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Author Topic: Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?  (Read 9159 times)

BrisoS

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Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?
« on: July 28, 2012, 01:49:16 pm »

Hi all,

I got the basics of DF and therapist down. My fort is growing in size rapidly but I still find that most of my dwarfs stay idle half the time. I want tasks to get done as I set them and am struggling with Dwarf Therapist to achieve my goal. I am at about 70 dwarves in a relatively small fort (still on Spring of year 2 only and not digging or building much). I don't want to start new industries before the old ones are running smooth and items are moving from shops to stockpiles quickly. Out of my 70 dwarves I only have about 15 working in a workshop or having other full-time jobs (farming, wood cutting etc...).

Does anyone have any advanced tips for Therapist? Anything beyond most basic stuff (I know how to assign labor, what each labor does basically) to make my workforce more efficient would be welcome. The guides I have found don't go further than that stuff.

Thanks!

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GoombaGeek

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Re: Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?
« Reply #1 on: July 28, 2012, 01:50:51 pm »

I don't use it :D

This post is pretty useless but I do fine without it :P
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rdnwt

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Re: Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?
« Reply #2 on: July 28, 2012, 02:01:08 pm »

It's usually better to keep everyone as generalists until your fort is very mature. I typically turn on plant gathering and farming and wood burning and engraving and even masonry and carpentry for everyone.

Then, when I get a dwarf I want as a specialist, like a migrant who is already a master weaponsmith or a dwarf after a mood: give him a nickname so I remember who he is, turn off his other labors, and turn his specialty off for everyone else so he isn't distracted and no one else tries to make useless garbage.

But especially for labors that aren't really affected by skill level (farming, wood burning, plant gathering, etc.), just leave it on for everyone unless you don't want a specific dwarf distracted.
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celem

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Re: Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?
« Reply #3 on: July 28, 2012, 02:04:48 pm »

Therapist does give you a nice overview of dwarvern personality traits.  Certain fortress jobs work best when coupled with certain traits.  For instance your doctors should be as altruistic as possible, if you want engravings of mighty battles from worldgen, then your engraver should be a traditionalist.  There are a slew of these, many not well known or mapped, infact i dont know if theres an accumulated list anywhere.

Examine the personality section of the wiki to get an idea of how dwarven brains look and make some educated guesses as to what traits might help certain jobs, its fairly logical (as far as DF ever can be)

As to keeping your dwarves busy, well thats a question thats age-old.  Once upon a time you set these useless layabouts to mass dump stone or just made them all stone haulers and made huge stockpiles.  The hauling changes make this less satisfactory now.  Another common piece of advice is to make them pump for stats, though iirc this only boosts endurance which wont make them much more useful than they were.  One option is to make them stone detailers and smooth your entire fort, ties up a couple of years though be prepared for your fortress worth to skyrocket

The truth is you almost always end up with hoards of these useless gits, many fortress industries are highly effective.  2-3 planter dwarves 1 cook and 1 brewer is enough to maintain around 200 dwarves.  Most crafts get churned out so fast in a dedicated industry setting that you make more than enough a year to buyout caravans, and thats even before your clothesmaking, glass, roasts, pottery etc etc etc

My solution is to make anyone prone to idling into a dogsbody, these dwarves have the labours that bottleneck on me most.  Architecture, masonry, carpentry, mechanics.  You use manager profiling to keep these newbs out of the relevant workshops since they suck, but when you are mass designating a trap field or throwing up a structure, they come swarming like ants.

Also use therapist (or 'v'-'z') to look at the dwarfs stats.  From here i populate a militia with the less desirables.  Agi, str, dis.res., heal, willpower, toughness are all desirable in a melee warrior.  But just because he doesnt have them all in spades doesnt mean he cant train 6 months of the year.  As long as none of those key stats are severely negative they are acceptable foddermilitia.  A crossbow militia can be made up of just about any dwarf, since they are dead if they get melee'd generally anyway.  Only stats that rule out even xbow militia are severely neg agility

While its nice to get an immigrant who has some combat skills, they dont always have the stats to back them up.  That useless potash-maker with ++ across the key stats will be smearing the rest of your soldiers across the floor within 6 months.  Dont write them off because they are starting from 0...in the long run they will far outstrip any warrior with lesser stats.  (My current 'swing' team consists of 10 superdwarvern warriors, all started life as trash immagrants, soap makers, cheese makers, fisherdwarves.  They are the squad of choice when facing serious badassery such as inorganic FB/MBs
« Last Edit: July 28, 2012, 02:09:25 pm by celem »
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Bitharne

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Re: Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?
« Reply #4 on: July 28, 2012, 03:06:23 pm »

How do you check dwarf stats in Therapist? Haven't been able to see this option, was looking for it recently...
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WanderingKid

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Re: Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?
« Reply #5 on: July 28, 2012, 03:20:34 pm »

Doubleclick the name to see the stats for that dwarf.  Once the screen's up simply click another to change the view.

