I've been trying to build fortresses that produce sheep and bees. It's not too bad, but I have to manually micromanage milking, shearing, cheese- and mead-making.
I can assign these tasks to individual workshops, but the moment the dwarves are unable to do a task, it gets cancelled, so I have to reassign it manually some time later. Or I can assign tasks via the manager, but then orders to the same workshop seem to stack up, so until n orders of shearing are completed, dwarves won't try to milk my sheep or make cheese. Both require significant micromanagement, which I can imagine only gets worse as the fortress grows.
What can I do to make these production chains (also: butchering by-products) handle themselves, so I can direct my attention elsewhere?
Best Answer
Unfortunately, the user interface for these industries is rather poor.
The only real fix for it I've uncovered is the use of dfhack's workflow tools.