Bay 12 Games Forum

I am thoroughly disappointed in my dwarves, for they are apparently completely bereft of both intelligence and compassion.

the squad of three champions i ordered to guard the only entrance to my fort abandoned their position when the leader got thirsty and went for a drink, and his subordinates followed him for no reason at all. It didn't occur to them that i had placed them there because the traps that would ordinarily have protected my fort were temporarily out of order and needed to be cleaned. I wish i had caught them slacking off sooner, but it didn't occur to me that my dwarves were unprotected.

So my guards left and i was unawares when, as if they choreographed it thousands of times beforehand, two simultaneous goblin ambushes appeared at my doorstep and descended on my innocent workers that were trying to maintain my traps. fortunately, they had cleaned enough traps to slaughter the first 7 of the 8 goblins, thinning their numbers, but disabling the rest of the traps.

my innocent dwarves ran, and i found my squad leader and reordered him to get his ass back over their. His lack of disciplined was astounding, for he stood their and continued drinking like a camel.

back at the entrance, the last goblin, a bowgoblin, was taking potshots at my dwarves, who, for some reason, weren't running away. I had noticed that among the group of dwarves was my Great Furnace Operator, an essential second generation migrant member of the fort. The first victim however was a newly arrived soapmaker. he would be missed but not mourned.

I then realized why they weren't running away, they kept re-queuing 'clean trap' as their job. Watching them dance about back and forth was revolting. "EEK! GOBLIN! RUN AWAY!" would be their action for one moment, then they'd forget about the goblin entirely as their lust for cleaning traps took over their small dwarven minds and compelled them to walk back towards the goblin waiting by the traps in some sort of hypnotized death-march. then they would run away again, and repeat.

i looked everywhere... EVERYWHERE for an option to make them stop doing this. i went into (o)ptions and disabled all actions, i disabled every labor preference the dwarves had, and even marked the floor they kept walking towards as "restricted" but nothing would stop them!

the goblin finally manages to hit another dwarf, a female lyemaker and a mother carrying her newborn baby boy, but she is not dead, but her leg and foot are broken. Her dance of retardedness is coming to a close it seems.

a puppy and a tame raccoon are the next victims, and a miracle occurs, the bowgoblin leaves! it would appear that the mother's life is saved. but then another ambush strikes, signified by a merchant's swordsdwarf who apparently doesn't give a damn about the goblin and heads towards the trade depot.

i successfully manage to get all the dwarves at the entrance to safety, except for the mother, who can barely move. the guards are still taking their merry sweet time at the drinking hole and a single goblin wrestler (where the other goblins are is beyond me) descends to kill the helpless lame mother. desperate, i quickly recruit her and tell her to fight unarmed so she will atleast defend herself. the struggle begins, the injured, inexperienced, and child-encumbered mother versus a trained goblin wrestler. they fight for a good minute, but it would appear that the mother and child are destined to die. I check up on the frickin champion guard captain and he's STILL DRINKING. frustrated, i appointed his unthirsty subordinate as captain, and the new squad leader makes his way to where the mother is.

its been some time, the mother is more injured than ever, the baby has a mangled arm and wrist. things look bleak, but she still fights for her life. they keep fighting for like another 30 seconds, and she's on her last legs, and she's trying to escape death. she struggles valiantly, and the guard captain gets their in time! he promptly dispatches the goblin wrestler and it would appear that the mother and child, while injured horribly, will survive and perhaps recover fully within a couple months.

then a frickin' goblin snatcher appears outta nowhere and grabs the child outta the mother's arms. the guard swiftly kills the snatcher, and the baby is hurled to the ground.

the mother, with an injured leg and now thirsty from the long time she's been their, is apparently unable to move to get her child. the baby, with a mangled arm and wrist, desperately and incoherently crawls about on the ground, not aware of his mom just feet away, passing out for a few moments every now and then from the terrible pain.

the goblins are gone, so i order everyone to resume duty, hoping that someone, anyone, would come to the aid of the poor mother and child. No one comes, every resumes duty, but no one cares in the least that they are walking past a horribly injured and valiantly strong mother and child that could die at any moment.

almost everyone has the "health care" job preference, but no one wants to abandon what they're doing to help. could it be that the dwarven caravan had arrived earlier, and the 'place item in depot' job has higher priority then helping a fellow dwarf?

that's where i saved. their info says they're not bleeding, but i don't know how long they'll last. what should i do to help them?

i Swear to god, if that baby survives, he's getting his own custom name and title.

haha, nice, looks like all my effort is gonna pay off.

yeah, just replace everytime i said "arrow" with "bolt" and thats what i mean....

