Dwarves won't dump stone.

[Razorhog]

I have Irrigated three rooms for farm plots and have assigned the plots. I thought the Dwarfs would move any stones when they built the plots. When they did nothing for three months I assigned a dump area in the passageway and set all the stones to be dumped. Over a year of game time has played out since then and they haven't touched anything. Am I doing something wrong?

[BgDaddyDevil]

That probably depends on your workload--giving constant orders keeps everything moving a little too much. Give your boyz some time to catch up and see if that helps. If not, try cancelling some of your labors.

[Swindler]

lock 1 or 2 dwarf in that area and create a dumpzone within it. If they dont have any other work to do, they will start dumping.

[AlP]

Do your dwarves have refuse hauling enabled?

[Razorhog]

Thanks for the help. I went back to an auto save and removed every work order just to see what would happen. At first they just finished putting things into stockpiles, but before long they moved the stones out of the way and built the farm plots. They did suspend construction on each plot but as soon as I hit resume they finished them. I simply had too many other jobs for them to do, which may be common among new players. However, since these jobs had existed far longer I do think they should have been finished long ago. We need a way to force job completion like we can with pulling levers. Replacing all those work orders will be tedious, but I will have better farms now. Thanks for all the suggestions, I may try locking someone in there, and will also check the refuse hauling thing.

[BgDaddyDevil]

Yeah, at first I refused to use quantum piles but damn are they useful--plus it looks like absolute crap when you have a bunch of junk stone laying around. The only downside is that it's just as you say--dorfs will suspend construction when one of those designated stones are in the way. A small price to pay.

[Razorhog]

One last update. I did create burrows for each room and assigned one dwarf to each. When they arrived I locked the door, removed the burrow, made a one tile dump zone, and assigned each stone to be dumped. They each went to work right away and after they finished, and were freed, others came and built the farm plots. I then removed the dump zones and unlocked the stones and now everyone is happy, specifically me. Learning this game can be frustrating at times!

[AlP]

Originally posted by DevilsGotAnRPG:

plus it looks like absolute crap when you have a bunch of junk stone laying around.

You can simply hide all that stone.

[Nachoman]

Originally posted by Razorhog:

I have Irrigated three rooms for farm plots and have assigned the plots. I thought the Dwarfs would move any stones when they built the plots. When they did nothing for three months I assigned a dump area in the passageway and set all the stones to be dumped. Over a year of game time has played out since then and they haven't touched anything. Am I doing something wrong?

In my new games I create 2 new job labors now:

1. Food Hauling.
2. Refuse Hauling.

These are always enabled.

If I want my dwarves to dump a bunch of things immediately this is what I do:
1. Ensure there is only 1 garbage dump. Having multiple garbage dumps doesn't guarantee the dumping will occur at the location you want.
2. Ensure Refuse Hauling labor is enabled. <------------ KEY PART 1
3. Disable (No one Does this) Hauling labor <----------- KEY PART 2
4. (Optional) Disable Food Hauling if you don't make that much food. I always enable it so that food doesn't rot in the kitchens.
5. (Optional) I disable stonecutters labor as well. My fortress always needs smoothing and I disable this for everyone.

Works 99% of the time.

The key is to ensure refusing hauling is enabled to give it priority over other hauling types. It is in the (general) hauling labor but so are a bunch of other hauling and dumping has very low priority.

[kheftel]

Originally posted by PPanda421:

Originally posted by Razorhog:

I have Irrigated three rooms for farm plots and have assigned the plots. I thought the Dwarfs would move any stones when they built the plots. When they did nothing for three months I assigned a dump area in the passageway and set all the stones to be dumped. Over a year of game time has played out since then and they haven't touched anything. Am I doing something wrong?

In my new games I create 2 new job labors now:

1. Food Hauling.
2. Refuse Hauling.

These are always enabled.

If I want my dwarves to dump a bunch of things immediately this is what I do:
1. Ensure there is only 1 garbage dump. Having multiple garbage dumps doesn't guarantee the dumping will occur at the location you want.
2. Ensure Refuse Hauling labor is enabled. <------------ KEY PART 1
3. Disable (No one Does this) Hauling labor <----------- KEY PART 2
4. (Optional) Disable Food Hauling if you don't make that much food. I always enable it so that food doesn't rot in the kitchens.
5. (Optional) I disable stonecutters labor as well. My fortress always needs smoothing and I disable this for everyone.

Works 99% of the time.

The key is to ensure refusing hauling is enabled to give it priority over other hauling types. It is in the (general) hauling labor but so are a bunch of other hauling and dumping has very low priority.

I might have to try this, thanks for sharing!

[Stafford's Bees]

If you're using a pit, make sure the pit zone extends over the tile you want dwarves to stand on when they throw things. Pits won't work if every tile is open air.

[UnderTow]

too many orders

[Darzan]

Problem is that game does not allow you prioritize one type on hauling over others. You either do it or you don't do it. Then again, game does have it internal priorities, which also depends of distance and whatnot. Food hauling is usually high priority haul. Hauling job most likely has all types of hauling enabled.

Care must be taken not to enable too much of hauling of one type as it fills up all task list space and prevents any other type of hauling to be done.

All you can do is to provide some dwarves who are suitable for job. Stone hauling requires dwarf to be strong unless you can provide wheelbarrows. If you put weak dwarf on stone hauling it may easily take 10x more time. Of course, they will grow stronger once they done lot of stone hauling.

I have set up most of jobs like stonecutting, weaponsmithing, armorsmithing, engineering which have stone and refuse hauling as part of it. I do not care if they get fed but they have to do dumping jobs. I have other dwarves who have all types of hauling enabled for the rest of things.

This is crap system we have now but best we got at moment.