Bay 12 Games Forum

After a bit of a break I started running what was, I thought, my nice peaceful fortress. As I'm still training up my militia I've stuck with a version where goblins don't show up so there's little of menace around so far. But while I was getting on with organising grandiose constructions I was notified that the Captain of the Guard was throwing a tantrum. A certain amount of fighting ensued as a result.

On investigation I found the captain was miserable on account of the loss of a friend and further investigation showed my dwarven body count, which I thought was 2 (unfortunate drowning and a suicide after fey mood) had increased to six, including a baby. One of which presumably accounted for the captain's foul mood. Since I'd been notified of none of these deaths I rolled back and changed the announce settings so I'd get a pause and centre when a citizen died.

The re-start hasn't helped identify the cause of death as it turned out they'd all died before the save. Violently it seems, upper bodies being noticeable by their absence. The only fighting reports are for regular sparring so on the surface all seems well. But I started getting messages about giving food jobs being cancelled, no food available. This is odd, the place is stacked with lavish meals and raw foods, but it led me to find an unconscious  dwarf in my above ground sculpture garden. Seems this sculpture garden is more of a sculpture danger room as later I found a couple more unconscious dwarves there. The centrepiece of the garden is a bronze colossus in a nickel cage - I thought it might give the dwarves something to laugh at - which I'd assumed wouldn't be able to get at anyone. Is it somehow able to clobber unwary dwarves as they walk past it's cage? If not any tweaking I can do to get more info on what's causing dwarves to suddenly pass out?

Roasts.

Seconded. Once I had my, not very extensive, farms going I first got the booze supply up to speed and then switched my kitchens over from easy to lavish meals. I made the best cooks my Master Chefs and only allowed them in the kitchen and in a short while they were producing stacks of roasts I could sell for between 1-2k, with the occasional masterpiece stack going at over 15k. I effectively pay traders to take the stuff away for me as I can buy everything I want and still leave them with an enormous profit.

Having bought some valley herb I got some vials made and processed the herbs to produce golden salve. My z-stocks list shows I've got a fair quantity in stock. My cunning plan was to flog it to the next passing humans, having assured them it will do wonders for their manhood I expect to get a good price. Unfortunately this scam fell apart because I can't find the wretched stuff when it comes to move things to the depot. According to the wiki it's an extract but it doesn't appear in that category. Nor can I find it in the All list or lurking inside any bins or barrels. Where's it got to?

The thread I started on ammunition equipping: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=68400.0 may provide an explanation. It veered into target practice and recovering bolts that miss the target by use of channels. It appears that a channel dug in front of the archery target stops the dwarves firing at the target. I proved this myself because before someone posted a layout I dug just such a channel and put an immediate stop to marksdwarf training. I'm wondering whether the same thing could apply to a target goblin on the other side of a channel. I've yet to try this myself but I believe the usual way of setting up live targets is to put them into a pit.

I use guard towers (I like to think of them as ravelins though they're the wrong shape) to cover the fortress entrances. Accessed by underground tunnels the theory is that while invading forces are battering the doors down to gain entry to the long corridor of traps that are there to welcome them my marksdwarves will pop up behind them and start peppering them with bolts. I've yet to try it with a siege as I'm in a goblin free build at the moment, but with various fearsome beasts it worked in theory as squads deployed there quickly enough  although their presence was unnecessary as the assorted monsters just fell into the first cage trap they reached.

Yes, I wondered if that were the case. But if your current setting is:

metal bolts(100)  T
bone bolts(100)  C

then if you highlight the metal bolts, say, then the legend next to the C key becomes 'Use non-combat' whilst the T key is 'Use in training'. As I said, the key legends suggest that pressing the keys will result in the exact opposite of what I want to do with metal bolts. It's a pretty hopeless bit of design when you can so easily come up with two contradictory explanations as to what the keys and tags actually mean. Would make far more sense to have 'C: Toggle combat use' and 'T: Toggle training use' then have the TC tags popping up appropriately. And get rid of the red/green colours while you're at it as they convey precisely zero useful information. My Toady donation challenge money is going to be safe for a long, long time.

They won't go to the pond because you have soap.  Dwarves decide to clean themselves, and first check to see if you have soap.  IF you do they go to the soap, pick it up, and then because of broken AI can't figure out how to use the soap.  This causes them to completely cancel the cleaning job, so they never go to the water source.  If you forbid all soap that isn't in a hospital, it will avoid the bug.  You may also want to build a well or three as they seem to clean themselves more consistently at wells.

That may well be the case, but it doesn't explain why they won't venture through the pond to get to the sculpture garden for a boozed up party when they will walk through a stream to drag a log back to base.