(Disclaimer: First time posting on the forum.
Another disclaimer: I'm stuck playing v44.09 because I can't get the steam version to work on my system (Ubuntu 18.04.6), even when I try to force it to run in compatibility mode, so apologies also if the following is totally moot due to changes in the steam version that I'm not aware of.)
I know stockpile settings/interface/mechanics are probably one of the things people make suggestions on most so apologies if this exact idea (or something close enough) has already been suggested -- I tried to search around and read through old suggestions to see but there are quite a few, as you can imagine.
You can probably guess the idea just from the title (the inspiration is also clear, since the kind of settings I'm envisioning already exist for work orders). It's pretty simple but I think it could potentially be very convenient (and I would imagine easy to implement). In the simplest version, I think it could be really nice to add a set of default stockpile configurations which are designed to isolate precisely the resources either used by a type of workshop ("reagents") or produced by a type of workshop ("products"). So alongside things like "food," "finished goods," etc. you'd just have menu items like "ashery reagents" or "butchery products" (the latter I personally think could be especially useful).
I guess this "problem" can also theoretically be solved -- at least for workshop products -- with stockpile give/take designations (i.e. instead of modifying permitted/forbidden item types just set a stockpile to take only from a workshop), but I feel that that system can become difficult to manage in its own way sometimes, and it would be good to have a second way to effect the same logic.
I also think there's great potential for a richer version of the concept though, where instead of just having them be default configurations on the same footing with the current ones, there would be a system in the custom settings menu similar to the work order conditions, where one can add/remove conditions on the properties of permitted items in the stockpile rather than just the names of those items. I'm of course aware that several of the custom stockpile menus have an "Item Types" sub-menu where you can permit/forbid items "by their properties" in this kind of way, but
a) I find the logic of how those settings actually determine what is and isn't allowed kind of inscrutable, and I think I've seen quite a bit of confusion among other players about this too -- for example, if you want to make a stockpile that only stores fresh rawhide, I think in the custom settings for refuse you have to allow "fresh raw hides" only under "item types" but then you also have to allow all corpses, body parts, etc -- I think allowing a "type" alone does nothing unless there is also a set of "literal items" enabled. As another example, I tried to make a stockpile that would store only mugs/cups/goblets and it didn't work when I forbade everything except the "goblet" item type, but then once I also enabled the right materials, and all item qualities, dwarves would finally store cups in the stockpile.
b) The organization of the "types" under the "item types" sub-menus is typically inconvenient, and the actual "types" that exist in these menus sometimes seems arbitrary -- they don't always correspond to properties (which I think more or less correspond directly to the tags that exist in the raw files, e.g. "alcohol-bearing plant" or whatever it is for the brewing reagents in work orders) in the same way I'm thinking of it above.
Anyway, just another stockpile suggestion to throw on the "stockpile suggestions" stockpile.
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Topic: More natural stockpile defaults - reagents/products (Read 271 times)