Best way to make lots of stone?

Started by Hans Lemurson, May 23, 2019, 02:51:02 AM

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Hans Lemurson

What's the most effective way of making lots of stone blocks to build your base with?

There are stone chunks lying scattered over the map ready to be turned into bricks, but you quickly exhaust the supply of nearby rock.  How do you gather stone efficiently?

-Do you just go for "quantity" and queue up a bunch of stone cutting tasks and let the pawns walk across half the map for their materials?
-Do you specialize your labor and have some pawns haul stones to your dedicated cutters?
-Do you build a mobile stone-carving station and move around to where the blocks are so that your hauling can be 3-4x as effective?

What methods do you use when you need to get tonnes of stone?  Are there any ways stone hauling can be made more efficient?
Mental break: playing RimWorld
Hans Lemurson is hiding in his room playing computer games.
Final straw was: Overdue projects.

Canute

If you allready got Animals (or robots from a mod) to haul stuff for you, let them haul chunk's close to your stonecutting bench.

Since stonecutting don't give crafting XP,  your best crafter shouldn't do that. He better should do things that give XP. Don't forget to add toolboxes.

Sure you can place the stonecutting bench somewhere with alot of chunks, but mosttimes these get destroyed when raider attack.
I prefer homework and let the chunk's haul to it. Mosttimes i use the mod Extended Storage, so i can build skip's that can store 10 chunk on a 2x1 tile.

At the vanilla gameplay a pawn allways just can haul 1 chunk.
But with Pickup&Haul mod, pawn can store stuff at their inventory for hauling. So a pawn with lightweight appareal can maybe store an extra chunk at the inventory.

Hans Lemurson

I've read that forming a caravan can let a pawn pick up multiple bulky items so long as they don't exceed the pawn's carrying weight.  I remember using that on a sea-ice challenge to collect slag in bulk, since it was fairly light weight.

At 20kg apiece a pawn should in theory be able to carry 3 chunks, should they not?  That could help fill up a stockpile quickly, especially with the carrying capacity of Animals.
Mental break: playing RimWorld
Hans Lemurson is hiding in his room playing computer games.
Final straw was: Overdue projects.

Golden

I always make a dumping storage area right away, relatively near my intended base, but out of the way.  All construction created stone chunks go there, as well as the ones that need to be moved out of the way for rooms or fields or such.  Then after my animals (or whatever) are trained up, they haul from farther away as needed to the initial dumps.  And I make small, "critical" storage zones near my workroom (maybe 4-8 slots) so that the crafters don't go far at all to carry them to the stonecutting workbench, but the animals keep them filled.

Canute

Quote from: Hans Lemurson on May 23, 2019, 05:23:55 AM
I've read that forming a caravan can let a pawn pick up multiple bulky items so long as they don't exceed the pawn's carrying weight.  I remember using that on a sea-ice challenge to collect slag in bulk, since it was fairly light weight.
Sure that works too.
Put a caravan packing spot next to the chunk. Create a dumping stockpile over the chunks.
Start a caravam with 1 pawn and alot of animals, watch the pawn to load up the animals with chunks.
Once he is finished, cancel the caravan.
Pawn and animals will move back to the base and get unloaded.

TheMeInTeam

Using caravan feature you can draft haul.  Unlike ordinary hauling this lets you pick up lots of stuff at once.  However it has the downside of that weight limit; unlike regular hauling you can't just carry an elephant the length of several blocks without even slowing down.

Limdood

I don't put that much thought into it...

I just get a stonecutter table up early, set it to "cut any stone blocks" unlimited, and set a couple pawns with low priority crafting...often i'll have my more valuable pawns that do constructing and planting and other important early colony tasks set to do those tasks, THEN cut blocks, THEN haul/clean, and i'll have a less useful pawn set to either not craft, or haul/clean before crafting.

And i just let it run...I tend to always have enough blocks to build my buildings, and if i don't, i will shortly.  If i start finding that my crafters are wandering too far (for predator or raid dangers), then I restrict the stonecutting bill to a smaller range, set up a nearby dumping stockpile, and periodically flag an area of the map for hauling.

