Bay 12 Games Forum

I know save scumming might be looked down upon, but when I am trying to make exploding goblin sappers I usually find it in my best interest to make backups.
However because my fortress is a few years old there are a lot of seasonal saves.
In my past experiences I just deleted the saves that weren't the past 4 seasons saves and the recent save. This helped reduce time when making backups. But the last 2 forts I had were ended not by magma-geddon but by Nemesis Errors, meaning my world and saves were corrupt (I think).
SO HERE'S THE QUESTION(S):
Does deleting old saves of the same fortress increase probability of errors in the future? Have Nemesis Errors been given a clear reason as to why they happen, like direct causation? Is trying to make a goblin armed with explosive barrels awesome?

 

8th year of fortress, and no human or dwarf traders have been here for 2 years. I checked to make sure there is wagon access to the fort and even sent a suicide squad to the far edge to build a road to my fort. Elves come every year (hooray?) but I don't understand why the other civs don't come anymore.

Again a Titan attempts to assault my fortress. Fortunately, this one doesn't kill anyone and is easily caught by a cage trap. He is now sitting peacefully in my animal stockpile. What should I do with him? The other titan I captured (which killed several dwarves and cats) is in a pit where I throw captured goblins in. Can I tame this Titan and if so, how? I have a Dungeon Master but can't seem to find the option in the kennel.
Other uses for megabeasts?

From http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/help/main.html attempting to reach forums from this page directs to link http://www.bay12games.com/cgi-local/ultimatebb.cgi (which is dead for me, I don't know if it served a purpose in the past)
should it link to http://www.bay12games.com/forum/ ?

We all have our stories of retarded dwarves, here's one of mine.
A giant wave of useless cheesemakers come to my fortress and I assign them to fortress guard since I didn't have any. Ignis promptly starts to spar and get a punctured lung. Instead of being a good wounded dwarf and staying in bed, he promptly walks around the fortress falling unconscious, refusing any medical care whatsoever. This I could tolerate because it meant the idiot would be dead soon and no one would care. After traveling to my royal dining hall in just under a year, he proceeds to grab a plump helmet stew from my nearby food stockpile. He then promptly falls unconscious again and drops his food in the hallway. The stew proceeds to rot and create a gigantic amount of miasma and there is nothing my dwarves can do about it since the stew is owned by Ignis. After waking up half a season later, Ignis, seeing his stew has rotted, proceeds to the stockpile once again to grab some cat biscuits. You can see where I am going with this.
For 2 years I deal with this before realizing why I had so many unhappy dwarves and gigantic miasma clouds.
Finally Ignis dies after 5 years of making my dwarves miserable. I dump his body under a drawbridge and set the nearby lever to repeat. I want to make sure the molecules of Ignis do not spread through the air and infect anyone.

After using the search function, I have unanswered questions.
My Marksdwarves refuse to grab metal bolts or keep wood bolts on their persons when on duty. Off-duty, they will happily tear through the wood/bone bolts for practice but when on duty, they drop their practice bolts, pass right by my ammo stockpile of 2k iron bolts (not forbidden, easily accessible) and go on their patrol routes. I have lost 3 dwarves already because they tried to bludgeon a GCS.
Each one of them have quivers. So I guess my question is, why are my dwarves acting like idiots? Which body part holds the bolts?

First post:
During Year 5 of my needlessly complicated fortress I was moving goods to trade with the Humans when I see one of my haulers run by the trade depot with his ass on fire making a beeline for the entrance of the fort. Quickly I forbid passage on all the entrances and let him burn to death but looking around, I saw no forest fires or any fires at all. There is no magma on the map so I have no idea why my hauler would suddenly burst into flames. Any help?
Also, does smoke have negative effects?