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[PopTart]

Kind of ashamed to post this... I've been playing DF for two years and since then I have made a whole bunch of rad forts. My style of playing is that I like to maximize the craftsmanship of as many items as possible. Not for monetary value or even to lower dwarfs' stress—more for my roleplaying imagination, I guess. Anyways, guaranteeing that every dwarf is clad in ☼emerald silk robes☼ means keeping tight controls over labors, training clothiers and dyers on making bags, etc. Ditto for masons, carpenters, metalcrafters, and so on. I know that setting SET_LABOR_LISTS:NO in d_init.txt will help.

I can't keep waiting on dfhack or DT to play Dwarf Fortress! So I have to get over any external labor management. Any tips for speeding this up and keeping it organized and error-free?

[Taffer]

Stop caring so much about optimal job selection. Seriously, forts get along just fine without it. The built-in labour system isn't very good--it will be replaced at some point, I believe--but it works just fine for simple tasks. Your prized blacksmith is hauling corpses too much? Turn it off, VPL is good at that. Nobody is mining? Turn mining on for 4 or 5 fish cleaners, VPL is good at that.

You don't need a spreadsheet to enjoy the game, and chaos isn't a bad thing: Dwarf Fortress is--in my opinion--more enjoyable without the obsessive micromanagement I think Therapist leads people towards.

I'm not sure what to say about ensuring that everyone is in emerald silk robes, but personally I'd be content simply making a lot of them and ensuring that the only clothing available is an emerald silk robe. It's not the end of the world if somebody isn't wearing one, and that can enhance roleplaying: fortresses aren't particularly authoritarian places. Urist just prefers his pink gem-studded shirt, no matter what the monk wannabes think.

[PopTart]

Yeah I'll have to get over this obsession with optimizing stuff and just jump in

[Bumber]

DT generally updates very quickly. It doesn't need to be used very often once everything's set up. I pretty much just use it to make sure my military is wearing their equipment after that.

DFHack is useful at the very end of a fort's FPS life. It can change 10 FPS back to 20.

[Findulidas]

Stop caring so much about optimal job selection.

I completely disagree, but then again I play just like OP. Doing things quickly and efficiently is so much better and saves so much real time. Do you want to produce stuff, get that megaproject actually built within a reasonable time or whatever else your goal is then optimal job selection is where its at. Of course planning and placement is part of it.

[PopTart]

DFHack is useful at the very end of a fort's FPS life. It can change 10 FPS back to 20.

Oh man, I completely forgot about autodump destroy!! I'll have to resort to actual dumping and smashing! And I'll have to make a lot more soap without clean all. What are other FPS savers near the end?

[Dame de la Licorne]

Hi!

My main reasons for using DFHack (other than the bug fixes) are:

2) Clean blood/spatter/owned items/autodump etc. (as mentioned by others)

1) AUTOBUTCHER.

-Dame de la Licorne

[Taffer]

1) AUTOBUTCHER.

If I'm not mistaken, you don't need DFhack to automatically butcher corpses.

(s) toggles whether animals marked for slaughter will automatically have slaughter tasks added at butcher's shops
(b) toggles whether butcherable corpses will have butcher tasks automatically generated at butcher's shops

I completely disagree, but then again I play just like OP. Doing things quickly and efficiently is so much better and saves so much real time. Do you want to produce stuff, get that megaproject actually built within a reasonable time or whatever else your goal is then optimal job selection is where its at. Of course planning and placement is part of it.

I've alternated back and forth from using Therapist to not using it since I started playing, and I'm honestly confused as to how you save much time over just using VPL. Time waiting for results to occur, that is. Obviously if you want to turn hauling off of every new useful migrant, Therapist is superior: I'm just not sure that the results of this spreadsheet work actually pay off in-game. If something that I need to be built isn't being built quickly, it's hardly any effort to toggle off hauling for a few of the craftsmen with VPL, and it's not difficult to have a few dedicated haulers using VPL.

I personally remember Therapist as being a lot of tedious spreadsheet work with questionable payoff in-game. It reminds me of premature optimization: I'll spend a lot of time ensuring that none of my carpenters will wander off and haul garbage around or something foolish (for example), but I haven't waited to find out if this will actually be a problem for me and the effort involved in preventing it might take as much time as I'd spend waiting. For all I know (in this example) I'd have had more than enough beds and barrels even if the carpenters spent half their time making cheese rather than beds. It also wasn't uncommon for me to optimize "too well" and end up with craftsmen sitting around doing nothing because I've run out of things for those craftsmen to make. In those cases I'd have probably been better off just leaving them with their default job selection, as then they'd at least help with the hauling whenever they had some downtime.

