Bay 12 Games Forum

Your civilization is extinct. An extinct civilization:

a) has no sites
b) has no population
c) has no monarch (and will not appoint a new one)
d) provides no trade caravan
e) provides no immigrants beyond the two hard-coded waves


This is distinct from a "struggling" civilization, which:

a) has few or no sites
b) has some population
c) has a monarch, and will appoint replacements
d) provides a trade caravan
e) provides immigrants, even if they must be generated from scratch


The game doesn't clearly distinguish between "extinct" and "struggling" civilizations on embark. I have heard of players "rebooting" an extinct civilization by embarking and retiring one or more fortresses.

Since there appears to be no way to order that only non-butcherable carcasses be dumped while butcherable ones are stockpiled, how can one set a stockpile up where anything placed in it is immediately atomsmashed/dumped into magma without putting the hauler in any danger? At first, I considered pressure plates, but now I'm thinking about building bridges, designating the stockpile over them and then just leaving them retracted all the time.

You can't designate a stockpile on top of a bridge. You can, however, link your stockpile to a minecart sitting on a dumping track stop next to a pit, and configure the minecart to only take "unbutcherable" refuse. You can dispose of the pitted refuse via magma (make sure the pit is deep enough to prevent magma mist from reaching the top) or an atom smasher.

What is it that allows two creatures / objects to slide right past each other?

I've seen it a few times in earlier versions, where two dwarves in a narrow corridor pass each other without one lying down, but I've saved just before one of these and it happens consistently. The two objects are a dwarf and a minecart, and there is no combat log about the dwarf dodging.

Is it as simple as them moving on the same tick while next to each other?

There are two different mechanisms at play here. Creatures can sometimes "creature swap" with other creatures, exchanging tiles (this can lead to inexplicable behavior, such as dwarves ending up on top of walls after being creature swapped by a flying creature). Minecarts, though, move separate from creatures; there is apparently a small window where creature can move into a tile containing a minecart and prevent the minecart from moving into the creature's tile and causing a collision.

Check your standing orders menu.

I'm not sure what I saw now, since neither the stones nor wooden logs experienced any decay from what I can tell (wear=0 and wear_timer=0).

They don't. Logs, furniture, etc. which are damaged in some other way (such as being caught in a fire or attacked by a building destroyer) may be hauled to a refuse stockpile, which could explain why you found them there.

I can't tell if the cages experienced accelerated wear, but apparently wooden goods are supposed to completly wear out after 100 years (and wear_timer is nonzero on both the refuse-piled empty cages and the control, non-refuse-piled empty cages).

Improvable organics are supposed to wear out over a long time period, an effect which is completely independent from the accelerated degradation caused by refuse stockpiles.

The wiki wear page is quite comprehensive.

The version shown on the wiki is precise; adding or removing a few tiles of water-covered track will cause it not to work correctly. It sounds like you've shortened the track enough (or added extra impulse ramps) that the minecart has too much velocity to make the final turn at the end. Building a wall in front of the turn will force the minecart to make the turn, but it'll still be going extra fast when it hits the wall, potentially injuring your dwarf. Add a track stop with medium or low friction on the track after the turn to slow down the cart and prevent injuries.

If an item is damaged, e.g. the Xs around its name, does its trade value decrease?

Yes.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Wear

IIRC, clothes will only wear out while being used OR while in a refuse stockpile.

Nope. Most organic items constantly experience a very low rate of wear (1 level every 100 years, corrected to 1 level every 20 years by dfhack). High and low temperatures can also cause item wear, which can notably impact trade depots built on the surface in frozen climates.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Wear