Work orders for making clothes

[GrundleBuster™]

I can't seem to find a good way to keep clothing going. Setting a work order for clothes where item count is less than whatever also includes the discarded worn items so it's not great. I was setting them to be created seasonally but this still leaves me with gaps like a million gloves but no loincloths. What are your strategies for this?

[Trabber Shir]

Dump or forbid worn out clothing from your stocks screen fairly regularly. Or trade it all away every time a trader comes. if you are clearing it out once a season (minus winter if using the trading method) and have enough haulers to stay on top of things, then having the manager keep enough in stock to clothe a quarter of your dwarves is usually good enough.

[Turak]

So forbidden clothing isn't counted when the manager looks at orders? Is there any way to see if a piece of XwornX clothing is being worn by a dwarf without looking through all of them?

[Ligma balls]

Are weared/owned items counts in work order less or equal?

I know what any items in stock counts, including scattered, other race's items, large versions of items

[Ligma balls]

And maybe exists conditions for order
Make 10 cloth gloves if non-scattered non-x-X-XX usable plant gloves less than 100

I found only plant condition

[Trabber Shir]

Clothing actively being worn is not counted by the manager, nor are forbidden items ... or at least that is what my workflow had been assuming, testing ... oops

I am not sure about owned items ... testing ... owned items are not counted by the manager.

Basically, set up your manager to on average produce more clothing per year than your your dwarves will wear out. My assumption that seems to work is that it on average takes between 2 and 3 years for a dwarf to wear out a piece of clothing. In other words I assume wasted clothing in the fort should approximate population/8 of each slot assuming it gets cleared out every season, so I set orders to keep a total of population/4 pieces of each slot in stock. that should make sure I am producing at least as much as is being used up.

I assume the system works because I trade a lot of xclothingx, very little XclothingX, and essentially no XXclothingXX Implying that all my dwarves can discard things before they get too tattered.

[harlequin_corps]

Originally posted by Trabber Shir:

Clothing actively being worn is not counted by the manager, nor are forbidden items ... or at least that is what my workflow had been assuming, testing ... oops

I am not sure about owned items ... testing ... owned items are not counted by the manager.
.

This is good. Bear in mind that Owned items includes items in their bedrooms. This is relevant because if your soldiers are set to Wear uniform instead of clothing, they will still have their civilian clothing, In their bedrooms. The upshot of that is two things are happening. You are still having to make clothes for your military personnel, who will still go and grab clothing for their civilian wear and throw it into their bedroom, AND items on the floor, i/e not in Cabinets, will wear, Gain x, then X, then XX the longer they are on the floor.
The other half of this is that Refuse items, i/e Refuse enabled Stockpiles that include Items (Armor/Legwear/Headwear etc) and Save Refuse items is enabled in Standing Orders/Refuse and Dumping (Save Other Items) won't pick up items that are only x, only X and XX items. And they won't pick them up if they are owned.
That could have been said easier.. here. Refuse Stockpiles will only take X and XX clothing/armor items. There.
To make Owned/non weared (I used that term deliberately because Worn means something different here, should have said Equipped, but hey) last longer, i/e not gain Worn status (x, X, XX) give your dorfs cabinets in their Bedrooms. They will put their non equipped Owned items into it and they will not gain/increase Worn status. This will decrease your overall clothing industry logistics chain.
My suggestion is to setup a Master Clothing stockpile for all your clothing/Armor in the entire base, no Bins. Then from the Master clothing, start to pare out your individual categories with linkages and minecart stockpiles. If any clothing/armor items is grabbable (Available) they will take it to the Master Clothing stockpile.
From the Master Clothing stockpile you can then seperate your Masterwork items, your plant cloth items, your metal smeltable items, and your other items to sell to non Elves (leather for example) to either/and/or Bin Equipped stockpiles/quantum stockpiles.
What I would SERIOUSLY suggest you NOT do, is setup a auto dump sequence (minecart dump into Magma) from this Master Clothing stockpile and it's subordinate piles. Stockpiles have a tendancy to introduce errors the more you link in sequence, the only true item gates are the minecarts, as they will ONLY take items on their list, whereas stockpile have .. they take any item that falls or is dropped into them. An item existing in the physical location of the stockpile is IN the stockpile. the linkages/settings only apply for items being moved either TO the stockpile or from one stockpile to another. This is why they don't move stones out of stockpiles unless you have another stockpile taking the stone. Or bins.. They won't move bins out of stockpiles either, AND a bin is sort of it's own stockpile. Bins are bad, throw rocks at them.