I personally invert the rdnwt does labor.  I specialize early and often, so my non-mood buildable stats go to legendary as early as possible.  In particular I eventually end up with 5-7 miners with nothing else enabled, at least 1 legendary carpenter (usually from the original embark), 2-3 legendary masons for walls and masterwork furniture, and 3 or so legendary engravers for masterwork engraving later.  Stone, Bone, and Wood-Crafting all eventually get a moody dwarf to take up the reins.  I usually won't militarize my original hunter so he becomes an amazing one eventually... at least until the worldgen runs out of prey.

My original farmer usually ends up becoming a legendary chef so he gets taken off farm work and I just throw more random grunts at the farmland since legendary or beginner really doesn't matter to the result, it's just time.  I can throw more dwarves at time.  Dedicated brewer usually gets assigned in the first migrant wave, if not the second at the latest.  He'll usually get an apprentice from the first 'massive wave' since he isn't quite up to legendary speed yet at that point and I'll have two stills going.

The faster these guys hit legendary and are dedicated to just those tasks, the more of the remaining cannon fodder immigrants can be put to military and hauling duties without affecting your primary fort.

for using Therapist, setup advanced jobs once you've gotten a feel for what you want dedicated workers for and what you want to be able to quickly set to 10-20 inbound dwarves.  I've currently got settings for Marksdwarves, Farming Grunts, Haulers, and Generic Crafters... the last really only comes into play for the first Immigration wave so I can get stone crafts up asap for that first caravan, then they get set to something else.

Urist McPenguinhead

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Re: Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?
« Reply #6 on: July 28, 2012, 05:03:10 pm »

If you want, there's also a clone of dwarf therapist by splinterz, it's got a couple of neat extra features like suggesting the best jobs based on a dwarf's attributes.
You can get it here: http://code.google.com/r/splintermind-attributes/
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melphel

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Re: Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?
« Reply #7 on: July 28, 2012, 06:30:57 pm »

Use custom profession profiles.  I used therapist for so long before trying this and discovering what a godsend it is.

It allows you to homogenize the common roles you give to your dwarves instead of having to turn on/off the same labors for several individuals.  It also changes their profession name in the game so you can easily tell who you have slated to what role (i.e. haulers).  You can make templates that will dictate what labors a certain professional should have.  When applied to a dwarf, the custom profession will turn on all its related jobs for him/her (and turn off anything not in the profession that they have on -- but only if you choose to not apply that profession as a mask).  Then you can sort your dwarves in therapist by profession, grouping them all together (you could do that without custom professions too, but it looks nicer with them enforced).  This isn't as useful when you only have a handful of dwarves, but with larger numbers it makes a difference.

In general, don't allow a dwarf to haul items for his own craft.  It will take longer to clear cut a forest if the woodcutter stops to carry his logs to the stockpiles each time he fells a tree, rather than letting someone else come by to pick them up while he keeps cutting.  Same goes for emptying out workshops.  What is nice with custom professions is that you can make sure all skilled workers don't have hauling tasks that take away from their job or put them in danger.  Much better to have a disposable hauler, rather than the legendary weaponsmith, carry the wood/corpses/refuse in the event that an ambush is waiting outside.
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BrisoS

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Re: Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?
« Reply #8 on: July 29, 2012, 11:46:51 am »

Doubleclick the name to see the stats for that dwarf.  Once the screen's up simply click another to change the view.


Details in Therapist will show skills and traits but not attributes. Strength Agility etc... are not displayed. am I doing it wrong?
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Garath

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Re: Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?
« Reply #9 on: July 29, 2012, 02:52:11 pm »

no, those arn't displayed in DT, though I think they are in SDT (Splinterz DT)

I never bothered about mental or physical stats though, and all my forts did fine so far.
DT is good at figuring if someone is just  an extra in his profession and should be reschooled to what you need. Or to assign some people who do the occasional special work that you don't really need and those who don't do anything usefull to temporary mason duty because that wall needs to be done yesterday, and the real masons are pumping out blocks for them.
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Azure

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Re: Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?
« Reply #10 on: July 29, 2012, 05:01:17 pm »

Brisos give us more details on what your fort is.
  • Where is it? Surroundings, temp, nearby civs, biome, features(river, water in cav 2,3, magmapipe in cav 2, etc.)
  • What stage is your fort in?
    • Are you buying out caravans with masterwork quarry bush roasts?
    • Is it a surface fort or dug into a hillside
    • If you're on the surface, is your outermost wall up? Dodge trap? Z-2 reverse fortifications? z-3 patrol level to spot invaders? z-4 sniping towers? Are all surface structures roofed over with at least bridges?
    • What is you military and what gear does it have at what completion rate?
    • Are you still in need of massive stocks of stone for blocks/mechanisms/furniture?
     
