely is as kheftel said, which is that you have the workshop set to take goods from a specific stockpile.

The next possibility would be that the dwarfs can't find a path to the fuel. Like maybe you somehow cut off access from the bottom floor from the surface, a locked door somewhere or a ramp that got removed that you haven't noticed yet.

The 100 charcoal lying on the surface should still get used, again unless it's forbidden or if they can't path to it for some reason.

What it sounds most like to me is that you've somehow blocked obvious paths to the fuel.

I'd also recommend getting the fuel into a stockpile. Stockpiles help with path finding.

For me, a good construction is to have your wood burner output to a Charcoal Output stockpile. Then have a Charcoal Input stockpile next to your metalsmith's shop. Then have the Charcoal Input take from the Charcoal Output stockpile.

Then on the metalsmith's forge, I don't set any requirements on where to take from, so it will take from the closest source, from the charcoal input if it's there, otherwise wherever it can find the nearest charcoal. If I do set an input requirement, for example, to enforce a certain kind of metal will be used, then I would also set the input to the charcoal input stockpile.

Then the only thing to worry about is whether charcoal gets moved from the charcoal output to charcoal input.

I don't worry about bins too much, dwarfs will take from bins. There's a few situations where they won't, so don't end up in those situations. Those are generally the case when the bin is scheduled to be moved, or if the items should not be in the bin because you've changed the stockpile settings. Dwarves will generally never take from a valid bin to lay an object on the ground, so if you had Charcoal Output which accepted bins, and dwarfs start putting charcoal bars into the bin, and you had Charcoal Input which took from Charcoal Output, but charcoal Input didn't accept bins, the dwarfs will not move the bars from charcoal output to charcoal input unless you've run out of bins. Because it won't take them from a bin in a valid charcoal stockpile.

But if you disabled the charcoal option in the charcoal output, they will take them from the bins in charcoal output and put them on the ground at charcoal input ... unless there's another bin with charcoal in it somewhere else that it's allowed to be.

If you're doing this weird stuff to try to get things out of bins and on to the floor, you're going to be fighting against dwarves that are trying to stack things up and constantly reserving the materials as you are forbidding and unforbidding them or turning on and off options in the stockpiles, so just don't do that. As long as you just make enough bins so you have some in excess of your needs, and you let your stockpiles use bins, it will sort itself out.

But if you were to have a charcoal input stockpile with bins available and a charcoal output with charcoal available, and your charcoal input stockpile doesn't take from the charcoal output stockpile when correctly set to do that, then there's probably a pathing issue. I would create a squad with a guy at your metalsmith's forge, and give him a station order at your charcoal output stockpile. Can he get there? Does he have to go through water or climb a wall or open a locked door to do it?

If he can still get there no problem, then I'd deconstruct and rebuild the metalsmith's forge.

[Endemonadia]

Originally posted by Thorene:

Most likely is as kheftel said, which is that you have the workshop set to take goods from a specific stockpile.

The next possibility would be that the dwarfs can't find a path to the fuel. Like maybe you somehow cut off access from the bottom floor from the surface, a locked door somewhere or a ramp that got removed that you haven't noticed yet.

***SOLVED***

But its none of the suggestions... thanks for the help tho cos i learned a bit from this! ;)

I had ONE burrow set up which took up most of my underground structure and nothing on the surface or the next lowest level. Ive used this burrow 5 times when dangerous enemies on the map and locked down.

Every time i used this burrow i would have 1 person still assigned to the burrow after unassigning. After 5 uses it was reading 5 assigned, even though i had used the ALL option to unassign. I took this as a glitch/bug and ignored it.

I delete this burrow and now i have options light on the Metalcrafters workshop lists... its working again!

For some reason the burrow was affecting the route even though it wasnt in use by anyone except the 5 assigned who dont exist.

Maybe this is a dev worthy bug considering the last update they added in the ALL option to burrows right?

[AlP]

Originally posted by Endemonadia:

Originally posted by Holyvision:

Screenshots?

Screenies of what?

u wanna see 10 workshops that wont allow any selections off the list cos theyre all redded out with [Requires Fuel] ?

Yes, because maybe you built some magma forges on the surface and are trying to make them use charcoal.

When something you do is not working, post screenshots.