Bay 12 Games Forum

Dwarf Fortress => DF Dwarf Mode Discussion => Topic started by: Iban on August 08, 2011, 10:49:46 pm

Title: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Iban on August 08, 2011, 10:49:46 pm
I don't need 50 god damn wax workers I live on a fucking glacier you are of no value to me there are no bees on this glacier go home.

And stop bringing your god damn guinea pigs to my fortress I've owned guinea pigs they suck ass if I could butcher them and feed them to you I would.

Why are migrants so useless? I literally have an army of farmers and floor detailers because migrants just sit around and do nothing otherwise. My idlers are in the 70s in an 80 person fort. What am I doing wrong here?
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Putnam on August 08, 2011, 11:01:04 pm
You are doing nothing wrong. This is completely natural. Conscript all the migrants as masons and carpenters and build a giant sacrificial chamber for them.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: krisslanza on August 08, 2011, 11:02:30 pm
I both hate, and love migrants. I love them early on, when they come in nice, managable waves... then I hate them when the game is like:
"Here, ruin all your work! HAVE 20 MIGRANTS!"

I wish I could just force the game to keep them waves at under 10 or something.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Iban on August 08, 2011, 11:03:56 pm
Is there any way to just completely remove immigrant pets in the init files? All I want is a thousand turkeys and one gobbler. That's it. No guinea pigs, no dogs, nothing. Turkeys.

And, yeah, I love it when I get 3 migrants.

"Miner McImmigrant has arrived with his pickaxe, ready to work!"
"Woodcutter McImmigrant has arrived with his axe, ready to work!"
"Farmer McImmigrant has arrived, ready to work the fields"

Then.

"Peasent McImmigrant has arrived with tattered clothes, ready to eat, drink, and socialize! x50"
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: trees on August 08, 2011, 11:04:40 pm
Draft them all in to the military. Every single one of them.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Number4 on August 08, 2011, 11:05:49 pm
What am I doing wrong here?

You need to apply the correct amount of selection pressure. Or magma. Or, selection pressure by magma.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Iban on August 08, 2011, 11:06:01 pm
Draft them all in to the military. Every single one of them.
I'm terrible at managing the military now. I don't know how to do anything. I have one squad with 5 novice marksdwarves, 2 hammerdwarves, and 1 recruit by the first seige.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Flaming Toadstool on August 08, 2011, 11:12:26 pm
Atom smash any useless migrants into nothingness. Or use liberal amounts of magma. Or a danger room. I could go on.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: trees on August 08, 2011, 11:15:00 pm
If you have enough equipment to go around and a big meat industry, make like five squads of marksdwarves and bone bolts. An enormous hail of inaccurate fire is surprisingly effective at incapacitating a siege for your melee troops to clean up. You don't even need to bother with them training, really, they'll get plenty of experience from shooting at goblins.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: ThatAussieGuy on August 08, 2011, 11:20:47 pm
Atom smash any useless migrants into nothingness. Or use liberal amounts of magma. Or a danger room. I could go on.

"Welcome to the fort, Migrants" *SLAM* "Welcome to the fort, Migrants" *SLAM* "Welcome to the fort, Migrants" *SLAM*
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: franti on August 08, 2011, 11:22:50 pm
I use a two-tier military set-up that works well dealing with migrants.

1st Tier - Professional Soldiers. Well-stocked baracks, Adept Weapon/Armoursmiths, Steel Armour and Bismuth Bronze Maces. Kept happy, fit, and heathly. When one of these dwarves gets hurt, I unforbid the soap stockpiles.

2nd Tier - Useless migrants. Armed in whatever metal I happen to have in abundance, even if that means I have to mod the RAWs to make Sterling Silver an armour material. Sent out first in any fight. Long patrol duty, removed from other dwarves to make their deaths less impacting.

