Drink Brewing Cancellation Spam

[omghacks]

Is there any way to not get your dwarves to spam cancellation messages when the conditions of a work order are not met?

Here's an example of a work order that keeps getting cancelled:

Brew drink from plant 1/1

When:
-Amount of empty food storage items available is greater than 5 (not satisfied)

-Amount of unrotten fermentable plants available is greater than 10 (satisfied)

With a work order like this I will get multiple cancellation notifications saying "John Smith cancels Brew drink from plant: Needs empty food storage item." Why does this happen? Shouldn't someone only come along to start the task if the conditions are met? Why are they starting the task and then cancelling when the conditions are not met? This can happen even if neither condition is met.

I must be doing something wrong or misunderstanding how the game processes work orders.

[hog_jockey]

Make some barrels.

[arclite311]

Amount of empty food storage items is 0

[Saver Sigonith]

So what happens is that when the conditions are satisfied (even momentarily) then the work order is enabled. And then your dwarves will continually try to fulfill it until it's complete - they don't re-check to see if the conditions are no longer satisfied mid order.

This means that if you HAD 5 barrels, but then someone used some, your dwarves will get stuck. Try to give your repeated orders an upper limit and make sure they have enough materials to reach it, so they're less likely to momentarily see "Aha, we have 10 tomatoes, approve it manager! - Wait no Ann ate one, nooooo we must sit here canceling our tasks for eternity!!!"
(Dwarves are very melodramatic, you see.)

[omghacks]

Originally posted by hog_jockey:

Make some barrels.

Originally posted by arclite311:

Amount of empty food storage items is 0

I'm quite aware I don't have enough empty barrels. If I were to make more, my dwarves would fill them with wine and I would run into the same problem again.

[omghacks]

Originally posted by Saver Sigonith:

So what happens is that when the conditions are satisfied (even momentarily) then the work order is enabled. And then your dwarves will continually try to fulfill it until it's complete - they don't re-check to see if the conditions are no longer satisfied mid order.

This means that if you HAD 5 barrels, but then someone used some, your dwarves will get stuck. Try to give your repeated orders an upper limit and make sure they have enough materials to reach it, so they're less likely to momentarily see "Aha, we have 10 tomatoes, approve it manager! - Wait no Ann ate one, nooooo we must sit here canceling our tasks for eternity!!!"
(Dwarves are very melodramatic, you see.)

Thank you for your help! I'll give this a shot. I had suspected that the order was becoming unfulfillable at some point during their task, which is why I set the work order to only complete once daily.

By upper limit, do you mean "Amount of wine created is greater than 5, STOP"?

[amade]

Originally posted by omghacks:

By upper limit, do you mean "Amount of wine created is greater than 5, STOP"?

They mean give it a bigger margin, e.g. don't activate unless there are at least 30 empty barrels. You can't make a condition that stops/cancels a work order but you can prevent cancellation spams by making sure you have more than enough materials by taking into account of all other jobs that uses barrels.

And if you haven't already, you should also have a work order that makes new empty barrels to keep it above a certain threshold, e.g. if empty barrels < 30 make 10

[Saver Sigonith]

Originally posted by amade:

They mean give it a bigger margin, e.g. don't activate unless there are at least 30 empty barrels. You can't make a condition that stops/cancels a work order but you can prevent cancellation spams by making sure you have more than enough materials by taking into account of all other jobs that uses barrels.

I didn't mean this actually, but it's a good idea too!
I actually meant having another condition that's something like "amount of drinks is less than 100" so that even if you're running out of the materials all the time you won't have to ALWAYS be worried about your thresholds.