  • Please list your entire labor structure as well as your current and future labor plan. If you're gonna make a glass tower we'll have diff. recc's than if you want to go for 180/200 steel/adamantium legendary soldiers to duke it out with the HFS.
  • List how much of what warehouse space you have with what stockpile settings.
  • List your armory stats so we know what gear you have on the soldiers as well as in reserve for recruits.
  • How large are you ammunition stocks?
  • What size is your cage storage and prisoner processing station?
  • Arena built yet?
  • Been culling "finds helping others rewarding" for doctor/nurse positions? Analytical/memory/intuition for diagnose monkeys?
     
  • What is the entrance of your fort designed like? Does it have a redundant entrance so that all goblins are fully inside before you strike, allowing for safe harvesting of goblinite? Or will you need to plan on armored haulers bearing the brunt of the work.
  • Have you built or are planning to build/irrigate/dig a tree farm of large proportions?

Here's some labor designations to help group it up.

Specialists - Full time specialists, should never be recruited and should be burrowed for efficiency where applicable.

1-? Miner - Full time mining. You should have your fortress planned out and therefore you'll always have more crap to dig. Arena, warehouse, redundant service tunnels & cisterns. Early on you'll need a lot, not so much later.

2-4+ Grower - Full time farming. Burrowing is preferred to ensure a high planting rate. Disable EVERYTHING else. maybe leave haul food but you want these guys filling the fields.

1-2 Brewers - Full timer brewers. Generally once you get around 50-90 dwarves you can just leave one on repeat. might want a second once you're breaking into the late 100's.

1 Cook - Dem roasts will let you buy out caravans. Keep a stockpile around the kitchen only allowing flours, FB meat, semi-/mega megabeast meat, exotic meats, eggs if you want, quarry bush leaves, sunshine if you want, and cheese if you want.

1 Soaper - Keep your soap stocks up. Infection's a bitch.
  • Soap making, lye making, wood burning. Let him help in the furnaces and animal hauling if he's idling too much.
1+ Stone Crafter - Stone pots, while heavy, will free up more wood for light bins. you should use stockpile dickery to try and limit their distribution to booze pots and food storage pots. Don't want a hauler getting fragged cause he's lugging a pot after all.

1+ Mechanism Crafter - Get this guy to legend and burrow his ass. Let him work on internal stuff like building the pump stack but otherwise don't risk losing him.

1+ Leatherworker - Backpacks/waterskin/quivers early on. not so much later unless you max out your armor coverage.

1-3+ Weavers - All weaving all the time. Keep those cloth stocks segregated and filled while you keep your unfilled bag supply and clothing stocks up. Good use for children if you cheat.

1-4+ Dyers - Unnecessary imo but if you go for it overkill it.

1-2+ Clothier - In the early days while your milling industry is still getting set up you'll want more. Once you're established you'll have a mook hauling his useless crap to the masterwork clothes bins.

1-?+ Forgers - Numbers all depend on how you distribute your labors. either way make sure they have a panic room with supplies, a pick, and unraisable bridges in case of FUN.

1+ Butcher - Like the mechanism crafter, it isn't necessary to have a guso dwarf to rock the job but it never hurt either.

1+ Tanner - A good tanner will help keep the skins from overflowing if the overflow dwarves aren't keeping the stocks low.

2-3+ Animal Trainers - You'll want more the more exotic crap or high volume breeding you do.

1-2+ Carpenters - Carps gotta carp yo.

1-2+ Masons - Quality furniture inc.

3-4+ Bone Carvers - If you enabled butcher sentients then you have a lotta bone bolts to make. Good use for children if you cheat.

1 Bookie/Broker - Handles bookkeeping/Manager/Broker duties. Can do wood cutting and animal training on off days. Architecture is a good help as well.

1 Chief Doc - A dedicated diagnoser/suterer with high analytical/memory/intuition. Disable feed/water and recover wounded.
 
1+ CCand - Chief candidates in training. same as above.