[harlequin_corps]

Just realized I didn't answer the question.
Answer, SELL EVERYTHING... Seriously.. Sell it all, everything..
Any item that is available in the "Move to Trade Depot" sections is both Not Owned and Available. which means no dorf currently wants them, And generally they will NEVER want them because they are too low quality. Dorfs don't cycle down on quality. They would rather wear an X Masterpiece X than a brand new -item-. So, just select everything and get rid of it.. ALL of it. The only exceptions are wearable metal items (armor) that you set to smelt. And this is WHY you use the Master Clothing as a Feeder for both Masterpiece and Metal items. Once all your metal armor items that the dorfs don't want or have gathered are all in one quantum 1x1 you only need to click that one single 1x1 with the smelt icon and bingo.. ONLY those items will get smelted.. i/e your dorfs wont' go haranguing off to the corners of the map looking for that ONE item you smelted from Stocks that you couldn't be bothered to actually check their physical location AND those items are items that your dorfs CAN physically (digitally?.. meh.. whatever I suppose) get to w/o urist mcdumbface running into an Aggressive Newt.

[harlequin_corps]

Originally posted by harlequin_corps:

Just realized I didn't answer the question.
Answer, SELL EVERYTHING... Seriously.. Sell it all, everything..
Any item that is available in the "Move to Trade Depot" sections is both Not Owned and Available. which means no dorf currently wants them, And generally they will NEVER want them because they are too low quality. Dorfs don't cycle down on quality. They would rather wear an X Masterpiece X than a brand new -item-. So, just select everything and get rid of it.. ALL of it. The only exceptions are wearable metal items (armor) that you set to smelt. And this is WHY you use the Master Clothing as a Feeder for both Masterpiece and Metal items. Once all your metal armor items that the dorfs don't want or have gathered are all in one quantum 1x1 you only need to click that one single 1x1 with the smelt icon and bingo.. ONLY those items will get smelted.. i/e your dorfs wont' go haranguing off to the corners of the map looking for that ONE item you smelted from Stocks that you couldn't be bothered to actually check their physical location AND those items are items that your dorfs CAN physically (digitally?.. meh.. whatever I suppose) get to w/o urist mcdumbface running into an Aggressive Newt.

Oh.. I forgot, one other thing. Items wear.. (see.. there it is), Items gain Wear status and increase Wear status at different rates. Trousers wear faster than Gloves, Socks wear faster than Dresses, etc. so don't even try to gain a level of parity between items. Miner's / Soldier's items wear faster than Priests/Bartenders. Just dye them all blue and sell it all to the Humans.

[harlequin_corps]

Originally posted by Imac Oksuker:

Are weared/owned items counts in work order less or equal?

I know what any items in stock counts, including scattered, other race's items, large versions of items

There is a stockpile setting for Usable/Unusable armor.. However, once you have a Human residing in your fortress it's without value.

[harlequin_corps]

Originally posted by harlequin_corps:

Originally posted by Imac Oksuker:

Are weared/owned items counts in work order less or equal?

I know what any items in stock counts, including scattered, other race's items, large versions of items

There is a stockpile setting for Usable/Unusable armor.. However, once you have a Human residing in your fortress it's without value.

man.. it just keeps going.. OK so, to make Human sized armor/clothing in the current version. all you need to do is setup a workorder for that item, then click the magnifying glass thingy on the right side where you can specify size.. Type in hu.. (for Humans) and you will change the workorder to Large [insert item here]. It used (And still does) to work that in order to make Human sized items you HAD to have a Human make the item. I/e it was sized for the person that made the item. And THAT was a pain.. It still does work that way btw but generally since you can now specify a size to make it is MUCH more less of a pain and more macro manageable.

[harlequin_corps]

Originally posted by harlequin_corps:

Originally posted by harlequin_corps:

There is a stockpile setting for Usable/Unusable armor.. However, once you have a Human residing in your fortress it's without value.

man.. it just keeps going.. OK so, to make Human sized armor/clothing in the current version. all you need to do is setup a workorder for that item, then click the magnifying glass thingy on the right side where you can specify size.. Type in hu.. (for Humans) and you will change the workorder to Large [insert item here]. It used (And still does) to work that in order to make Human sized items you HAD to have a Human make the item. I/e it was sized for the person that made the item. And THAT was a pain.. It still does work that way btw but generally since you can now specify a size to make it is MUCH more less of a pain and more macro manageable.

sigh.. Ok so.. one of the reasons that, sometimes, armor/clothing isn't being equipped is that, sometimes, when a goblin makes the item, SOMETIMES, it's too small for dorfs, BUT it DOESN'T SAY small [insert item here], because it's still big enough to not qualify for small, but it's still too small for dorfs. But only sometimes because some goblins are bigger than others so they make dorf and goblin sized items.. But only sometimes.. You can click the item in question and it will say "This item is sized for goblins". So, yeah.. sell it all, gain a smidgeon of FPS, and let Armok sort it out.

