Bay 12 Games Forum

If Dwarf A got distracted after drinking and, say, went to sleep, and Dwarf B didn't clean up his mess, the bones could rot eventually. The bones are tasked to the job, not the dwarf; if the job is inactive, all the materials become untasked and jobs are created to haul them back to their respective stockpiles.

One solution to your problem would be to make a bone/shell stockpile close to the craftsdwarf shop. Then Dwarf A wouldn't have to go very far to get his bones, and would have less time to get sidetracked getting water or whatever, and thereby untasking the items.

Also I've noticed that when the items get untasked (because the dwarf goes for water) when he comes back to the job he'll start at the beginning of the materials list again. I.e. if I say "Build a rock table" the dwarf grabs some rock, carrys it to the masons shop, and gets to work. Say halfway through he gets thirsty and gets some water. When he comes back to work, he'll get a different piece of rock to build the table from, and later some other dwarf will come by to pick up the old rock.

You aren't understanding what's happening. The dwarf is taking a break, which untasks the items from the job as it is suspended, and causes a "haul item back to pile" job to be made. Then, other dwarves come along and take the stone/metal/etc back to the pile.

As long as your dwarf continues to work on the project continuously, the materials will remain tasked to the job and will not be hauled away. If you bring the stockpiles closer, your dwarf won't need to spend so much time hauling the materials to the workshop in the first place, allowing him more time to create whatever item you wanted him to make before he has to go sleep/eat/whatever.

If you're seeing dwarves come in and take the materials while the, say, mason is still hard at work, odds are he got interrupted, and grabbed another hunk of stone to work on when he got back to it (as the original had been re-tasked to be returned to the stone piles). Then some other dwarf finally came along and grabbed said original stone while the mason continued to make the door or whatever using the second piece of stone.

So you want a real solution, hmm? A way to make your dwarves stop returning material back to stockpiles? Well, there's only two things that can stop this from happening at the moment. As someone suggested, don't use piles at all. Or, get your dwarves to stop eating, drinking, sleeping or taking breaks. Good luck on the second one. I'd say mitigating your problems by moving yoru stockpiles closer is your best bet. Besides, your stockpiles should be close anyways. That's just good fortress design.

Indeed, trading with multiple human (or elven, or even dwarven) civilizations at one site would be interesting. Particularly if/when more complex interactions between nations is implemented. Say two human kingdoms are both trading with you. One declares war on the other. The other asks you to give them weapons/armor/etc, while the other demands that you not trade with the first or else. And so on. You'd probably end up making some difficult decisions (Nation A has been a great trading partner for a long time, but man there sure are a lot of Nation B troops over there...)

Is it possible, in adventurer mode, to kill enough [EVIL] and/or undead monsters/animals (and then more mundane animals) to render the entire worldmap as being serene?

That method involves a lot of tedium and babysitting. Mine involves less, and is much more satisfying to watch  

My solution to this would be to, as stated, start at the bottom and work your way up. However instead of channeling, I would first mine out every floor. Mining takes FAR less babysitting This would allow you to designate the entire pit's worth of mining from the start, and attend other matters while your dwarves do their thing. Once finished do a controlled cave-in: On each floor, designate for the entire perimiter to be excavated save one bit on the side. Again you can attend other matters while your dwarves do this. Then, on the top floor only, designate for the last bit of ground to be cut away.

Make sure however that this last bit of ground is on the LEFT side of the pit, and that your dwarf has somewhere to stand to the left of that (as well as a way to get back to other duties from that point). Dwarves like to do their work from the left side, so if you order it done from the right your dwarf will likely be involved in the cave-in himself. Once that last bit of ground is cut away, the top floor will collapse onto the second, causing a cascade of cave-ins all the way to the bottom in a spectacular blast of dust and flying debris. Make sure nobody's on the bottom (or any of the intervening floors) when this happens or tragedy will result.

I'm not certain exactly how the cave-in mechanics work, however, and the "support" squares on the other floors may be left. If you want to avoid this you can make the top floor one square larger on each side, to ensure something lands on that extra square bit to remove it. Or, you can just go in afterwards and designate them all for channeling.

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Originally posted by Rondol:
<STRONG>What's the oldest world anybody's got going right now?</STRONG>

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Just wanted to point out, that I never asked about a specific fortress. Just the world.

Occasionally (I haven't figured out the exact cause yet) a dwarf will begin a smoothing job, but not finish it, and rather than the job being suspended and finished later by someone else, it is removed entirely. I only noticed this because my current project (a massive underground pyramid tomb) involves a large amount of smoothing.