Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF Gameplay Questions => Topic started by: Halo on June 16, 2010, 01:46:19 am
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I've got two masons workshops, and I assigned them both to create rock blocks. Right next to the workshop is a stone stockpile filled with microcline, not forbidden, not designed to be dumped, nothing. They've made microcline blocks just fine for the duration of the fort until now. On the other side of the stockpiles are hundreds and hundreds of stone, as it was all dumped there(and then reclaimed). I was looking down in the first level for caverns and I noticed two masons wandering around down there on their own, so I watched them. They picked up some olvine from down there, brought it all the way back up into the fort to make rock blocks.
WTF. I know they choose material based on a direct distance, rather than actual walking path, but the closest microcline is 2 tiles away from the workshop, and the caverns are 12 levels below, to say nothing of the horizontal distance. Neither of them have any sort of preference for olvine, and even if they did, they're some bloody olvine on the other side of the room. They didn't choose the absolute furthest possiblQe rocks, but its pretty damn close. Why on earth would they do this? And two of them at the same time even.
Edit: God dammit, I don't know how this ended up in suggestions, I'm sorry. If someone could drag this into gameplay questions and correct my stupidity, I would appreciate it.
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I think this is a known bug with pathing that pops up occasionally. I wouldn't worry about it unless they're habitually taking the scenic route, in which case you could lock them in the room with the stone you want them to grab.
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In my experience, placing a stockpile close to the workshop WILL work, but with one major exception:
When the dwarf detects a task at the workshop, for instance, to create a door, he will immediately grap the nearest rock to his current position, and proceed to the workshop where he will create the door.
Therefore, if you want to create 3 microcline doors, but have other stone elsewhere throughout your fortress, it is necessary to place a stockpile next to your workshop and then queue up at least four doors. This way, he'll grab a stone on the way, use that one on a door, and then proceed to build the next three doors using the closest available stone from the point at which he has detected the next tast, which will all be the microcline next to the shop.
Keep in mind, that if the dwarf stops to go get food, sleep, etc, the process will restart and he will head back with the nearest stone to his bedroom/etc.
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Hence why I prefer queuing up some random other job before the ones I want done - build a stone block before those 3 microcline doors say.
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Hence why I prefer queuing up some random other job before the ones I want done - build a stone block before those 3 microcline doors say.
Odd how I keep missing painfully obvious ideas like this ....
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Hence why I prefer queuing up some random other job before the ones I want done - build a stone block before those 3 microcline doors say.
True, you can never have too many blocks!