Bay 12 Games Forum

Bug #774 recently fixed:

There are two issues here. One, which is a bug I've fixed now for 0.31.06, is that they would trade out their equipment for any newly made item of equal value. That is very bad, of course, and leads to constant shirking of duties.

The other matter is just the frequency of the updates. People will want their dwarves with the best possible equipment and they also will want them to not bother with minor upgrades if it means wandering off. This is more subtle and also a lesser non-bug issue, so I'm going to mark this report as resolved and note the other issue down for consideration as a rebalance for whenever it comes up.

Regarding the second issue, that seems like it could be an arsenal dwarf setting that the player then balances to his needs. Some default value would need to be in place for forts that have yet to meet the arsenal dwarf population requirements.

The way it's set up, you can't have a 'put out fire' command anyway - best bet is to cause a cave-in and then dig out the fire material, then atom-smash it. About Boozefire, you need to wait for a very future patch where all liquids can flow. Unless you mean booze that burns without blowing up (I don't know how you'd do that unless you want solid, undrinkable booze)?

In 40d, leather was exactly 50% as good as iron, so it definitely offered some protection. In DF2010, I hear leather is meant to be good for cushioning bludgeoning attacks, but since they're so weak by default (until Toady fixes it) anyway we only worry about sharp attacks. Hence we don't worry about layering leather underneath metal at present.

Regards to uniforms, I've never had trouble with them bearing 2 precautions:
1) make your uniforms very specific. I specify Steel [equipment slot], not just any 'metal'.
2) don't change equipment. That's where all the headaches come from. If you really must, then be prepared to delete squads, make temporary squads with naked uniforms and then rebuild the final squad with your choice of very specific gear.

I also hear stockpiling any equipment means dwarves don't know how to assign them.

Walls that have only been designated, not actually finished constructed. That's what I presume anyway.

Quote from: o_O[WTFace] on June 06, 2010, 06:54:08 pm

The underground soil everyone is talking about is cavern soil.  Find a cavern, plant stuff on the ground in it.  All you have to do to find a cavern is dig, more or less.  Its hard not to find them.

I'm down 20 levels in my current fortress. Over a dozen fortresses and I've never seen a cavern yet. I'll keep digging though.

Where is the bottom of the map? Keep moving the view downwards until you see where the bottom z-level is on your map. That'll give you a rough idea of how far below the caverns are - some maps have them almost 100 z-levels below your starting point.

THE wtf bug with reclaims in DF2010 is the disappearance of all cavern mud.

Catapult behaviour is from the old 2D days. They haven't been touched since we moved to 3D - that's reserved for the Army Arc when sieges will get revamped properly.

Quote from: greycat on June 07, 2010, 01:41:20 pm

Quote from: Dark_T_Zeratul on June 07, 2010, 12:56:10 pm

Still, having something that can utterly destroy a second-year fortress with no hope of survival if you haven't done X beforehand seems a bit much.

But it's a Fortress!  If X is "build defenses", then it seems quite reasonable that you ought to do X some time within the first year.

Perhaps, but I still preferred "survivable but you'll lose a lot of dwarves" to "not survivable at all" at such an early stage of the game. Even an untrained dwarf with an axe should be able to do SOMETHING against second-year ambush goblins, and I don't think six goblins should be able to kill forty dwarves without taking any damage whatsoever in the process. Losing is fun, yes, but not when the game just up and goes "you lose and there's nothing you can do about it."

Quote

You never accidentally flooded your entire fortress while trying to irrigate?   

Sorry, should've clarified: nothing not instigated by the player that will screw you over with no hope of recovery the instant it happens. And technically, even a flooded fortress doesn't constitute an instant game over; there's no reason the surviving dwarves couldn't start building a new fortress and perhaps eventually pump out all the water from the first one.

Perhaps part of the reason I didn't have an early military lies with the fact that in my other fortresses in DF2010 I never saw a single goblin, even after many, many years. The creatures I did see were dispatchable both with and without a trained military, though loss of life was admittedly rather high in the latter case.

A steel full-equipped but untrained soldier still ought to hold a very good chance against an early goblin invasion, especially if you also laid out some weapon traps. The key point isn't weapons (actually it is but you got that covered) but armour - combatants die REALLY FAST if they're not covered in metal. All else fails, you can always wall yourself off in an emergency bunker stacked with supplies (includes stuff for you to do while waiting) and blocks to quickly put up a wall.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong here, but this is a new one to me.
For some reason, most of the areas I've chosen to embark upon seem to be in the middle of winter, all water frozen, snow on the ground, etc.  Which makes it a bit hard to start out, being unable to irrigate my fields.

It's more like the default behaviour I saw at times back in 40d - when you start, it's winter. Mere in-game hours later, it'll be spring and everything thaws out. It's just a nice heads-up from the game telling you this place freezes water in winter, which is perfectly ordinary in normal climates. Yeah, .05 includes fixes to seasonal temperature which brings back this behaviour from 40d.