1+ Surgeon - At least one dedicated skilled surgeon to help lower infection rate. Keep in mind that a novice is better than letting them go untreated for months. Disable recover wounded

1-3+ Doctors - All 4 labors enabled. disable recover wounded. These are your primary doctors. When training them via drop shaft volunteers make sure only these, the Chief, and the surgeon have their medical labors enabled to help condense the xp.

1-6+ DCand - Dwarves with "Finds helping others rewarding".These are overflow doctors. Enable wound dressing and suture to keep infection rates low.

1-10 DCand Enforcer - Dwarves with "Finds helping others rewarding as well as strong attributes. Train in the military and have them billeted in the hospital quarters. Survival of the medical team is of the utmost priority.

5-???+ Nurses - Additional "Finds helping others rewarding" dwarves, but in rough times any dwarf will do. Purely feed/water and recover wounded. If the battlefield is hot, disable recover wounded and let the recovery haulers bring the wounded in.

If your fort takes catastrophic damage you may need to draft enforcers and nurses to help with the suture/dressing and enable set bones/surgery/diagnose on the DCand's. Also, if it wasn't clear the medical staff must have no hauling labors enabled. You want them idling life away while you arrange for injured. If that burns your ass then kit them out as leather marksdwarves and get them a couple ranks via shooting prisoners. then let them train the day away during peacetime. hospital should be designed as a mini-fort with it's own guarded single entrance with multiple raisable bridges, picks, well & redundant wells, seeds to an unused crop, etc. If the shit hits the fan you need to be able to seal them off. Try to leave a shaft to an unused and blocked off quarry for slab crafting/memorials. Quality quarters for the medical staff is reccomended to keep deaths via tantrum spiral down. Wont hurt to put their fav caged animal in their room or have their fav foods/booze on hand with masterwork roasts in a legendary dining room.

1-2 Baron, 1-2 duke, 1-2 king - Let your nobility be a shoulder to cry on or a master bolt maker. w/e boats your float.

You'll easily run 50-80 dwarves as the backbone of your fort and that's not even getting into teachers and misc junk.

Overflow jobs - Unskilled labor has a skill all it's own

1-3+ Gather - These are your rustic frontiermen keeping your wilds tamed. May want to hurl the wood cutters to axedwarf training for a year or two as well as putting the generics into the hauler reserve. Large tree farms need lots of course
  • Wood cutting(Just a few with wood hauling disabled, Plant gather, animal hauling, wood hauling. If they idle too much give them food hauling.
1-20+ Eng Core - These are bulk engineers for large scale low-quality projects when you're just getting the fort on its feet. Shift labor designations to fit your needs. If you don't plan on dropping a hojillion traps at once you might scale back mechanics to condense xp. ditto with engraving. Large surface forts need a fuckton. less with the recent change to stone blocks but still a lot to get dem 55x55x4 5-tile thick walls up.(|___|).
  • Masonry, Engraving(Carve fortifications), Mechanics,(installation), Architecture,Furniture Hauling
As needed,temp, Armored Eng Core - Armored marksdwarves in the hauler reserves for unsticking traps in hazardous  conditions will need to use burrows to make this useful.
  • Masonry(Exposed walls once ambushes are popped), Engraving(Carve fortifications, cavern/exposed particuarly), Mechanics,(installation,maintaining,replacing),Architecture(Exposed pumps, bridges, etc.
As needed, temp, Engraver - One day you might feel like smoothing & engraving large sections of the fort. Draft chunks of the hauler reserves to be your engravaboos.

2-6+ Processors - Backbone of your food industry, also a great use for off duty hauler reservists.Assign labors as needed.
  • Milling, Plant processing, shearing, spinning(keep low to condense xp), fish cleaning(if you fish), Pressing.
4-12+ Furnace Ops - Help melt down goblinite, keep charcoal stock up for ash and so on.
  • Furnace op, Wood burner. Add item and stone hauling if they idle too much.
1-?+ Railmen - Doesn't hurt to have agile dwarves burrowed on your minecart route to be on hand all day erryday.
1-2+ Butcher/tanner - Assign as needed to keep the refuse stock clean

