Bay 12 Games Forum

Thanks for the advice!

I've been reluctant to release the kea to attack it on release, as I've tried to hunt the pests with both melee and crossbow squads, and they just end up with "no valid target", and thus wouldn't target it on release. There isn't much worth training in my area: I've seen raven, kea, turkeys, wild boar, weasels, and red pandas. I've already got tame turkeys (a lot of poults, since egg collection has been so low a priority that they've hatched before being collected), as well as pigs. I've played with the thought of trying to get some fearsome exotics off of the long eared tree huggers for future war training, though.

When it comes to the suspect, I'm going to try to generate a witch test, since I've got a walled off room full of water as a result of an aquifer incident (digging on the same level stops when encountering dampness, but channeling on the level above does not, and I was trying to build a catapult training range with a boulder trench; thus, another lesson). I'll see if I can order the suspect down into the water, and since I don't think she's got swimming, no suffocation should be an indication (I think dwarves can climb up out of the water if there is a climbable path even when drowning?). The problem with all this is that while this will convince me, the player, it will do nothing to convince the dwarves, so they would probably be upset if their mayor ended up with an "accident". I've got a total of 3 dwarves with no relatives in the fortress, and two of them have had recent thoughts about sleeping/eating and eating/drinking respectively, which I believe should rule them out.
I have to say this incident came as an interesting surprise, as I didn't know citizens could be vampires before this. The benefit of being a newcomer!

Thanks Loci!

1. Is possible, if "assigned better equipment" includes new gear being produced and they chose to upgrade themselves.
2. Probably not. They shouldn't be at those locations when active.
3. Given 2, 3 shouldn't apply either (to armor; some militiadwarves might actually have hunting enabled, which might explain the crossbows, as I haven't produced any).
4. None dead yet... (Something is supposed to happen at population 80, though. I've currently acquired 14 new freeloaders babies and gone from 71 to 85).

Stockpiles exists (with free space, but bins allocated), but that won't help if nobody goes after the items. I've had some minor success with quantum stockpile/discard, however.

Hm, I'd enabled "Gather refuse from outside" in order to collect dead animals (like the sheep killed off by a werebeast), but not the submenu for vermin. Do you mean that suboption actually means collect vermin from Inside to bring it Outside? Anyway, I'm tring to see what happens when changing that.

Thanks for your help!

Thanks lethosor!

You may find RECENTER_INTERFACE_SHUTDOWN_MS (in init.txt) useful.

It seems this will help a lot.

A command to mark all water/ice tiles as Restricted. The intended use is for cold climes where you want to avoid drowning due to ice melting and death due to freezing.

Thanks!

1. Maybe this means I have to set up a dual stockpile system for most production items (a short term stockpile for storage & a dedicated stockpile for usage by brewer, thresher, etc) as the Wiki describes for seeds. I find it odd that there would be any stealth cooking going on. Only a single dwarf has the Cook skill enabled, and I check the unit list very frequently. Anyway, I'll try to get cooking going by repeating the order until it catches on.
2. I guessed at a frequency like that. Since it doesn't seem to be scheduled by itself, I've had to do it manually.
3. Thanks, I think I've found it. I just hope they don't try to recover the dead Carp that apparently is lying somewhere on the map...
4. I disable all hauling on dedicated craftsdwarves, and only enable it occasionally on them, but there is always more hauling to do than hands to do it. I'll try to use one of the two tools to make life a bit more controlled.
5. I mostly want this control to get rid of scarce items, such as newly found surface plants to get at their seeds, so repeat boredom should not be an issue.
6. Had no idea that feature existed! Yes, it should do the trick.
8. I've accidentally ended up with a pet or two on my first attempt, and I believe the owner name was given with the pets, but these migrant animals do not seem to have any owner. My named gosling (now grown up and laying eggs) is not a problem, though.
9, I'll try that the next time I see a caravan.

Thanks again!

My fortress is heading towards a crisis as the alcohol is running out and the brewer claims there are no unspoiled source goods available. I also get the same kind of reactions when trying to process fibers and cook meals (I have been able to both brew and cook earlier). As far as I can tell, all food items are stored in barrels in one of my two food only storages (seeds are stored in its own storage), and should never have touched ground anywhere else. The food report states I have 48 plump helmets and they are available for Brewing but not Cooking, e.g. When it comes to eggs, I've had a fair number available for Cooking, but still a refusal to make meals out of them (is there some kind of ingredience balance requirement for meals somewhere?), but they still get consumed somehow (presumably eaten raw). I've tried to give a dwarf the order to just haul Refuse to get rid of my spoiled stuff from my food supply (if there is any), but he just twiddles his thumbs.

Next question is about Milking: How often can that be done? I've been unable to find any info about that on the Wiki. As an aside, I can mention that my milker is afraid of the sow, as he frequently abort the task due to a dangerous beast, and once even gave up cheese production due to a dangerous beast (I assume the sow gave him an odd look after being milked?)

The third one is about roadkill, i.e. animals killed by violence (lost two of my grazers to an attacking Weretapir e.g.) but never found out how to collect the corpse, although I think the answer to that probably does exist on the wiki (something about global forbidding, which probably also causes hunters to run out of ammo after scattering it all over the landscape).

The fourth one is about job prioritization: Is there a way to bump up job priorities of individual jobs to e.g. get the butcher to actually take care of the body hauled in by the hunter rather than continue to take on another haul stone job (or do something possibly even more pressing: "build" the cages with purchased grazers so they can be released before they starve to death rather than building yet another bed). I know you can turn on and off job categories on dwarves to get them to go the right job category, but that's rather blunt and requires constant micromanagement (Turn the Farmer's "Gather Plant" job on when there is nothing to be planted or harvested (easy, as the idle count is non zero), and off when there is, for instance (harder, as it requires constant checking of the jobs list)).

Is there a way to prioritize the order in which food is consumed (eating of brewing)? I would prefer to recover the kinds of seeds in short supply first, for instance.

Is there a way to label levers? I suspect you can end up with quite a lot of them, and you might forget which one does what. It's not really a good idea to let the river into your castle when you intended to raise the drawbridge, for instance.

Is there a way to see what a job is about? I might want to cancel a Hunt job if the hunter is going after the wrong kind of prey or something that's at the other end of the map (like the hunter that spent several months hauling a deer back, only to drop it a short distance outside the fortress for an unknown reason to go after a skunk instead).

A couple of oddities and annoyances (0.40.12):
Animals brought by immigrants always have names as far as I've seen, but seem just to be normal animals rather than pets.
The trade screen (ought to be barter really. I my first "trade" I gave away most of my gems since I tried to get cash to buy stuff...) has the problem that you can see what the container is made of in great detail, but you have to guess as to what they contain as the contents description is cut short. I've found no way to scroll the description sideways to see the remainder. By resizing the game window I can get the description to be cut even shorter, but not more complete.
The trade negotiation screen shows two rows for each animal type, presumably one for each gender, but does not actually display the gender, so if you want cows rather than bulls you still have to select both to be sure (or know the hidden list order), which defeats the purpose of separating the genders in the first place.