I'm not saying that you're wrong! You're free to disagree, I just personally don't find megaprojects difficult with only the base game. Things get done, walls get built, and I turn a new labour on for anybody idling long enough.

Even if Therapist makes things easier in some regards--which I don't dispute--I still see tutorials that give the impression that labour selection is unmanagable without Therapist, and I think that this is an exaggeration that does the game a disservice. When I first started playing I spent about as much time in Therapist as I did actually playing the game, and in retrospect I personally think that it was a mistake. I'm surprised I stuck through it, as that doesn't sound fun to me.

[Robsoie]

autodump destroy is to me the major reason for getting df hack , it just can make the unplayable back into playable.

What are other FPS savers near the end?

Some other non dfhack related fps saving :

- quantum stockpile
- atom smasher , in your atom smasher room have a quantum stockpile for all the items you know will be useless to your fort but still will accumulate by thousand every years
- smaller map (i had a 2x2 very playable without me really limiting myself for 20 years) for your fort = better for long fort games
- set your pop limit to 100 or lower (though it's said that to have full df events like king thing you need min pop 100) instead of default 200 , pathfinding from so many dwarves after years of fortress and cavern infested by items isn't really nice.
- wall everywhere you don't need your dwarves to go to stop their pathfinding from going in useless place, sure those caverns can be attractive, but there are so much things on the ground , the replicating webs by example, that your dwarves will kill your fps with them.
- in DF constantly respawning and constantly growing trees are evil, not only for fps, so cut them all (and another reason to use 2x2 map so it's manageable)
- traffic designation is said to help with the pathfinding eating fps

Still for post battle cleaning there's no real workaround to the so great "autodump destroy", those dwarves will takes several month to bring all those gobs useless junk to your atom smashers
I guess making atom smashers where all your battles will take place should help a lot with the process, assuming there's no troll or other building destroyer monsters along the gobs sieges troops.

[Fleeting Frames]

Taffer:
I thought I had optimized my labours, spending hours to go over each dwarf to give them suitable tasks. Sure, 30 seconds to enable main jobs, non-moodable non-quality tasks, disabling hunting/fishing, etc. and then going to next dwarf in line is not much - but it adds up, especially when done several times.

Then I found therapist.
- I could go back and undo the changes for which plans changed without spending 20 minutes to go through every dwarf to find the 3-4 dwarfs whose plans had changed.
- I made something like 700 labour changes to ~77 dwarves in 15 minutes. Doing it again, I could do it even faster. That is about 1,28 seconds per labour - and this after I thought I had optimized their labours over many hours before!
- I now can set up mood-preparation and non-mood dwarf's labours easily with pre-set professions, which further reduces that time.

Did the fort efficiency improve? Indeed. Though the 20% or so I'd guess from idlers isn't prohibitive, an experienced user could likely manage better.

I'd prefer if therapist was tiled the other way, though; I feel it takes focus away from individual dwarf a bit.

Other examples:

Loading up a succession saves. Ok, so what do the over a hundred dwarfs do, what does the fort specialize in?
- piles of dabbling glassworkers
- half the legendaries have their legendary skills disabled - there being other dwarves to work on those jobs
- some are legendary in military skills rather than production
- sixth of fort seriously unhappy.

- another fort: everyone had just 1 labour, no labour having multiple dwarves for it
- all labours, including hauling, disabled on 2 of them (using dfhack's autohauler*, I never pay much mind to hauling).
- Melancholy blacksmith from failed mood.

Sure, I'd discover those eventually without DT too, with a good memory or my own spreadsheet. But eventually is also when the farmer is taken by a mood, when one notices that there is just 1 dwarf mining out the new living complex or when the designated refuse hauler punches mayor in the neck. Can't really get around looking at least selection of dwarves in a succession fort if you want an idea of what it does.

* One day, I'd like to test the autolabor in full, tbh; A fort without direct dwarf management would be a curious thing to try. Crap for moods, though.

[Dame de la Licorne]

1) AUTOBUTCHER.

If I'm not mistaken, you don't need DFhack to automatically butcher corpses.

DFHack's autobutcher isn't for queueing the tasks at the shop, it automatically designates animals for slaughter, and preferentially designates gay animals first.  (So you can keep breeding pairs and slaughter all babies as they grow up, without having to page through animal screens and risking ending up with only gay animals.)  <- This makes a marked difference when leather-farming, not to mention an FPS saver.