Haulers

Animal Haulers
 2+ Hauler Dedicated -  Livestock - You need dedicated haulers or unburrowed doctors/nobles will go get themselves killed.
 ?? Hauler Reserve - If you have exposed cages you may want the reservists to handle it since they'll be armored.
Wood Haulers
 1+ Hauler Dedicated -  Keep at least one dedicated on hand for timely hauling.
 1+ Hauler Reserves - Toggle on more reservists as needed.
Stone Haulers
 1-2+ Hauler Dedicated - Keep a few on hand to sort your stone and keep the minecarts dump zone clean.
 3-8+ Patrolmen - Off duty job for leatherclad patrolmen. 4 on, 6 off per 10 will be fine
Food Haulers - NEVER send these into combat. At least without checking each dwarves inv. 1 barrel of booze is all it takes man....
 2-4+ Hauler Dedicated - Grower - Haulers to handle crop/generic food shuffling
 1-2+ Hauler Dedicated - Kitchen - Handles the production from brewery and helps keep kitchen clutter down.
 1-2+ Hauler Dedicated - Pig tail/rope reed/dye reagent shufflin. helps with generic food shufflin
Item haulers
 4+ Hauler Dedicated - Ammuntion - Bone bolts suck up a huge amount of jobs. Helps with generic item
 2+ Hauler Reserve - Various cloth related shufflin
 3-5+ Hauler Reserve - Armor/wep shuffling. Goblinite sorting to melting/incinerator stockpile.
Furniture Hauler
 1 Hauler Dedicated - The rest is split with the Eng Core. May want to enable animal hauling if he's idling too much.
Recovery - A subgroup of the Hauler Reserves. Train as skilled marksdwarves then cross-train to hammers once legendary. After a siege only let recovery haul useless crap to a garbage dump just inside the wall. raise bridge, enable item hauling, and let the fortress sort it out. dump burnables in the incinerator, let furnace ops melt the meltables. Do it right and you wont have UristMcKing getting shot by a post-siege ambush party.(Play DF with a copy/paste & title rename of the goblin entry x3+ for good times.=D )
 20-40+ Hauler Reserve. - Burial, recover wounded, refuse hauling, item hauling(clean-up/overflow only)

As your fort grows you should be drafting dwarves for the military as their attributes/skills place them. Get a group of 6 dwarves to function as teachers. Keep them deep inside the fort and safe at all but the most grim times. Get a group of 10 legends trained up, split into 2-five dwarf squads. They can patrol, master teacher and train a different weapon, etc. At least 1, 10-dwarf dedicated marksdwarf squad.

Once you have your rough military and core needs met all dwarves get drafted into the hauler reserves after being tagged by attribute post-migration wave.
  • If times are rough and you can't kit them well then use whatever castoff goblinite you can scrap together. The big priority is masterwork xbows and a sufficient ammo stock asap.
  • On arrival, assign them to a full marksdwarf armor uniform or a full leather marksdwarf kit if you value speed more than risk.
  • Use a "Recovery" custom profession to autoassign them their generic job. As your fortress has new needs arise grab haulers from the reserve and reassign them.
  • Do not activate prior to getting a few ranks in marks. Get those via ventilating prisoners/using an obs platform to plink at ambushes/sieges.
  • Distribute labor so that a 2-3/10 training schedule wont interfere too badly. Motivated dwarves will give 0 fucks and may req. retirement into a permanent civilian job.
  • If you build a swimming pool you wont have to use quality soldiers in risky ops.

Other uses for idlers are:
  • Medical test subject. Have them fall 2 z-levels and break a few bones to train the medical staff. Armor,disease resistance,faster healing increase training rates. Remember to clear the traction benches of the cowards every couple months.
  • If you ever snagged skilled wrestlers/striker/kicker/misc. obj user outside of your teaching 6 you can throw together wrestler squads to help round out future recruits. Full armor,open hand + shield(metal). Will train fairly quickly vs armored but disarmed prisoners for a bit. give them wood shields to keep the headshot rate low.(Ha! wood shields are misc. obj training weapons.)

Aaand bam! There's ~ 160 dwarves at the minimal side. the other 40 easily get placed and you're at 200 going oh god i need more dwarves but my fps can't take it! D:
Most of these numbers wont get met cause you'll keep needing dedicated specialized dwarves here n there but such is life.

I'll post some attribute copypasta in a sec.
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Azure

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Re: Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?
« Reply #11 on: July 29, 2012, 05:07:52 pm »

Physical Attributes: All "--" should be carefully considered before placement in ANY squad and should be barred from jobs that suffer from their inferiority.
 Strength: Keep these in mind for stone haulers/wrestlers/hammerdwarves for faster hauling/higher success rates/possible kockback bash's
  --S [Very weak and worse]- These poor bastards are fit only for the most pitiful of jobs and being used as medical test subjects.
  -S [Weak] - Send into non-strength related fields: Processing, Butcher/tanner, Carver, Marksdwarf and/or reserve squads
  S,VS [Strong,Very Strong]- Send into Wrestler/Misc obj. (shield bashing) training squads. These will become slightly buffed recruits for specialist needs. Make better Stone haulers. Especially when paired with +A
  M [Mighty] - These are your golden boys. Train these dwarves in hammerdwarf if you do not want them using or they are not large enough to use exotic weapons. The hammerdwarves can be later crosstrained into fully realized marksdwarf commandos. Dwarves with a size of 62500 or larger can wield pikes/mauls/great axes etc. in 2-H. Never hurts to screen migrants with an exotic weapon check once you have 10 of that type.