[Trabber Shir]

... You know, if everything you added is accurate (which I will probably assume for a while) I need to change a lot about how I handle the clothing industry. I always figured it was just a bug when dwarves let the clothing rot off their backs with plenty of new clothing laying about. Now I have to assume that specializing clothiers is necessary for the mental health of dwarves because that one masterwork from the guy who died 2 years ago is why some dwarf is not picking up a new pair of trousers.

The new dwarven university design where you get legendary by locking dwarves in a guildhall for a year is sounding more and more useful by the day.

[Nimbo]

What i do in the manager is "make 2 silk robes: set it to (dwarf) with the magnifying glass icon // conditions, check everyday: silk robe exactly 0, silk cloth greater than 2. Its going to make 2 silk robes every day if there is none in the stockpiles and has cloth for both crafts, as soon as all robes get picked the manager makes a new batch. A dwarf will take the robe in this case if: it has better quality than his own, can equip it (multiples of the same) and its something (item or material) he likes (in case of stacks of the same item/clothing). By being "make if exactly 0" you dont have too many of one item in stockpiles for dwarfs and only have to worry about supply of raw material. Cabinets in bedrooms are a must before you start crafting it. Lets say you prefer Giant Cave Spider Silk clothing for your dwarfs (more expensive) but cant gather much of it yet, you can do the same set up, but adding a layer. make 2 cave spider silk robe (dwarf) check every day: if cave spider silk robe exactly 0, cave spider silk cloth greater than 2. Then you make a new workorder with silk/yarn/plant fiber you prefered and in order of preference like so. make 2 rope reed robe (dwarf) check every day: robes exactly 0, robe reed cloth greater than 2, cave spider silk less than 2. It will make cave spider silk robe if theres none avaliable, but if theres no robes and no cave spider silk cloth to make more but has rope reed cloth, it will make rope reed robes.

[Trabber Shir]

If you are setting it to only make replacements if exactly 0, how are you handling the worn out stuff that gets dropped and un-owned? I don't know the exact mechanics, but I get a lot of xpig tail sockx at trade time, I assume they came into being when a dwarf upgraded. Similarly, how are you handling the guy with masterwork XXturkey leather cloakXX which the military dwarves dropped and replaced after the battle?

Those worn out bits will keep the total above 0, won't they?

[Nimbo]

Originally posted by Trabber Shir:

If you are setting it to only make replacements if exactly 0, how are you handling the worn out stuff that gets dropped and un-owned? I don't know the exact mechanics, but I get a lot of xpig tail sockx at trade time, I assume they came into being when a dwarf upgraded. Similarly, how are you handling the guy with masterwork XXturkey leather cloakXX which the military dwarves dropped and replaced after the battle?

Those worn out bits will keep the total above 0, won't they?

Yes they will. Sadly a bit of micro is needed since not all things from stockpile and clothing management are implemented yet. What you can do to make it easier. Mostly after a year or so (the spring cleanup as we call it), for the cleanup you link the clothierleather workshop to deliver at a clothing stockpile and select to take from linked only (select finished goods footwear/handwear/headwear/legwear and remember to select material and quality) then make a new one thats free to take from everywhere. What happens is that new clothing goes to the clothier linked stockpile and "un-owned" clothes (turns "un-owned" within a season or so after last interaction with owner or forbidden manually for the same time while not in a cabinet) goes to this new not linked to the workshop stockpile. From there you can select them for dumping/selling/atom smashing/dropping in lava or my favorite and more automated, make a Refuse Stockpile (better ouside because of miasma) that not only takes Refuse but also clothing, (you must have the linked clothier/leather workshop stockpile otherwise you will be destroying good and fresh clothing). This will make so that every yearish some clothes get placed toguether with some Refuse and will rot into nothing after some time. Or if you are making Masterwork Giant Cave Spider Silk and Candy dyed clothing and wants to make a few urist bucks with it by selling. make a third stockpile for clothing again, but this time only take from the other "used clothes" (i would bother with only masterwork) stockpile and nowhere else. Make it close to the trade depot. This will make so that at the trade depot menu, selected by distance, all the used clothes will be the first ones in the list. Hope it all makes sense.