Bay 12 Games Forum

I'm getting two issues with my latest fort. Not sure if these are specific to the latest version or what.

1: Marksdwarves aren't training. Ample bolts, bolts allocated in military screen, archery range designated and assigned to crossbow squad. Some of the members' jobs report "going to archery practise" while they stay standing still in the meeting area.

Ordered marksdwarf squad to a specific area. Two of the four showed up. Stood them down and one went to the archery range, unloaded his quiver and then went back to standing around doing nothing.

2: I've put all dwarves, even civilians, into squads in order to arm and armour them. Schedule settings are to "wear uniform when inactive", yet the dorfs only partially armour up. I've got piles of unworn armour around and dwarves missing those pieces. Strangely, pretty much everyone has an axe as ordered but not the armour.

[edit]To clarify: some dwarves will be wearing, say, only a helm and no boots while pairs of boots lie unworn on the stockpile. Others have only their axes. For some reason, my professional squad of full-timers all seem to be fully armoured[/edit]

Even more strangely, I ordered all squads to attack something (that is, ordered every dwarf). Those that were missing armour pieces seemed to scramble to the armour pile and equip them, but when the orders were cancelled they went and removed these pieces (?!).

So are these known issues with the new version? New bugs? Any workarounds? I basically want to arm and armour my entire populace and I'd like to get my marksdwarves training.

My fortress is currently in the middle of a tantrum spiral, and I'd like to abandon and reclaim it because I've gone to a lot of effort to pump magma and I don't want to waste it. The thing is, I've got a sizable stockpile of adamantium armour that I'd really rather wasn't scattered across the countryside. Is there anything I can do to prevent that from happening if I abandon the fort?

Thanks, having a car - even just a van - is making things a lot easier.

Even if workshops did make noise, I'd argue that it's better to keep bedrooms reasonably close because otherwise it would take too long for dwarves to get to/from jobs. The slowdown on getting stuff done from not having buildings near each other is pretty noticeable.

To be safe when mining out the last block of a wall separating your dwarf from fluids, set them to channel the last block rather than mine it. This seems to work better, possibly because the fluid has more space to occupy before it reaches your dwarf. Pretty much mandatory if you're breaching into lava - every time I've dug into it the dwarf has been immediately burned and killed and every time I've channelled the last square he's got away scot free.

I've had dwarves training with training axes and equipped with nice steel armour, using the uniform settings. A forgotten beast arrived and I hurriedly changed their uniform settings to be steel battle axes instead of training ones. The result is my army rushing the beast with a wooden axe in one hand and a steel axe in the other, and then wrestling the beast instead of slicing it up.

Question: how do you get the little buggers to drop weapons so you can equip them properly?

Hang on, you guys said you're using SMOOTHED floors. I'm using CONSTRUCTED floors. I wonder if that's the difference?... Honestly I'm grasping at straws here.

I've just tried digging a 5x5 pit next to the lake, lining the pit with constructed walls and floors and pumping the water in, on the theory that the water has to drop into the pit. It's still not showing up as drinkable from the zone menu. Water level is at 4.

I guess I'll throw in a well for good measure, but as I understand it that's not supposed to desalinate water in the new version?

I'm on a saltwater map and trying to desalinate water. The wiki says "Salt water pumped through a pump will become drinkable if then kept separate from natural walls, natural floors, other salt water or an aquifer", so I tried pumping a lake out into box made of stone floors and walls (with ramps for access while constructing):

(saltwater lake)
   %
╔═0%0
║+++║
║+++║
║▲++║
╚═══╝
 ▲This didn't work. I tried removing the pump, building a floor tile under the "output" square of where the pump goes, waiting for all the water to evaporate out of the reservoir and trying again. No luck. What am I doing wrong?