 Agility: - Try to pair base agility's together as the base speed caps their upper limit. You want the squad to move as a unit instead of UristMcExtremelyAgile rushing into a 40 gobbo+40Cave croc siege by himself while 9 other UristMcQuiteClumsies are far behind.{Even after being trained  to legendary and getting a massive agi boost the quite clumsies will still be slower than +A's}
  --A [Quite clumsy and worse] - Put into a slow as fuck marksdwarf reserve unit with other --A and -A And/or use as medical test subjects.
  -A [Clumsy]  - Still Marksdwarf or medical bait.
  A,VA [Agile,Very Agile] - Great dedicated railmen for guided minecart routes. Ideal for patrol routes. Consider training as marksdwarves and shift into a melee skill after legendary. Those with increased healing and disease resistance should be moved into fast response reserves and Spec. Ops. Squads.

 Toughness: - Reduces Damage Taken - i.e. Great for wrestlers, Shock Troops, Hospital guards {With +Dis}
  --T,-T [All grades of flimsy] - Should not be used in heavy infantry or Medical testing that you want to survive for more than a few years/
  T,QD,IT [Tough,Quite Durable, Incredibly Tough] - Can be used in wrestler/misc obj squads as shock troops. When combined with increased healing and disease resistance these are your ideal drop shaft subjects. !!Important!! If you disable refuse hauling for all but the Armored recovery squads you'll have a minimum of deaths to sock grabbing. [Recovery Squad: 10 dwarf marksdwarves in full surplus armor. Refuse hauling during sieges. enable item to stay busy during peacetime. mass dump designate the killing field and watch your 40 or 50 recovery dwarves rake in the gear, seal the wall then lug meltables to the forges & then burnables to the incinerator. No useless crap killing your fps.]

 Endurance: Completely irrelevant. Trained by enough that it isn't a concern unless you're minmaxing to a ridiculous degree.

Recuperation: Important for heavy Infantry, Shock Troops, and Drop shaft test subjects,
  --H [Very slow to heal and worse] - Marksdwarf/haulering/civvy job candidate. Too much of a liability in a endurance slugfest against a steel or stronger FB.
  -H [Slow to Heal] - See Above. Can be used in infantry but caution is advised.
  QH,QQH [Quick to heal, Quite Quick to Heal] - Priority for Wrestler/Infantry/Test subjects. Giving them a civilian job is a waste of potential imo. With a highly skilled medical squad they'll be rushing back to combat at a blazing pace.
  IQH [Incredibly Quick to Heal and stronger] - These are a special concern. These dwarves should be cycled into Training squads until teacher hits legendary. Employ as teachers and keep them out of all but the most dire combat. Dwarves with IQH,VRS or ANS and acceptable remaining attributes are to be employed as royal guard and your final line of defense to buy time for a falling fortress. They should be cross trained in all ranged skills, wrestling striking kicking misc. obj, their primary melee and the defensive skills.

 Disease Resistance:
  --Dis [Quite susceptable to disease and worse] - Keep out of shock troops you want alive, core infantry, and marksdwarves with FB duty. These fools are a liability in the case of spreadable diseases. Remember comrades! Loose Immune Systems Sink Fortresses! Do Your Part and Keep Your FB AIDS To Yourself!
  -Dis [Susceptible to disease] - Of Marginal Concern. Just keep away from syndrome using FB's
  RS [Rarely Sick] - Filler for Marksdwarf Squads with FB duty and Test subject squads
  VRS & ANS [Very Rarely Sick and Almost Never Sick] - These dwarves should be placed according to their remaining stats. With QH,QQH,IQH They should be employed as royal guards, Spec. Ops., FB Duty Captain, Hospital Guards, with being assigned as a doctor as the highest priority in case of sympathetic doctor stats.

