Bay 12 Games Forum

tl;dr version: Use exponential backoff with an (optional) maximum period.

Long version: This may be related to some of the listed development goals already (e.g. Req79 under Bug Fixes), but I can't be sure, so here we go.

DF has a problem with job cancellation spam. A lot of this is somewhat unavoidable, but not all of it. In particular: Have you ever sealed off an area, only to discover that there's a XXcave spider silk sockXX somewhere down in the depths that you haven't forbidden (and can't find), and now some dwarf tries to go get it a hundred times a day? I know I have. There are workarounds to this problem, but a solution would be better.

So, my suggestion is this: When an item is found to be inaccessible for some task or another, make the game wait a while before firing up A* to find it again (as, last I checked, it does in at least some cases). If it still can't  be found next time, double the amount of time (and each subsequent time). This is called "exponential backoff." This will save both on cancellation spam and CPU time (as A* isn't exactly fast). Of course, some users might not want to have to wait a hundred years for their dwarves to reclaim their lost items once they work out what was wrong, so there should probably be a limit to how long they can have to wait before trying to find it again.

Of course, some jobs shouldn't have this quality, like dwarves searching for food.

Edit: A limitation of this approach: Two dwarves in separate rooms Urist and Burist, both trying to access an electrum bar. Urist can reach it, Burist cannot. If Burist's jobs are always processed first, the bar will never be used. It may be necessary to limit job queries per dwarf-item pair rather than per-item. This will increase the memory requirements, but last I checked these were not the limiting factor for most DF players anyway.

Due to an unusual set of circumstances (mainly the result of accientally embarking on a map with no iron ore), I was recently in a position where I had a goodly number of caged prisoners to execute. Being a lover of efficiency, I built a drowning chamber. Being dorfy, I used magma.

I anticipated some benefits to this approach. For one, I would likely not have to release the prisoners, as the (wooden) cages would not likely protect the prisoners as they would (mysteriously enough) against magma. The obvious drawback was that I would lose the cages, but I considered this an acceptable cost associated with causing this amount of fire, mayhem, and destruction. Of course, I would have to avoid using my nickel cages, as they are magma-safe.

Then, a happy accident occurred.

While the wooden cages mostly performed as expected (with the exception of one that freed its elk bird occupant before the magma later overtook it), the nickel cage I had accidentally placed remained in place, but its occupant was nevertheless killed.

Thus, I have discovered a way to:
-Kill prisoners
-En masse
-With magma
-Without wasting time linking mechanisms (magma-safe or no)
-And keep the cages afterward!

Sadly, as I did not set out to perform this experiment, I cannot yet say whether the goblinite would survive. None is in the nickel cage, but this is not proof either way, as I don't know whether the goblin carried any, and it could theoretically end up outside the cage. I will try to acquire appropriate samples in the near future. Meanwhile, in the interest of science and definitely not sadistic glee at all, I invite you all to independently verify these results so that they may be added to the wiki.

For science.

So, I get bored with my fortress. I've done everything I care to, and only elves just abandon forts. So, naturally, I decide to unleash the legions of Hell for my amusement.

Sadly, instead of charging into my fortress and shredding my militia, the demons just hang out in the magma sea and the caverns. Sure, they kill anything that gets close, but I was expecting demons to be at least as aggressive as your average troll. Is this normal, or have I somehow broken the game?