Bay 12 Games Forum

I was looking at my dwarves' equipment in Dwarf Therapist, and noticed that most of my military dwarves aren't actually wearing the steel gauntlets and high boots that are assigned to them. The odd thing is that the squad leaders of both squads are wearing everything they should, but the other dwarves will wear their helmets, mail shirts, and greaves, but continue wearing their wool mittens and pig-tail shoes.

Has anyone else noticed this? Have you all checked to see if your troops are actually wearing what has been assigned to them?

It's has always been somewhat challenging to get troops to actually put on the uniforms that are assigned to them, but I've usually managed to get them to do it. But the usual methods don't seem to be working now.

The (m)ilitary->(e)quipment->(P)rioity screen shows that they all have the gear assigned to them.

I have the uniforms set to replace clothing, rather than wearing it over it.

I've tried stationing them in the armor stockroom to get everyone on duty and into uniform.

I've even created a uniform with nothing in it and assigned it to both squads, let them take all the armor off, then reassigned the uniforms with the gauntlets and boots. They put the helmets, mail shirts, and greaves back on, but not the gauntlets and boots.

I've tried everything I know of, but still no one but squad leaders will wear gauntlets or boots. What I find really curious is that the squad leader will wear these things, but not the rest of the squad. So I must be doing something right.

Anyone else seeing this?

So I'm starting a new fort, and I've found a nice location. While checking the different options for the dwarf civilization to start in, I find one that has the usual red ----- for goblins and War with the elves. But there is another that is at peace with the elves and War with the goblins.

So What's the difference between ---- and War with the goblins? Is it going to provide enough Fun to make up for not being at war with the elves?

    Keith

So, we all know that a dwarf can become a were if the dwarf gets bitten by the were. Can a dwarf also get infected by biting a were? In Real Life^TM a blood-born pathogen could be transmitted either way, but I don't know if it's possible in DF.

I just had a were transform in the middle of my fort (What?! It's been a month already?!!), and in the ensuing melee I had a few civilians who resorted to biting and I'm wondering if I need to quarantine them in addition to the ones that got bitten. 

   Keith

I had a situation where an early siege group of goblins had gotten stuck because their leaders were caught in cages on the bridges (floors, actually) I built over the stream on my map. I needed to end the siege so I could get more migrants and caravans, and I didn't have enough trained military  to really take them head on. So I let my civilians go out, hoping to lure the goblins in closer where they would hit more cages.

So one civilian heads out that general direction to store something in a stockpile. he gets close enough to see the goblins and turns and runs. I turn my civilian burrow back on to get everyone to head back inside, then go to watch the hauler haul his backside back to the fort, expecting him to have a goblin chasing him the whole way. Well, Urist starts moving at a fairly normal speed back to the fort 9or at least away from the goblins), and all the sudden, something rockets in from the edge of the screen. I thought it was a bolt from the crossbowgoblin that's been swimming in the stream, it was that fast. But all the sudden there's a gray g next to the hauler and the hauler is dead. A goblin lasher had arrived like he was wearing rocket skates and taken him out. Seriously, he was moving at about the same speed a bolt typically travels.

Has anyone else seen this sort of warp speed movement?

   Keith

I built a puppy dropper 10 levels above my dining hall in my current (0.34.10) fortress, expecting a 10 z-level fall would be an automatic death like it has in the past, and was disappointed to see that the puppies were usually surviving the fall. SO I've made another shaft for drop-testing goblins. A 10 z-level fall was survived by all 3 that I dropped, although the third one landed on teh second and was only stunned. The second guy did take damage from being landed upon. I then tried 12 and 14 z-level falls with new goblin volunteers, and all have survived. So it looks like creatures need to fall significantly farther now before we can be sure they'll die. Has anyone done any science on this recently? If not, I'll try higher drops over the weekend to see how things are working now.

I just created a 34.04 world and was looking in legends mode, and looked at a few slabs. One had an entry for when a necromancer "learned the secrets of life and death" from the slab. But another had the necromancer learn "the deep truths of the world's bones". And another slab had its necromancer learn "the ability to sow chaos in the minds of foes". And another slab teaches "mastery of elemental fire".

Oh, wait. I just discovered that these seem to be added by the wanderer's friend mod. This should be interesting.

The question of how much booze dwarves need to drink has come up a couple of times recently, and has been answered by someone saying they think that someone else said that dwarves need 16 drinks per year. Since nobody seemed certain, i decided some science was needed.

I started out 7 dwarves with:
4 Picks
2 Battle Axes
28 Dwarven Beer
28 Dwarven Wine
28 Dwrven Ale
28 Dwarven Rum
112 Plump Helmets

The total number of booze was chosen as 112, the predicted consumption for 7 dwarves in 1 year.

They immediately chopped down a couple dozen trees, dug a modest fort, moved everything but the animals inside, and walled up the entrance. The animals were left pastured outside. They then proceeded to carve out a nice home with a 3x3 room for each dwarf and a 11x11 dining hall, then smoothed and engraved the rooms and hall. The digging, stone dumping, smoothing, and engraving kept everyone pretty much 100% busy for exactly 6 months (purely by coincidence, I didn't plan the timing). After that I gave them nothing to do and they just sat around for 6 month. They had no access to water and did not do any farming.

At the beginning of every month (approximately), I recorded how many booze and plump helmets were remaining. Sometimes I was a few days late, but I always recorded the exact date.  Starting in Felsite (the 3rd month) I also recorded how many plump helmet spawn were in stock, just to see how many I was getting from each plump helmet.

When migrants showed up, I set up a 1 tile meeting "hall" outside and let them sit out there. I expected them to either starve or get killed, but most of them survived by hunting and eating vermin. There were eventually 11 or them, and I organized them in 2 squads so they would defend themselves. One migrant arrived with a pick, which added immensely t their survivability. They managed to kill a couple of ogresses and a few harpies, but a werewolf did manage to get a few of them isolated and killed them. But they weren't important to the science, since they were completely isolated from the original 7.

Inside the fort, the booze slowly dwindled, and the food did even more slowly. The final drink was take on the 8th of Obsidian (the 11th month), nearly a month earlier than expected. As of that date, the dwarves had drunk at a rate of 16.72 drinks per year per dwarf, or one drink per 20.09 days for each dwarf. I strongly suspect the actual value is one drink per 20 days on average. But the rate did fluctuate over time, so there is probably a random factor tossed in.

On the 8th of Obsidian, the food was down to 53 plump helmets. That's a rate of 8.99 per year per dwarf, or 37.37 days per plump helmet for each dwarf. But see below for a possible problem with these numbers.

The number of seeds per plump helmet varied a lot, and sometimes the number of seeds fell from one month to the next. There were a few vermin (rats and demon rats) around, and I'm sure they were eating the seeds. I was able to see a few times when a rat appeared in the same tile as a seed, and when the rat disappeared the seed was gone. It's also possible that they ate some plump helmets (but I didn't see any), so the actual rates per dwarf may be somewhat lower than my results would indicate. That might just raise the plump helmet rate to a nice round 1 every 40 days, but that's pure speculation. I doubt the vermin consumed any booze. If I were to do this again (and I'm tempted), I would bring a couple of male cats to keep the vermin under control.

My data is recorded in a spreadsheet here.

As i said, I'm very tempted to repeat this with some cats to control the vermin. Any suggestions on other changes I should make to my test procedure?