But, in all seriousness, I've abandoned forts because they went from 15 to 40 dwarves/goblins(yay for raw editing) and I didn't have enough food/booze, and didn't care to watch the dehydration/tantrum spiral.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Kilroy the Grand on August 08, 2011, 11:24:04 pm
I kill them so my engravers have something nice and tasteful to put on the hospital walls.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Corneria on August 09, 2011, 12:34:18 am
My idlers are in the 70s in an 80 person fort. What am I doing wrong here?
...assign them some labors? There is absolutely no excuse for that
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: AWdeV on August 09, 2011, 02:40:09 am
Make a stone stockpile somewhere and get haulin'. :P

It's a pity guineapigs don't produce any meat when butchered. Stray ones would be useful then and I wouldn't feel quite as bad for butchering them. Guineapig skull totems just don't quite work.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Puresowns on August 09, 2011, 02:42:20 am
Gather all the guineapigs and pit them into any cavern level that you feel needs some hands on exploration. Cave crocs will eventually snag them up.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: NRDL on August 09, 2011, 02:43:45 am
Draft them all in to the military. Every single one of them.

This is a good idea.   :)
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Puresowns on August 09, 2011, 02:51:38 am
Draft them all in to the military. Every single one of them.

This is a good idea.   :)
Then, if you ever feel really NICE you could take them all to the circus to meet the clowns and ride in the clowncars.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: malroth on August 09, 2011, 02:56:21 am
have them live of surface crops in a slum inside a pit underneith your walkway,  when siegers come they'll waste all their ammuniton cleaning out your ghetto for you
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Nil Eyeglazed on August 09, 2011, 03:02:35 am
Migrants?  Don't talk to me about migrants.

Wait till you see children.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Unholy_Pariah on August 09, 2011, 04:21:15 am
simple 3 step anti useless elf migrant system
1)build 2 large bridges over a chasm and have them meet in the middle
2)set a meeting zone on the external bridge and raise internal bridge
3)raise bridge while migrants are idling on bridge (works better if you have a magma pit basketball hoop at the end of their flight path)

also works for sieges if you manage to lure enemies on :D
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: ThatAussieGuy on August 09, 2011, 04:45:32 am
Migrants?  Don't talk to me about migrants.

Wait till you see children.

If you're VERY lucky, they do tasks.  I've got about 10-15 kids working on my dwarven water reactor right now.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Saeldanya on August 09, 2011, 05:05:37 am
I usually have an average of about 10 idlers with a 70 dwarf fort. Are you using dwarf therapist? Very, very useful tool for handling jobs and professions, in fact, the game is nearly unplayable without it. It shows you what each dwarf is good at and what they are currently set to do - sometimes migrants come with useful skills at high levels that are just not enabled for them. It helps you identify idlers, I usually compare their skills to others to make sure I have everything covered, then draft the most useless ones into the military or make them masons to work on my fortified walls and watchtowers.

Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: CriticallyAshamed on August 09, 2011, 05:31:45 am
I maintain 0 idlers pretty much always... If they aren't caging poults they are hauling food, if they aren't hauling food they are hauling crafts, if they aren't hauling crafts they are quantam stockpiling. Then when everything has been hauled they are Military or builders.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on August 09, 2011, 09:06:50 am
If you have enough equipment to go around and a big meat industry, make like five squads of marksdwarves and bone bolts. An enormous hail of inaccurate fire is surprisingly effective at incapacitating a siege for your melee troops to clean up. You don't even need to bother with them training, really, they'll get plenty of experience from shooting at goblins.

This, except no bone bolts, because bones currently clutter workshops. Use wood or metal bolts instead.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Number4 on August 09, 2011, 09:46:27 am
This, except no bone bolts, because bones currently clutter workshops. Use wood or metal bolts instead.

