Always great to have more DF content! For new players though... I suggest holding off on complex min/max strategies like this... keep it simple... big farms... over production... bigger simpler stock piles. (and don't forget to turn off cooking plump helmets) That way you can enjoy the game and start tweaking when have more stable rock under your feet. Dig Deep!
Used a bit different approach for MASSIVE production of MRE's for sale. 1) Designated 1 room 9x9 with 4 workshops using 1 specific material (rock or wood type) to produce furniture, goods, polished stones (if you found magma and have forges, you might use Coke and Coal ore for making polished stones for extra cost, because they worth like low-medium grade gems) and mechanisms. 2) Used 1 room 9x9 for storaging non-encrusted pots or barrels, connected to polished stones or cut gems (or glass) to make incrusts and with storage for encrusted food storage items. 3) Encrusted food storages goes to another room of 9x9 with 3 spots of storages for pots, 1 storage unit for prepared food (you can even name that production line whatever you like by renaming storage and kitchen where it was made) and 4 specific storages for each ingredients. For example, I separated 2 kitchens where it used different edible parts of Red Spinach, Garden Cress and Bitter Vetch and added different alcohol for usage in making those dishes. It still works quirky, but you still control variety AND usage of specific ingredients in your fortress. As for alcohol production, you can use 9x9 (or larger) rooms for making 3 (or more) separate beverage making lines from specific ingredients. Like I did in my fortress, making cider, beer, wine and rum/moonshine (sewer brew) from rat weed/river spirits in different rooms, where lines or production were like: 3x3 storage for ingredient => Brewery with designation taking pots and ingredients from specific storages => unloading ready alcohol into storage 3x3 for specific one near brewery. 4) In the end, you have maximized networth of the goods and a HUGE variety of it, which you can control to minute details. Just unload them where you need it by designating "give to" from temporary production storage room and you are good to please your dwarves with abundance of food and drinks. It may sound too difficult, but that's what mass production optimization looks like. A bit of chaining of production, a bit of bug and mechanic abuses and a bit of work with designation. But that way your dwarves will know exactly where to go and what to pick and where to place it.
This is a pretty good baseline to work towards since it can allow for some standardization of prepared meals for export. Some ingredients have very high value but hard to get, some are low value but easy to get lots of. This can end up being a question about producing high value or high quantity meals.
Would love to watch you do a full let’s play, you seem to do everything super efficiently. I just make far too much of everything and give all the excess away to traders so I don’t have it all lying around.
Hrmm, definitely food for thought. As someone that tries to go for more variety I see some interesting components here rather than a full system. But well presented.
This is far too complicated in general and I'm talking bout the whole game design. I'm not convinced that many people will get what you're trying to explain. I will never understand why they made this game that weird and complex, when all the excitement is from building, training them, discovering new places and sending those dwarfs on raids. I mean, this is a game when you supposed to handle/write a story, not a food stock manager.