Soul Attributes
 Willpower - Resistance to passing out. Of minor concern due to a wide amount of skill training it but +W can be beneficial with the raised willpower cap.
  IW [I just use Iron Will but W/e works] - Iron will is an ideal trait for captains, teachers, and wrestling/misc obj. squads and shock troops. An near 5000 point unbreakable will will fight through a siege with shattered legs and passing out only AFTER the enemy is exterminated or disabled.
 Analytical, Memory, and intuition:
  Boosts to these attributes help the diagnosing skill. A Minor concern in the grand scheme of things but it doesn't hurt to have a better doctor
 Focus:
  Boosts help Surgery, Bone Setting & Suturing. A useful byproduct of giving doctors & nurses marksdwarf training.
 Spatial:
  Boosts help the four non-diagnosing skills. Doesn't hurt to have it boosted by self defense training.
 
Personality
 Finds Helping others Rewarding: These are your good nurses and doctors.
  This gives the dwarf a happy thought when rescuing a wounded dwarf. This is essential for your medical staff. Nurses in particular. Their lack of medical training and probably lack of resistance to the horrors of war will likely devastate their happiness if your forces are routed. Every scrap of happiness that helps them keep it together for another day is desirable.
  I believe that Altruism [Finds helping others rewarding/does not like helping others] is also the kindness stat which gives a happy thought when feeding/watering a patient. Once again, creating "Does not care about anything anymore" doctors is desirable in disastrous times.
  Self-Discipline: Less breaks is an amazing thing. Especially in a crunch vs a adamantium FB! D:
  Friendliness: Or more particularly, A lack of... You don't want Mr. Lotsoffreetime making lots of friends with off-duty soldiers that'll likely die


 Other minor Concerns are: {Not a big deal now but after the personality rewrite...}
  Sense of Duty
  Organization
  Sympathy
  Activity Level
  Vulnerability: A high resistance to stress is very desirable.
  Depression: A High Resistance is Preferable
  Anger: A high resistance to berserking and enraging.
  Anxiety: A High resistance to melancholy.
 
From the Embark on TL;DR:
  • Disable Push/Haul Vehicle. You want dedicated railmen[A,VA's] for your routes with many stops. High Agi dwarves and burrows should be assigned to take advantage of the minecarts innate cancellation on content weight.
  • "Finds helping others rewarding" Should be examined for a series of stats.[DCand]
    • Analytical, Memory, Intuition Boosts. These in addition to boosted Misc. Doctor traits and a Solid personality. will make a Doctor Chief Candidate.[DCCand]
    • Boosts to disease resistance. They'll be surrounded by infectious blood and body parts in the case of a flubbed FB Assassination attempt. Best to have them sturdy.
    • Various Misc. Physical, Soul, and personality traits which make them effective doctors. Cross-train the more serious flaws out where applicable.
    • Washouts or overflow should be employed as nurses or enforcers. Basic nurses purely feed/water. Up & coming nurses gain dress wounds and suture to keep infection rates lower. Enforcers get military training until the core medical staff are trains and they are cycled in for doctor training.(keep 3 training yr round to keep rust off and kill berserking patients)
  • S,VS,M Are queued up for Wrestler/Misc obj, Hammerdwarf, Stone Hauling, Exotic weapons, masons and particularly Adamantium great axe wielders in case of FB's made of a highly resistant material.{You ARE Modding the dwarves Entity_Default.txt to allow crafting of all weapons aren't you?} 
  • --A,-A are either tossed in Marksdwarf squads or are written off and used as unskilled labor
  • Boosted A's are marksdwarves, railmen, and patrolmen
  • Boosted toughness's are trained to be skilled recruits and shock troops.
  • Excess migrants Should be dealt with as follows.
    • Tag for stats and employ accordingly
    • Once you deem your military satisfactory, employ as specialized haulers.[Haul jobs are queued up to ALL with the labor enabled.]
    • Once you feel your haulers are maxed out you have two places to send undesirables.
    • Put them into recovery squads. If they are idle too much. Temporarily enable furnace op, item hauling, and other time intensive tasks to keep them busy. Create a custom Prof in The Rapist to quickly reset them back to pure refuse during a siege.
    • Put them into medical test subject squads. With pure overflow dwarves survival is no longer a concern. Station (# of doctors - 2or3) on a 2 z-level drop dropshaft's retracting bridge and set lever to repeat. They get broken limbs, get treated, return, and repeat until infection kills them ~2 years later.[*Refer to further down for drop shaft specifics.]
[/list]

* Medical Drop Shaft:

Z-2  Retracting Bridge. Preferably 3x5 to have consistent station success.
Z-1 Open Air D:
Z-0 Sweet delicious stone to splatter on.

Common injuries ~90%: Broken arms, legs.
Uncommon injuries ~10%: Compound arm,shoulder,leg fracture/shatters.
Rare Injuries <~1-5%: Fatal head or spinal nerve wounds.

