Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Huntar]

Hello, all. I'm a newb who just downloaded DF, and I have a few problems, all of them likely very stupid ones.

First of all, I'm having problems with hauling jobs. I'm a neat-freak, even in games, and it bothers me to see all these stones littering my fortress. However, no matter what I do, it seems my dwarves will never even touch them. I've turned off all jobs other than hauling, made sure there are stockpiles available for them, and checked the options. The most I've gotten for this problem is a dwarf collecting a turtle shell before going to drink something. Any help?

Also, is there a way I can direct certain dwarfs to do specific tasks? I've looked and, other than turning off jobs on dwarves I'd like to have work elsewhere, I see nothing for this.

Oh, and when I started building a workshop, some plain white tiles popped up, which blocked my dwarves from leaving the room. I assume this is supposed to happen, but is there a way to set where these will appear? It's a bit annoying, having to tunnel around them. As stated, cleanfreak here, so it annoys having the template thrown off because of that.

I'm sorry if these problems are obvious ones. And, sure, they're not game-breakers or even really problematic, but they do bother me.

[utunnels]

Well, stone hauling is quite hard task, it cost a lot of haulers as you dig deeply in to the mountain. I prepfer to disable stone hauling in 'o' menu, until I have a lot of labors.

About your workshops, you can see some green 'X's when you design them: dark green means unpassable, while light green means passable.

[ August 09, 2007: Message edited by: utunnels ]

[ August 09, 2007: Message edited by: utunnels ]

[Sappho]

I can answer at least a few of your questions.  First off, welcome!  This game has a steep learning curve but I'm sure everyone here will agree it is worth it.  Many of us have begun to dream in ASCII...

Not sure about the hauling thing.  If you have stockpiles and the dwarves have stone hauling turned on, and you don't have them set to ignore stone in the o menu, my only guess would be that they have other jobs to do which are prioritized.

I'm afraid that you can't give specific dwarves specific instructions beyond turning on and off jobs in their labor submenu.  DF isn't completely a sandbox game - your little guys have tiny little cyber minds of their own and have a degree of free will.  It can be frustrating at times, but it also provides some of the entertaining challenge.  You'll learn to enjoy watching them grow into their own personalities.

The white tiles in the workshop are indeed supposed to be there.  This threw me off for a while too.  You can't change where they appear, but if you look closely when placing a workshop, the green X's designating where the building will be placed are slightly darker on the squares that will be blocked off.  If you keep your eye on this when building them, you can avoid inadvertently locking them in a new workshop.

Enjoy and good luck!

[Huntar]

First of all, thanks for the quick replies. I must say... This forum seems far kinder to newbs than a good number I've been to. And the game does seem like an interesting one, from what I've seen. I picked it up because I'm a fan of Rogue-likes and, despite that, it was still a bit daunting, watching the map pan out, and going into my first fortress.

Aye, I did check all of those things. However, I'll have 3 or 4 dwarves just standing around, just wandering around when they should be hauling. I just thought of something, actually. Do you need to put barrels or bins into piles to contain things?

Aww... Ah well, about the only thing it would be useful for is mining out sections and rooms that I'd prefer done first, without having to recall the layout I've not set yet.

And thanks for the pointer about the X's. I suppose I just didn't notice or remember the different color. It certainly will aid in keeping the guys from walling themselves in, and will keep my fort nice and purty.

[Eagle of Fire]

The way the game handle things right now, the objects "fetch" the dwarves for their job, not the opposite. When dwarves themselves have to pick something, they usually take the nearest item but the whole system work in a "first come, first serve" manner, at least as far as rock hauling is concerned. This mean that even if you just dig out a room and set a stockpile somewhere to move the rock out of it, they'll still go fetch the other rocks first and add them to that nice little stockpile.

It might be the reason why you come back to your room and tell yourself "what the .... are they doing? Good thing I'm not paying them, 'cause they'd be fired!"    

Edit: Oh, and the reason why you have dwarves just sitting around out of the fortress is probably because they are taking a break. You can check that in the job menu, it should come up as "on break" or something similar. To minimize the number of times a given dwarf decide to go on break, make sure that you have enough booze available for him to drink. Over everything else, dwarves prefer to drink alchool and they seems to be fine drinking no water whatsoever as long as the drinks keep coming.  

[ August 09, 2007: Message edited by: Eagle of Fire ]

[Haedrian]

Make sure you leave enough space around the workshops because of the room-blocking. Personally I used to build in a 5X5 square, it also leaves spaces for a ministockpile around the workshop, and allows easy (and guaranteed) access.

[Rick C]

"The way the game handle things right now, the objects "fetch" the dwarves for their job, not the opposite. When dwarves themselves have to pick something, they usually take the nearest item but the whole system work in a "first come, first serve" manner, at least as far as rock hauling is concerned. "

Just discovered this time sink last week.  

One thing I've noticed is my dwarves just love to pick the item farthest from the stockpile, leading to lots of time spent walking.  At least they get lots of exercise, I guess.

