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Dwarf Fortress => DF Gameplay Questions => Topic started by: Tsukenta on September 19, 2010, 09:23:12 pm

Title: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: Tsukenta on September 19, 2010, 09:23:12 pm
I tried 31.13, but I lost 3 fortresses to the people starving to death despite having food. I thought it was a glitch, so I went back to 31.12, just to have my first fortress do the same damn thing. I am watching the dwarves rummage through the food stockpiles looking for vermin to eat. What the hell is going on?
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: Lezowski on September 19, 2010, 09:28:48 pm
Seeds can't be eaten, except rock nuts. You might be confused as they count towards the total food count. If your fortress has only depended on gathering plants, this is probably why.
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: Sphalerite on September 19, 2010, 09:34:06 pm
Are you sure you have edible food?  Many plants, such as pig tails, cave wheat, or quarry bushes, can't be eaten straight and need further processing or cooking to be edible.   What does your food stockpile contain?
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: bucket on September 19, 2010, 09:48:19 pm
The solution to your problem is 2CAT.
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: Tsukenta on September 19, 2010, 11:35:07 pm
I have over 40 plump helmets, plenty of gathered food (the herbalists were gathering when they started hunting for vermin, and 3 butchers dealing with my catsplosion. I'm sitting on 300? meat (bookkeeper immegrant hasn't arrived yet) as I watch 24 dwarves starve, staring at piles of animal intestines, plump helmets, prickleberrys, and prepared turtles.

What's 2CAT?

Edit: Yes, I checked to see if it was forbidden. Yes, I've been making sure to cycle the types of food available (even though its only the beginning of winter 2, they shouldn't be sick of food yet), and Yes, they have booze, which they ARE drinking.
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: Quietust on September 19, 2010, 11:39:40 pm
The solution to your problem is 2CAT.

Not really, considering most of the time butchering a cat will only yield you 1 skull. Your'e better off using 2DOG.
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: Tsukenta on September 19, 2010, 11:42:10 pm
The solution to your problem is 2CAT.

Not really, considering most of the time butchering a cat will only yield you 1 skull. Your'e better off using 2DOG.

Thanks to my legendary butcher (I generally embark with 20+ cats to make sure I have plenty of pratice before the good animals show up to be butchered), I get plenty of food from cats and kittens. I have the food, they're just ignoring it.

Edit: They are starving to death with plump helmets withering on the vine. It's incredibly infuriating to see them running around the farm as 20 plump helmets start to rot, looking for vermin to eat despite having all this food. And this is now my FIFTH fortress this has happened with. Urgh.
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: truckman1 on September 19, 2010, 11:47:54 pm
The solution to your problem is 2CAT.

Not really, considering most of the time butchering a cat will only yield you 1 skull. Your'e better off using 2DOG.

Thanks to my legendary butcher (I generally embark with 20+ cats to make sure I have plenty of pratice before the good animals show up to be butchered), I get plenty of food from cats and kittens. I have the food, they're just ignoring it.




You embark with +20 cats? How do you get any FPS? Are you playing the game on Skynet?
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: Tsukenta on September 19, 2010, 11:50:16 pm
The solution to your problem is 2CAT.

Not really, considering most of the time butchering a cat will only yield you 1 skull. Your'e better off using 2DOG.

Thanks to my legendary butcher (I generally embark with 20+ cats to make sure I have plenty of pratice before the good animals show up to be butchered), I get plenty of food from cats and kittens. I have the food, they're just ignoring it.




You embark with +20 cats? How do you get any FPS? Are you playing the game on Skynet?

Last embark was 35 cats. Running about 25 - 30 fps, which is pretty standard for my craptastic lappy. Throw them in a cage ASAP, before people start adopting them. It works well, and by Fall I have about 2 dozen kitten fodder for Urist McMurderface to practice his butchery on.
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: gtmattz on September 20, 2010, 10:07:57 am
Check your 'o'rders screen and make sure you did not inadvertently tell dwarves to ignore food.  Also might want to check burrow assignments, possibly the food is in a burrow which is inaccessible to the one your dwarves are assigned to?
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: Tsukenta on September 20, 2010, 10:11:02 am
Condensing threads:

I can think of a few things: do you have a food stockpile at all? Do you have a dining room? Is everyone restricted to some burrow? You've mentioned the food itself is not forbidden. Is the food got "TSK" on it if it's stuck in a workshop?

Farming harvest will wither away if you don't have a food stockpile with space and if there are no labourers available to pick it up.

Okay, The food is stockpiled, except seeds, which have their own seperate stockpile. There is no dining room, but the meeting zone is set next to the food stockpile until the room is dug out and tables are set up. There are no burrows, and the only workshops that process food is the butchers shop and the kitchen, but the kitchen has no tasks (the only task was cancelled by the chef searching for vermin to devour).

Check your 'o'rders screen and make sure you did not inadvertently tell dwarves to ignore food.  Also might want to check burrow assignments, possibly the food is in a burrow which is inaccessible to the one your dwarves are assigned to?
I just checked, they are not told to ignore food, and burrows have not been made yet. Even if it had been ignore food, that shouldn't have stretched over multiple fortresses unless I'm really bad with keyboard commands.
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: gtmattz on September 20, 2010, 10:13:42 am
nevermind

I missed the multiple forts thing..

Seems rather odd, maybe you could upload one of your saves to DFFD so others can have a look at things?
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: Tsukenta on September 20, 2010, 10:20:25 am
Have you tried saving, closing DF, then reloading?  Might also try locking a door, unpausing for a few seconds then unlocking to reset pathfinding.

This has been happening over the last 3 days, Dorf fort has been closed and reopened numerous times, deleted, unzipped. Short of redownloading the zip (except 31.13, which is how this whole mess started), I've done everything to make sure its not dorf fort thats the problem.

I have not done anything to reset their pathfinding, next time it happens I'll try again. I doubt thats what it is though, because they can reach the stockpile. There are no doors between where they meet, where they grow food, and where they eat. But the dwarves will ignore food in the fields and food in the stockpiles.

I have redownloaded 31.12 (mayday graphics), and I'll report later to see if it fixed the problem. Fingers crossed, because I can't think of anything else that would cause this.
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: telarin on September 20, 2010, 04:09:14 pm
You need tables and chairs. I don't think dwarved will eat regular food if they can't find a table and a chair next to each other.
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: Grimlocke on September 20, 2010, 04:44:34 pm
They will, they just get a cranky thought about it.
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: Wastedlabor on September 20, 2010, 06:00:32 pm
Check that their blood is liquid in creatures_standard in the save folder. My "gas blood" dwarves were starving until I reverted it.
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: Tsukenta on September 20, 2010, 08:30:59 pm
I don't edit the Raws, but its okay. I just had to mass delete all of my dwarf fortress folders, re-download 31.12, and unzip it, and BOOM, everything is hunky dory. Thank you all for tolerating my picky dorfs.
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: Sphalerite on September 20, 2010, 08:41:09 pm
This should be verified, because if that's actually the cause, this is one bizarre bug:  Modding dwarves to have gaseous blood causes them to require live vermin food.  I'm not sure if that's actually a even a bug, or a very weird feature.
Title: Re: Hunting small vermin for Food.
Post by: FuzzyZergling on September 20, 2010, 08:47:02 pm
This should be verified, because if that's actually the cause, this is one bizarre bug:  Modding dwarves to have gaseous blood causes them to require live vermin food.  I'm not sure if that's actually a even a bug, or a very weird feature.
The gas is THE SOULS OF THE LIVING!