Somewhat related; Maintain at a minimum a core squad of ~6 legendary teachers. These dwarves should in time have legendary in :
 Teacher
 Fighting
 Biting, Striking, Kicking, Wrestling, Misc Obj. User
 Dodger, Shield user, Armor User
 Desired Melee skills.
 Ranged weapons are optional and more of a maxing Agi/Focus.
Do not let these dwarves engage ANY enemy. They are the Facilitators that not only bring up future soldiers but they will be balanced soldiers that will hopefully survive even the worst siege.

As a misc. Note. Create a swimming pool for your 'boos to skill up in. Artificial waterfalls and be put to use to isolate and slow down threats so it doesn't hurt to have amphibian dwarves. =D

As time goes on. Add more teacher squads. Generally snag the dwarves with the best attributes to be your teachers. Recruits should get to moderate ranks within a year or two and can be rushed via a gladiator arena. Then return to the trainers to max out defensive and Aux. attack skills.

If you are a sadistic fuck, lock the teachers in a system of auxiliary access tunnels linked to multiple levels of the fort and the arena after your military is fully trained and you no longer need trainers.(Keep 3-6 as royal guards just cause) Lock the door to the booze so that they are forced to drink from a well a vampire "Whoopsied" in earlier.[Werebeast is fine too I suppose?] Clad in your finest Masterwork Adamantium armor and Artifact weapons. In the end of times signal a fighting retreat into saferooms deep in the bowels of the fort. Then unleash the Monsters!. The Stat boost from vampire conversion on top of the already monstrous stats should end any threat. Even if it's an adamantium FB.
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Urist McSpike

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Re: Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?
« Reply #12 on: July 30, 2012, 09:31:34 am »

I go with a limited number of specialists, with 'secondary' labors enabled for mood-crafting, and let the rest be general labor.  Amounts increase as the population increases.

2-4 Miners (Armorsmith, Weaponsmith for moods)
3-6 Masons (Stonecrafting)
3-5 Engravers (Stonecrafting)
1-2 Carpenter
1-3 Wood cutters (Architect, Crossbow making)
1-5 Mechanics (Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Blacksmith, Metalcraft)
1-5 Doctors (Bonecrafting)
1-10 Farmers (Leatherworking)
1 Stonecrafting (for trade goods at the start)
1-3 Cooks (Leatherworking, Animal Care)
1-3 Brewers (Leatherworking, Animal Care)

That group also has various hauling labors turned off, as the population grows - except that I turn most off for Miners and Wood Cutters at the start.  I want them doing their job ASAP, instead of hauling stuff around.

Everyone else gets lumped into the same 'Manual Labor' group - I cherry-pick a few for Animal Training, and the various Farmer crafts, but everyone gets the moodable skills enabled.  I make sure that all of the other skills have a couple randomly assigned - a few Milkers, a few Spinners, etc.  As I get Legendary crafters from moods, I switch off the other jobs and let them fill their profession, or make dedicated workers for an industry as I expand into it.

The military, of course, has everything switched off - I want them training 24/7.  Well, not really - I maintain about an 80% training rate.  I usually rely more on various traps to take out invaders, and maintain about 10-20% of the population as militia.

And then, since I do use DT a lot, I use 'marker skills'.  Only Nobles & Doctors have Gem Cutting & Gem Setting enabled; Doctors also are the only Bonecrafters, and Nobles also have Strand Extraction.  The military are the only Pump Operators - I tend to switch to mechanical power, but it helps buff them up when they're off duty.  The Manual Labor drones are the only ones with Fish Cleaning & Fish Dissection enabled, so I can sort them out of the rest easily.  (I'm an isolationist - I rely on walled pastures for meat/milk industry, and farms.  I disable Hunting & Fishing immediately when immigrants arrive.)
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I mean, look at us.  You give us a young child and a puppy, and we produce, possibly, one of the biggest sins against nature the game has ever seen.

acetech09

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Re: Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?
« Reply #13 on: July 30, 2012, 12:37:13 pm »

I pretty much have 2 dwarves of every profession with hauling disabled, that eventually reach legendary. The rest of my dwarves are a mass hauling and masonry force.
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I challenge you to a game of 'Hide the Sausage', to the death.

toomanysecrets

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Re: Efficient labor - any advanced tips to Therapist?
« Reply #14 on: July 30, 2012, 01:13:03 pm »

Just don't go overkill with putting certain professions on a large number of dwarves. For example 30 carpenters will only skill up a few times each over many years, but 2 carpenters will become legendary rather fast.
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