Any ideas?
Put one right at the entrance with leather and a copper sword or whatever, and then hide more depots farther in, placing better and better equipment as you go along.
Actually sounds like a decent idea. Just too bad depots are 5x5, you cant just place items in hidden corners and such.
I mean the items that were made in that shops and were never moved since their making.
yes, things in them get moved. except stone and ore, which never seems to be moved, ever.
usually, built furniture is not moved. but i noticed that coffers seem to be randomly moved, even if they've been built as part of a room. i was on a woodless map, and i gave my dwarfs small rooms with a cabinet/coffer/armorstand so that i could define them as barracks, at least until i got a tree farm up. but all the coffers were moved -- often times just one square -- but moved none the less. it was wierd.
But yes, trade depots are the easiest since you can just select what you want in each one very easily. Even nobles will help carry stuff to them. Too bad they are so huge, otherwise it would be more useful for the plans that you have.
About the trade depots - since I can only add items to them while a caravan is there, and once the caravan leaves the items will be returned to their respective stockpiles, do I have to abandon the fortress while a caravan is there to prevent them from being moved? If I do not have stockpiles for the items in them, will they stay "in" the depot after shuffling even though they're not technically still supposed to be there?
Certainly the size of them is annoying. I wish it were possible to simply set up a container and send specific items to it. A chest at the end of the maze containing the artifact would be much nicer than a trade depot...