I ran into a problem with my latest fortress--I excavated a cave near the river to use as a Nile farm, and built doors to seal it off from the rest of the fortress.  But one door was built on top of a piece of mined stone, leaving the door open.  Won't that cause the rest of the fortress to get flooded?  Is there anything I can do about this?

[Eagle of Fire]

To go around that problem, I usually build statue(s) in the spot the doors are supposed to occupy and I unbuild them as they get done. The dwarves will move the rock away when placing the statue and if you build one statue for each door then the moved rock can't be hauled back and forth at the doors emplacements.

[Sappho]

Yes, that could cause the flood to go through the doors and destroy your fortress.  Unfortunately the only way to move the rock is to set a rock stockpile, which will take forever to get the rock you want.  There are two ways of speeding it up:

1. Set a stockpile that only accepts that particular type of rock.  There is a better chance that your rock will get chosen this way.

2. Set a stockpile right on top of that rock, and another one near it.  Set the second one to take items from another stockpile, and the dwarves should move the rock from the first stockpile to the second.

Once your rock has been moved, be sure to get rid of the stockpiles unless you want all your dwarves hauling stone for the rest of forever.  Hope this helps!

[ktrey]

It was touched on above, but it bears repeating: When it comes to a newly created stockpile, dwarves haul the last mined stone first. Eventually, you'll get the hang of how the hauling tasks work and you'll develop the necessary tricks. I find myself giving my miners plenty of other busy work (stone detailing, weaving/butchery/other auto-jobs) for when I need an area cleaned out. The key is that they stop mining/generating stone/generating stone hauling tasks. That old stockpile you created ages ago isn't gonna touch the newly mined stone until it's already filled with other stones that are tasked to go in the pile. Creating a new pile AFTER your miners are done with an area will tell your dwarves to fill it with the newly mined stone.

I rarely use piles for plain stone initially though, job micromanagement doesn't leave enough wiggle room to allow my initial dwarves to perform unskilled actions like hauling. Except Food and Items of course.

A trick for getting rid of stone is to build wandering Mason's/Mechanic/Craftsdwarf shops near the stone you want to clear out. No stockpiles. When queued for a job in the shop, the dwarf will usually haul a nearby stone all the way to the shop, but for subsequent jobs, they'll grab stone nearest to the shop. This is especially helpful at clearing large areas like farms/dining halls if you have a Legendary Mason/Crafter. Another thing to try, is having your mason build rock blocks. It trains the Mason up, and blocks can be put in bins. Build workshops out of blocks, build bridges out of blocks, give your fortress a nice wide smooth road. I find I can never have enough rock blocks.

Also, take an immigrant Peasant, turn off all jobs save Seige Operating, build a catapult facing a wall and set it to Fire At Will. It's slow going at first as the Operator trains up, but within a few seasons, if there's enough nearby rock, he'll make Legendary. At that point, I usually enable Item/Food Hauling on them, because they're fast.

You'll hone a system of stone removal to the point that I'm at: Having to create controlled cave-in rooms to generate more stone. I'm actually pleased to receive the "Mason Cancels construct Rock Door: Needs Rock" message.

[Rick C]

quote:Originally posted by Sappho:
<STRONG>Yes, that could cause the flood to go through the doors and destroy your fortress.  Unfortunately the only way to move the rock is to set a rock stockpile, which will take forever to get the rock you want.  There are two ways of speeding it up:

1. Set a stockpile that only accepts that particular type of rock.  There is a better chance that your rock will get chosen this way.

2. Set a stockpile right on top of that rock, and another one near it.  Set the second one to take items from another stockpile, and the dwarves should move the rock from the first stockpile to the second.

Once your rock has been moved, be sure to get rid of the stockpiles unless you want all your dwarves hauling stone for the rest of forever.  Hope this helps!</STRONG>

Your second idea sounds like a great one--I'll give that a try.  Unfortunately, the game instance froze up and I hadn't yet saved it, but I can pretty easily set up a test.  Thanks!

[Kaivosukeltaja]

quote:Originally posted by Rick C:
I ran into a problem with my latest fortress--I excavated a cave near the river to use as a Nile farm, and built doors to seal it off from the rest of the fortress.  But one door was built on top of a piece of mined stone, leaving the door open.  Won't that cause the rest of the fortress to get flooded?  Is there anything I can do about this?[/QB]

There are two kinds of flood in Dwarf Fortress: seasonal floods and artificial floods. The latter is created with flood gates, drowns dwarves and can ruin your entire fortress if not contained properly. However, artificial floods are stopped by channels, so building one behind a door that can be accidentally opened is always a good idea.

Seasonal floods occur twice a year. They do not rise high enough to kill dwarves, so there is no need to worry about opened doors. The worst that can happen is getting items thrown around by the flood, or having a huge mushroom blocking your corridor three years later. Just be careful not to stand on a bridge when the seasonal flood wave strikes - watching your only miner and his pick disappear into the murky waters of the cave river can be a traumatizing experience.