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Dwarf Fortress => DF Dwarf Mode Discussion => Topic started by: Urist9876 on September 08, 2021, 05:02:34 am

Title: How do you handle silk threads?
Post by: Urist9876 on September 08, 2021, 05:02:34 am

Annoyed with my weavers walking all the way to the caverns from the top side looms, I tried to make it a bit more efficient.
So I made a few looms close to the caverns. Now dwarves starting their job there do not have to walk that much.
Next was to disable the general work order to loom all threads (o-W-disable autoloom) and set a job to collect webs in the workshop profile (I used a job to collect 10 with the condition 10 are available and in the other shop collect 10 when 30 available).
Bonus: you can set those looms to low skilled weavers, reducing the risk for your experienced weavers dying in the caverns.
Much better, but still a lot of walking from the shop to bring the threads up. Time to add a mine cart.
I linked the web collection looms to a stockpile, set it to accept from links only and set that up as the start of the mine cart route. Near my topside looms I have another stockpile where the mine cart is set to dump its contents once a month or when full (which is very unlikely to happen with silk thread).
I probably should add some limits to the production, as I am getting hundreds of silk threads.

Title: Re: How do you handle silk threads?
Post by: Thisfox on September 08, 2021, 05:13:48 pm

Thousands. I have somewhat a similar setup. Thousands of silk threads. You can dress everyone in silk.

Title: Re: How do you handle silk threads?
Post by: Amaranth on September 08, 2021, 05:21:26 pm

Why don't you set up a silk farm? Can't you milk brown recluse spider men?

Title: Re: How do you handle silk threads?
Post by: anewaname on September 08, 2021, 11:21:00 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

When I see a cavern full of webs, I cannot resist, and I ignore the safer options of digging out rooms for cave spiders or making a GCS farm.

I focus on mass-collection of webs, then dye them later. Here is what usually happens:
- turn off the auto-collect and auto-loom orders, set up 4 looms below for low-skill weaver training.
- put 10 new weavers in an bone/copper armored squad, with barracks to do combat drills. When not activated as military dwarfs, these dwarfs have the good odds to take down a GCS by themselves without being webbed, because of their training and importantly because GCS only start webbing when confronted by active military. So they train when not collecting and this helps them survive in the caverns against dangers.
- The gate is opened, some axedwarfs are sent to murder local wildlife, the four looms are set to collect-webs-repeat. When the webs run out or a real danger arrives, cancel the looms, recall the weavers, and lock the gate.

- To bring the hundreds of silk threads upstairs, no minecarts. Minecarts would involve one job per thread at the pickup site, that is not efficient. Use a 1-or-2-tile stockpile for silk threads with 1 bin (the bin is stationary once assigned to the stockpile, even if empty, so the bin will not break your fort if you prefer to not use them). If you have a lot of jobless dwarfs, they will carry up 5 or 10 threads upstairs per job because the Put Item In Bin job adds threads to the job while the dwarf is walking downstairs. If you have few jobless dwarfs, the Put Item in Bin job will keep adding new threads to the job and the dwarf eventually assigned to the job may carry hundreds of threads upstairs in one haul. Once the webs are upstairs, set the stockpile to only-accept-from-links (this will stop it from collecting newly dyed threads and stops any bin-locked job-cancels). Ignore the system until you run out of undyed thread, then check if the caverns have enough new webs for another dwarf-mob-ravages-the-landscape event.

Title: Re: How do you handle silk threads?
Post by: DwarfStar on September 09, 2021, 11:25:28 pm

You could also use a burrow to limit how far into the caverns the dorfs venture to collect the webs. Use the burrow "w" option "limit workshop to burrow", and any looms within the burrow will only be able to collect webs that are also within the burrow.

Title: Re: How do you handle silk threads?
Post by: vjek on September 10, 2021, 09:30:44 am

Silk webs spontaneously generate on all tiles of all cavern Z levels, if they're open/mined out.

So, just mine out everything that's not caverns on those Z levels, and you get danger free webs just popping into existence on the floor.  It's magic!  8)
In my forts, I typically only have to do the one Z level closest to the surface, the top of the first cavern, because it has the smallest cavern area, and the largest mineable area. 
Once you open all that up, it's non stop silk for all that clothing that decays way too rapidly by default.

Title: Re: How do you handle silk threads?
Post by: Stench Guzman on September 27, 2021, 07:35:40 pm

I don't often bother much with cave spider silk.  With a few breeding pairs of llamas, sheep, and alpacas you can get plenty of yarn for clothing with less risk to your weavers.  Silk/cloth/yarn is also cheap to import.

Collecting silk can be a faster way to train weavers than weaving it into cloth, so it has that benefit.  Also it's good when you have some exotic types of silk around like brown recluse or forgotten beast silk.