Bay 12 Games Forum

Hermit is the only command I can find that changes it, but I just want to set a manageable limit.  I see other commands on the Dfhack website, but they all come up as unsupported and potentially dangerous.
Pre-steam DFhack had a window that could change these numbers right on it. Or that might have been part of the LNP.

help, please?

Ignoring nobles who claim to have special requirements, and ignoring RP reasons, at what point is chasing higher quality not going to help much for making dwarves happy?
Sooner or later you'll be producing mostly master quality clothes, is it going to make dwarves noticeably happier if they were also dyed? Or otherwise decorated? Is there a large mood difference between having the full set of 8 - 10 pieces of clothing, compared to 3 or so required pieces in terms of a dwarf experience high quality items and getting happy thoughts?
If my military has masterwork steel armor, are they going to get anything more mood wise if I also get them non-conflicting masterwork clothes?
In the fullness of time there is enough space to upgrade from my standard bedrooms (3X3, bed, cabinet, coffer, statue) to 10X10 or more. But is there a meaningful effect on mood for the upgrade.

I am trying to balance the difference between giving them what's good and wasting my time.

To round this out a little. Thisfox's suggestion of 2 stockpiles, 1 linked and one not linked can also be used with normal (non refuse) stock piles to prep the garbage to be sold to caravans. I've never let clothes compost before, but if you dispose of them in magma or in an atom-smashing bridge, sooner or later you will be destroying masterworks, which will make their creators sad. I worry the same is true of refuse composting?
So I sell them off to the caravans, which seems to be ok for morale.
Getting them to part with the worn clothes can be more difficult. I use DFHack cleanowned commands to autodump various levels of worn clothes and put the dump by the depot. Have to remember to D-B-Claim the stuff in order to assign it to trade though, and if you don't trade it all they'll then haul it off to various stockpiles if there's any left that take them.

If this was my fort, they'd be looking at a massacre at home sometime soon too.

Fort is about 15 years old, 200 dwarves. Volcano embark.
Mostly everything is stable.
Flooded a large area in a lower level to move my farming to. This will be better organized and closer to the kitchens and other plant processing. 
The old farms are getting lost in a 3 Z level deep channeling of the surface for a lava moat / killing zone / obsidian farm. This has proceeded with out due caution. Close to 10 miners have died, that reminds me I need more coffins. But one of them was already using a crutch. At least 4 of those deaths were due to the miners falling with collapsing levels through a floor level and into an area below that was previously dug out and now full of water from an aquifer.
Putting the various control levers in the tavern has been far more reliable than having them in the dining hall.
Having all the doors in green glass has really helped me be able to visually process things better.
Thought I was going to breed gorillas, but a loose beakdog killed the female before she produced offspring. Have since been at war with elvs.
Had someone's bedroom engraved. But I don't recall what she did that so impressed me.

I am now bored with trading, it's too easy to abuse and I no longer find it fun.  I realize this is a subjective problem that no one else can actually solve, but I am hoping some of you have suggestions on ways to approach trading that don't feel like I am abusing the system.
My particular experience is that it is trivial to generate excess meaningless value and trade it away. Simply pumping out rock crafts is enough to allow you to trade virtual garbage for useful stuff from the caravan. It's the same with rock mechanisms. It's worse if you make them out of valuable rock like native gold, and if you smelt the gold it's completely absurd. One gold ore makes 4 bars which becomes 8 craft goods and each single craft good can be as valuable as a steel weapon or all the food in a caravan. Don't have gold? There's a bunch of other ores that are just as bad, and plain stone crafts are still a problem all by themselves.
It's easy enough to tell myself I won't do these things, but I need to find some trading I can do that feels right to me.

Unacceptable: craft goods, mechanisms, other virtually unlimited things (doors, tables, etc). Meals because they are so valuable they again make trading trivial. Gems; they're not worth much, but my Manager or Doctor can just sit their churning out gems. Clothes if I am importing leather/cloth. Weapons, armor. Battle loot.

I might try rules like: Only exporting things I actually need, like bars of iron. Or only raw materials my fort produces, barrels of plants or meat or sacks of flour or bolts of cloth.  But in the end I suspect this will simply mean no trading early on and then later end up back at the "I can buy whatever they have" situation.

I'll try no trading at all. Or only trading for things I REALLY need (billion for the baron who likes this metal my dwarves have never heard of). Or things that might be a little different; "yes, I'll take this mated pair of gorillas".

I'll try only trading Artifacts. Then we can see how much I want what the caravan offers.

It would be more fun for me to endure selling a dwarf to the goblins than it is to sell finished goods. Selling finished goods feels like it has no cost to the player. I guess if I sold animals I'd at least have the small risk that I accidentally sell a Titan or other prisoner and have to deal with them getting free. FUN is where the fun comes from.

Are my embarks just too easy? My caravans are rarely threatened. If more got chased off would I be more desperate to trade? Is my military too small? If I had more soldiers I'd have less dwarves available to spit out crafts.

So, IDK. How do any of you handle this problem?

caveat: I am perfectly happy to make craft goods for my dwarves to enjoy. No matter how much I hate a specific dwarf I am happy for them to wear a bracelet or whatever, even if the dwarf sucks and the bracelet is worth 3K.

I too like to use bronze for bolts. Specifically in that period where I am fairly certain I have enough iron for everything, but I haven't yet actually made all the iron/steel things I need so I definitely don't want to use iron for bolts.