-Dame de la Licorne

[Salmeuk]

My biggest tip, without getting into yet another discussion about other people's apparent need for therapist, is to set

[SET_LABOR_LISTS:NO]

in the d_init.txt file. Coupled with this setting, every time you get a migrant wave you should pause the game and assign your most needed labors to specific dwarfs via VPL. Now you can guarantee that every dwarf will only perform labors according to your assignments.

You can always switch them around later as needed. You can take it one step further and manually type in their professions via the nickname screen. This means that even though their highest skill is masonry, and their tile appears white, you know they are really a jeweler or whatever.

Things get trickier after you lose a whole bunch of dwarves to a siege or werehamster or whatever. I usually find myself just pretending that I didn't lose any dwarves, and fill holes in my workforce as I discover them.

Like Taffer said, you just need to let the dwarves do their thing. A little clutter isn't bad. I find that playing without therapist or hack encourages you to design your rooms for the ease of visual assessment. Large stockpiles without bins, specific quarters set aside for the masons or the carpenters, and clearly defined pathways for the majority of dwarves to move around let me quickly assess if things are getting done according to plan.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

These are a few of my old fortresses where I put those design elements into action.

this masonry setup: http://mkv25.net/dfma/poi-33210-industry

or this metalworking room: http://mkv25.net/dfma/poi-32283-metalworking

the stockpiles in this young fortress: http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-12308-crystalcave

the plant stockpiles here: http://mkv25.net/dfma/poi-31581-expandedfarms

these farms were a bit overkill, but provided good visual feedback: http://mkv25.net/dfma/poi-30892-cavewheatandpigtails

I haven't touched therapist for a long time, and I manage 100+ forts just fine. Though the sweet spot for getting to know your dwarves is around 50.

[Bumber]

DFHack is useful at the very end of a fort's FPS life. It can change 10 FPS back to 20.

Oh man, I completely forgot about autodump destroy!! I'll have to resort to actual dumping and smashing! And I'll have to make a lot more soap without clean all. What are other FPS savers near the end?

fix/dead-units clears the dead units list, which I think has an impact. (I was up to 5000+ before I cleared mine. Mostly crundles and troglodytes.)

There's also fix-unit-occupancy, which fixes some phantom "creature blocking site" issues that build up over time. deramp fixes the floating down ramps left from cavern trees. I don't think these affect FPS, but it makes me feel better.

- in DF constantly respawning and constantly growing trees are evil, not only for fps, so cut them all (and another reason to use 2x2 map so it's manageable)

I found the hit from the resulting logs to be worse than the trees themselves. Trees also tend to spring back up very shortly in greater numbers. Only viable solution without constant autodump is paving over the embark.

[Goatmaan]

 Anvillocked (40.19) would not be possible without using df hack (workflow, clean owned scattered x) and Dwarf Therapist!!
There is no easy way to rid the fort of the huge amounts of xclothesx (no atomsmashing here) and the ease of using (now obsolete) workflow to maintain *stocks* is very useful.
But if you run a large fort, the true gem is Dwarf Therapist. And the bigger the fort gets, the more it shines. Ill give an example.
I haven't bothered to set the labors on children who have matured for several years. Sorting by age I see 200+ with farming and no hauling (they'll go into military soon, but I've got stuff to haul) so lets turn on hauling everything for them..youngest is at top so left click and hold, move cursor to right to last hauling labor, still holding left button, scoll down to oldest without any hauling, let go of left button. Move cursor to commit, left click. DONE. Hauling enabled on 200+ young ones.
 Yea, I need a tool like that.
I only use templates for drafting, all crosstraining labors.set by hand.
Even Therapist has become painful to use, but I can use it to great effect.
Try that in vanilla?? No thank you.

I will try the fix/dead-units and see what I get back fps wise, I'd be happy with 1

  Goatmaan

[Putnam]

Stop caring so much about optimal job selection.

I completely disagree, but then again I play just like OP. Doing things quickly and efficiently is so much better and saves so much real time. Do you want to produce stuff, get that megaproject actually built within a reasonable time or whatever else your goal is then optimal job selection is where its at. Of course planning and placement is part of it.

Most problems like that aren't so much about labor as much as optimal stockpile placement, which doesn't require DFHack or therapist at all. Hauling is the bane of my existence and everything I do minimizes it.