This idea isn't an important one by any means; at most, it would be largely for flavor & a bit of realism, to make the fort feel more lived-in & part of a larger world, and also for the visual appeal of occasionally seeing something that isn't a dwarf or animal moving around the map. Just a few notions for Toady & Threetoe to consider for long-future updates, after the game has developed enough features to be able to support the ones suggested here.
These "workshops" would come in 3 sizes, each with its own propulsion requirements; we already have the 1-tile Barrow, and the 3x3 Wagon. Let's add a 2x2 Cart, which would be pulled by 2 dwarves, or 1 dwarf leading a draft animal. Combinations, such as a Wagon towing a Cart behind it, might also be possible. A Barrow cannot be used to speedily transport high volumes of stuff into stockpiles--it may have started as a Wheelbarrow, but it's been modified to serve a more specialized purpose now. The same is true for Wagon-sized workshops.
Trade Depot: Peddler's Cart (still called a cart, even though it'll usually be a barrow)
Instead of your fort interacting with its economic neighbors only a scant three times per year, with your broker having to control everything, now the residents of the nearby hillocks can visit your fort whenever they feel like it, and interact directly with your citizens, roaming your hallways as they call out what sorts of wares they're carrying. (Which will usually be food, or hillock-made personal goods such as toys & clothes, but sometimes can also be raw materials that you can't source on your own site, like shells.) Both the peddler, and the citizens interacting with them, would move & trade independently of player control. Benefits to the player would be the customers' happy thoughts about their new acquisitions, and the increased likelihood of safely exporting badly worn masterwork garments before your Clothier suffers the tragedy of art defacement. Drawbacks to the player would include the possibility of your citizens silently importing something you might not want, such as a female cat.
Mason's Shop: Stoneworking Barrow
Stonemasons, sculptors, & engravers use a wide variety of tools: Many types of chisels, a few hammers, drills with various bits, splitting wedges, many grades of sandpaper, files, plumb bobs, squares, measuring rulers . . . in short, a lot for a single dwarf to carry, and way more than he can hold in his hands and still do useful work. He needs something to store it all in: either a backpack, or several pouches & harnesses, or a little wheeled cart--which would also serve to carry a raw stone boulder, enabling the stonemason to (for instance) carve a statue in its intended final position (rather than make it somewhere else and incur the risk of it getting damaged during transport), or even form furniture in situ right from the living rock. Dwarves smoothing/engraving walls & floors would be able to work far more efficiently (in other words, about as fast as their current breakneck pace) if they had the proper tools nearby. Multiple dwarves could even use the same tools more or less simultaneously: Just have each stoneworking barrow extend its speed bonus to all Engravers working within, say, 5 or 10 tiles of it. But if you're smoothing a huge room & you only built one stoneworking barrow, be prepared to see the dwarves fight over it, wasting time pulling it back & forth across the room.
Butcher's Shop: Knacker
If an animal is sick, injured, or dead, it's sometimes more convenient to bring the butcher to it, rather than vice versa. Knackers would also be willing to use animals that actual Butcher Shops sometimes refuse to (for whatever reason), and so for realism/flavor, meat that's been butchered at a knacker's would have a high chance of being considered as "unfit for dwarven consumption," and limited to being fed only to the fort's meat-eating livestock/pets.
Dormitory: Sleeper Car
A covered wagon with up to 6 beds built into it. If a large number of dwarves are working (mining, felling trees, removing constructions, hauling, etc.) in a fairly confined area far removed from their bedrooms, it could be a huge savings in dwarf-hours to move a temporary dormitory to the job site, rather than have everybody commute. The player would just have to designate a convenient zone for the sleeper car to be parked. As the work moves, so could the sleeper car, possibly even with dwarves still asleep inside it--at the risk of the occupants getting a bad thought about being jostled out of bed.
Kitchen / Tavern: Chuckwagon
Similar to the Sleeper Car, a wagon built with a fire-safe block, an array of basic cooking implements, & a bin full of mugs, and loaded with 1 barrel of food & 1 of booze, as well as some fuel for the stove. Workers coming to the food truck would each use their mug twice: First for a drink, and then for stew. By the time all the mugs are dirty, the victuals should be just about gone, and the chuckwagon returns to the fort proper to wash up & replenish its stocks. If the player-designated zone is still in place, the chuckwagon (or possibly even a second one) will return. Optional: If the chuckwagon also carries a few wooden tables & chairs, those could automatically be placed nearby, and loaded up again once the wagon is depleted.
Hospital: Ambulance
A covered wagon with a built-in table & traction bench, and carrying up to 4 temporary beds (constructed of wood & cloth, each usable as both cot or stretcher as needed), 2 barrels of water (1 for drinking, 1 for washing), and stockpiles of cloth, thread, plaster, & soap, with a couple of splints & crutches. [As well as surgical tools & the like, once they exist.] Are you dispatching part of your militia to go raid a hostile site? Better send along an ambulance or two. Are you working on a dangerous construction that has the potential for a fall or cave-in? Better designate an ambulance zone nearby, just in case. Make the zone a bit bigger than the ambulance itself, so the nurses have a place to set up the temporary beds.
Are there any other plausible mobile workshops? I tried working a Tinker's Cart into this (seeing as how they were 100% a thing IRL), but there seems so little scope for them in-game that it felt like I was creating a problem just for the sake of solving it.
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Topic: Mobile workshops (Read 274 times)