Don't listen to that elf. Now manpower is NOT a concern here, simply plop down 10 workshops and use the valuable stuff for better things.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: RAKninja on August 09, 2011, 09:47:18 am
you guys who kill your migrants... you must have a booming coffin/slab industry.  or a lot of ghosts.

i've got over two hundred dwarves.  even the siege operator who lost the ability to stand and grasp things is not idle.  only the king and duchess are idle, and they only because i force them to be.

i've still got at least nine years of uninterrupted hauling waiting for me on the surface.  i've had at least three smelters metling goblinite year round for five or more years.... just expanded to eight.

the catapults help keep everyone working.  they make a lot of stone hauling.

i still have yet to expand on my construction in the final quadrant of the map.  i have a settlement of sorts at the other three.

so yea, send me 20-30 migrants.  i will promptly enable masonry on them all and start constructing.  or i'll hollow out more stockpile space and shoot out a few hundred bins.  then i'll haul another chunk of goblinite.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Sutremaine on August 09, 2011, 09:55:55 am
My idlers are in the 70s in an 80 person fort. What am I doing wrong here?
Do you mean the idler count, or the number of dwarves not doing work? The former counts only dwarves with No Job, so if fewer than nine of your dwarves are eating, sleeping, drinking, or on break... congratulations, now make them go do something. If you really have no use for a number of dwarves, give them a barracks (plus a shield and an armour item if you're feeling nice) and let them train in their clothes. They'll learn something eventually.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Haedrian on August 09, 2011, 10:02:50 am
What I do is mark all useless migrants with a job say "a"

Then I set their mason/engraving jobs. And I put them to work. I like above-ground construction, and I hate stones running around - so there's always a lot to do. Break stones into blocks, build stuff, smooth stuff, make everyone happy.

Then when I need a new dwarf to do something (say I need a new jeweler after the last one fell off a bridge he was deconstructing), I take from that group. Same for soldiers.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Urist Imiknorris on August 09, 2011, 10:48:15 am
I assign my useless migrants most of the labors that need to be done en masse or that aren't moodable and don't have quality modifiers (also known as most of the farming jobs). Any plant processing, cheese making, wood burning, butchering, tanning (I have a bunch of tanner's workshops to keep up with the slaughter), etc. gets done by unskilled serfs.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: UristMcHuman on August 09, 2011, 11:05:50 am
I find no migrants useless (other than children, as they can't do anything save the basic necessities). If I get a milker, I change his labours to something (more) useful, like growing. If I get a gem setter, I put him to work mining IF I have extra picks. If I get a peasant, I conscript him.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: Niccolo on August 09, 2011, 11:36:49 am
Gather all the guineapigs and pit them into any cavern level that you feel needs some hands on exploration. Cave crocs will eventually snag them up.

I never, ever thought of this.

This is a fantastic way of getting rid of cats. I am so going to do this.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: UristMcHuman on August 09, 2011, 11:41:25 am
I did just dump a cat down a deep pit I found whilst exploring the caves. It is wandering around a bit.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: ohgoditburns on August 09, 2011, 11:53:47 am
For me, all male migrants go into the military.

All female migrants go into the civilian corp (doing non-quality tasks and hauling).

I basically have one dwarf per other profession.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: malimbar04 on August 09, 2011, 02:52:56 pm
If I ever have more than are useful for hauling labors, I make them amateur masons and build a huge entranceway. Skill there doesn't matter, and neither does risk. They die? you win. They build? you win.

well... dieing does suck because of the ghosts, but oh well.

Dwarf Fortress - where the primary reason to prevent death of your citizens is that it makes them more annoying then they were in life.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: ohgoditburns on August 09, 2011, 03:40:46 pm
Bury/Slab your dead. We ain't afraid of no ghosts.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: RAKninja on August 09, 2011, 04:21:38 pm
Bury/Slab your dead. We ain't afraid of no ghosts.

i keep at least 23 coffins open and waiting.  havent had to do much mass burial since the goblin years.
Title: Re: God Damn Migrants
Post by: YetAnotherStupidDorf on August 09, 2011, 04:44:55 pm
Dwarf Fortress - where the primary reason to prevent death of your citizens is that it makes them more annoying then they were in life.
Sigged. New release should only make it even more evident.