The 28th year of Ustanoddom, "Blamelesscloister" is well underway, we've weathered this year's goblin season with 21 goblins killed and no loss of dwarven life. The elven caravan fell victim to the ridiculous latency in caravan pathing - the safe bridge had been lowered, but they still took the longer path through the minecart grinder because that was the only path available when they last pathed, a few hundred tiles away. Well, not so much the way through but rather into the minecart grinder. So far, no unit has made it more than half-way through when active, and no-one has survived.
I couldn't really redirect the elves in an easy way, because _of course_ their arrival coincided with a multi-squad goblin ambush and the pathing doors at the far side of the grinder were "taken by invader" and couldn't be interacted with. On the brighter side, i was attentive enough this time to avoid loss of dwarven life. The "children seek to be near their mother" algorithm, which is even more demented than caravan pathing, regularly sends children on a two-day treck way beyond any security perimeter, so they can stand in the ditch _outside_, but of course only 2 tiles (of solid ice wall) away from their mother's referenced location. Last year, that one managed to send a kid wandering brazenly into the elf-slaughter acted out by the goblins, and of course it became collateral damage. That was the first citizen death since the glitched goblin snatching a child and getting caged _with the child_ - about five years ago.
The year before, i noticed a large number of ranged goblins popping up in the kill list, but it looked like there were two squads and one was only half accounted for. On a hunch, i sent the marksdwarf squad to check out the ditch, and sure enough, two crossbowgoblins sat in the ditch, one still in reasonable shape to take shots. My marksdwarf team is a serious liability, because it consists of two female dwarfs who have eight kids between them, who follow them everwhere they go. This time, however, that turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because one kid volunteered as bolt dispository. The little tyke was shot up quite badly, but neither goblin loosed at the marksdwarfs, so they could take them out without danger, and Litast was promptly scooped up and stitched back together, with five rounds of sutures, four wound dressings and four plaster casts. He's got a bunch of scars but no lasting damage apart from sensory nerve damage in one hand. I've since installed raising bridges in the trench, so any survivors sitting in there can simply be crushed.
Dwarfcount is up to 73, i'm planning to load the remaining three minecarts in the grinder with gold nuggets - they'll need the weight to shift the larger beasts that come along with sieges, and i can't rely on carts keeping moving. I don't know what does it, but every forty goblins or so, a cart gets stopped and the next in line has to take over. The chief minecart now has reached 115 kills (in twelve years): a mule, a horse, five elves (stupid caravan pathing), seven kobolds, the rest goblins. The second cart has twenty-four kills, the third only one. Carts four to six have never dealt with invaders, they only got five kills in the testing run - i released a hammergobbo squad on the inside, to see if they'd get out...
PS:
[Makeshift butcher shop to deal with a heavy corpse "out in the field"]
I find myself doing this a lot. Hunter shoots a beastie full of holes, said beastie expires AFTER the hunter has Canceled hunt: out of ammunition. [...]So far I've had to build two or three shops outside the walls: one for a rhino and another for an elephant.
I have a corpse/refuse stockpile next to a butcher's shop that seems to take care of most issues like that. I only did this in this instance because the last time an FB died in a salvagable manner (many, many forts ago) I was biting my fingers the whole time it was being laboriously dragged to the stockpile. This time I didn't want any chance that the body would rot on the way to the butcher.
One word: wheelbarrows.
Wheelbarrows can be assigned to _any_ stockpile, not just stone. I regularly use them for furniture (particularly for specialised stockpiles for metal furniture), "animal" (i.e. cages, occupied and optionally empty) and refuse stockpiles specialised on heavy corpses. The butcher's shop sits next to the stockpile, possibly with a give link from there. Corpses get wheeled to the stockpile at normal dwarven walking speed and the butcher can work in relative safety. Downside is that dismembered corpses get transported one piece, i.e. one wheelbarrow tour, at a time.
The number of hauling jobs that can be assigned from a stockpile is also limited to the number of wheelbarrows if any are stationed there, so they can help limit the number of haulers who swarm out into dangerous areas.
PPS: my knife-and-whip militia uses the knives (large iron daggers) as primary weapons, but it seems the game doesn't properly recognise them as weapon skill. A dwarf with only knife and no "proper" weapon skill will become a recruit when activated, and the display in the 'm'ilitary screens doesn't list it as "knife user" but rather as "skilled" - i.e. that's the displayed skill name - "novice skilled", "great skilled" and, yes, "skilled skilled".
At least the backup whips give them lasher rank so they don't get "activated without military skills" unhappiness.
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Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 5854403 times)