Wait... did i buy like 500* worth of stupid elf arrows thinking they were bolts?! damn the elves!

anyway, i have one more arrow related question. i have a "mega corridor", which is a long underground tunnel roughly 90~ units long and 11 units wide that acts as the only entrance to my fort. after i finished laying down a plethora of weapon traps to secure the tunnel, i thought "i can do better than this" and so i've begun training siege operaters with the intent of honing they're skills so they can fire giant frickin' ballista bolts down this corridor for great effect.

so yeah, i have a couple dedicated siege operators and one siege engineer to manufacture the ballista arrows and place them in a special stockpile that only accepts ballista arrows right next to the entrance ot the tunnel for convenience. (and having disabled ballista arrow acceptance on every other furniture stockpile. and btw, why furniture? i would think ballista arrows would go into the ammo stockpile.).

anyway, 3 ballistas side-by-side shooting down my 11 tile wide/90 tile long  corridor, thats my plan, but is it practical? i've never used siege weapons before.

wow, thats a good story. btw, by "rationing" do you mean "give food to some dwarves, and lock all the rest in a room to die"?

yeah, title. i have two marksdwarves right now, each with exactly the same settings. but while one is a good marksdwarf and always carries arrows when i put her on duty, the other is a bad marksdwarf and while he uses arrows to shoot at the archery targets, whenever i put him on active duty, he never seems to have any arrows on him nor will he pick up the bundles of arrows that are lying EVERYWHERE.

in his soldiering screen, he's set to carry a crossbow, have one weapon, wear platemail, and carry a shield, but wheres the "PICK UP THE ARROWS YOU IDIOT" button?

Dwarves are dependent on alcohol for everything though; they work best when hammered. No real Dwarf would deign to drink water...

are you implying my dwarves are fake?

anyway, i have a question about rivers. is it possible to divert or reroute a river entirely? i think having an entire river under your control would be awesome.

my fortress of impregnable solitude is reaching fruition, kinda sorta.

after exploring with the Z-axis some more, i've found that the site that i've chosen, which i believed to be a huge mountain, was actually just some small hills, and all my moats and walls were worthless because both walls and moats were in the surrounding valleys, so any invading creature needed only to go around them.

upon discovering this, i built a new tunnel which i'd planned to be the new entrance to the fort. to enforce this, i'd startd building a great wall all around my fortress, including ontop of the shallow river that runs through it (lets hope future enemies aren't marines that just swim under it!). all my token effort is repeatedly undermined by my own dwarves though, they seem to purposefully leave large gaps in the wall for no reason, and on the points where the elevation changes leaves eery gaps as units can just walk on top of the less elevated wall and over to the other side. my orders to patch up these oversights is ignored completely at the best of times, and suspended by my own dwarves at the worst.

in more hilarious news, in patching up the holes overlooking the elevated land around my river, one of my dwarves building it inadvertantly trapped himself over the river and he is now forced to watch the river as he dies of thirst.

i've figured out how to make mechanisms work. thanks guys.

using my newfound knowledge, i've tried building a water death trap in the 'official' entrance to the fort, which is where i presume invaders would be funneled when the wall was completed (which i presumed would have gone alot smoother than it had), by using 'channel' to make the floor extra deep so its easy to coerce water into it, with a nearby underground tunnel connected to the moat with a floodgate. it has yet to be tested on live specimens.

i need some help trading. the elves came to me wanting to trade, but i can't figure out how to do it. I understand moving things over their to trade, and entering the trade screen, but when it comes to the actual exchanging part, i'm stuck. i offer him things that are equal in value to what i want, but i can't do anything.

also, some rhesus macaque monkey showed up at the same time as those elves, and they started stealing things from the elven traders! they disappeared mysteriously after that, and when i was looking through the trade screen, i noticed "rhesus macaque cages" and i concluded that the elves had caught them and were now trying to sell them to me.

while i haven't been officially invaded yet, i have been bothered by kobold thieves and goblin snatchers or something, and i'm pretty sure those are bad. i've assigned a new migrant (who brought his own crossbow) as a soldier (i think!), but when they show up, he isn't kicking their ass. what do i do to order him to kick ass?

one of my armorers or something got "possessed by unkown forces" or somesuch, they caused her to stop working and make her blink with an exclamation mark. after so long she went crazy, so i locked her in her bedroom. she's brooding in their something aweful, she's torn off her shoe and when i examine it it says that it's 'blood spattered' or something. whats wrong with her and how do i make her stop?

finally, dwarves keep leaving the vicinity of my walls to get a drink upstream or downstream the river. the only bad thing about this is that their is a river running straight through the fort which i've zoned as a "drinking spot"! they are risking themselves needlessly, and i want them to stop undermining my paranoid fantasy of security. how do i do so?