Gadfly

Huskies do all my outside hauling, drop pods, stone chunks, wood, steel, gold etc.
Very important to keep the map clear of any predators.

If they lose a skill they go back to the training zone, saves my handler so much walking around.

pllovervoltage

#8
You don't have to do any hauling (but you have to do mining). You can just put down a mining drill on a spot without any resources right next to your stonecutters table and it'll mine the stone type you have in your region.

Cimm0

#9
I use stone block making as the least important job for everyone.

I have a material yard which stores both chunks AND blocks, with 6-8 cutting tables. When people run out of more important work, they make plenty of stone blocks as a group. Usually they have plenty of chunks close by since whatever hauling is done during everyday life includes these and they slowly fill the yard before people have so little to do that they move on to make blocks.

Basically I get huge waves of stone blocks very fast because of the minimal distance between chuncks and tables and everyone working on them at once (until something more important comes up).

This type of manufacturing meets the colony's demands, however this is not a good system if you need the blocks ASAP for defense or something.

Kirby23590

If i want to Break lots of rocks to make an somewhat impenetrable or tightened defended colony with granite or any other stone... With two layer or three layer walls...

I would mostly settle near a small hill or large hill...

Best way to make more stone is having two or more stonecutter tables... I go for "quantity" in this case... Since i have some idles that have to do something making lots of stone blocks for large freezers or just walls around my spaceship when i'm planning to escape the rims or the geothermal generator...


One "happy family" in the rims...
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fritzgryphon

Quote from: Hans Lemurson on May 23, 2019, 02:51:02 AM
-Do you build a mobile stone-carving station and move around to where the blocks are so that your hauling can be 3-4x as effective?

Never thought of that, but theoretically it would be the most efficient.  Especially in non-mountainous mid-game, when nearby chunks are used up.  Deep drill is an option, but it's so slow I doubt it's worth it while chunks still exist.

For the cost of making a small roofed shack, hauling a stonecutter bench and two toolbenches inside, you could increase the stonecutting efficiency for however long it takes to exhaust the chunks in that area. 

Lets say there's a cluster of 30 chunks, and relocating the station to the center of the cluster reduces average hauling time by 10 seconds each (hauling a short distance to the station instead hauling the full distance to the base), that would give a saving of 300 seconds.  Which is much less than the time to relocate the benches and build the shack.

But in application there are challenges.  You need two dedicated toolboxes just for the cutting station, which might get destroyed in a raid.  Also, a pawn must be dedicated to just stonecutting.  If the pawn commutes to the main base to do other jobs, it's not worth it.  The pawn is also vulnerable to raids or manhunters while far from base.  The pawn also has to commute at least once in the morning and once in the evening to sleep, which further eats away at the benefits.  The player has to constantly monitor the chunk supply around the station, and move it when hauling distances become too long.  The optimal time to move is hard to compute because it depends on the stonecutters crafting skill versus his move speed (does the crafter spend more time hauling the chunk, or cutting it?).

So even though moving the cutting station around might be the optimal method, the micro and complications would probably nullify it.  It's still a good idea in early game, though, before you have a lot of animals or enough steel for toolbenches.


Dargaron

I usually move my stonecutter's table around the map: it's generally NOT part of my overall "workshop" area, and is instead placed in its own little shack with a couple stone-only Dumping Stockpiles next to it. Here's an example image from one of my Beta 18 colonies (because it's got the Stonecutting Shack in the lower-left corner)


[attachment deleted due to age]

Gadfly

There is another way.

You need a psychic shock lance, animal pulser and a pirate base.

Move your group to the base, take out the mortar (if they have one) with your lance, build a wooden shack, hide in it, activate pulser.

Once your forced to leave create an immobile caravan with all the chunks.
Settle afterwards and you now have hundreds of chunks nicely in the center of the map and even more in you pawns inventory.