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Author Topic: Why do my Dwarves drop crap everywhere?  (Read 2172 times)

ibanix

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Why do my Dwarves drop crap everywhere?
« on: August 12, 2019, 01:56:00 am »

My dwarves are leaving crap everywhere. Mainly food, and military gear. The dining halls are the most common for this to happen in, but it does show up elsewhere.

Uniforms are all set to replace/exact matches. On-duty military carry water and one food item.

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ibanix

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Re: Why do my Dwarves drop crap everywhere?
« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2019, 01:59:45 am »

Oh, they also do this in the temple(s).
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§k

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Re: Why do my Dwarves drop crap everywhere?
« Reply #2 on: August 12, 2019, 02:22:30 am »

Dwarf gets new clothing
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mightymushroom

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Re: Why do my Dwarves drop crap everywhere?
« Reply #3 on: August 12, 2019, 11:47:34 am »

I would suspect squads rotating onto active duty: when the call comes they have a tendency to literally drop what they were doing (such as the food they were eating) and check that their equipment is up to date (shucking off any 'old' items). The dining halls or temples are where they happen to hang out most often, so that's where you see it.
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Why do my Dwarves drop crap everywhere?
« Reply #4 on: August 12, 2019, 12:04:15 pm »

As mentioned, there are a few processes in play:
- If new, better, gear becomes available (and presumably if the current gear has become sufficiently worn with replacements available), militia members will drop the old item and eventually (possibly after the impending battle) grab the new one they've claimed. Gear is assigned in a pecking order, so when the squad leader replaces an item, #2 can claim it and drop its item, which then can be claimed by #3... (if the gear is "equal" there's no need to change).
- When going off duty food is dropped, and I assume the same goes for equipment if set not to wear uniform when off duty. Dropped food is hauled to their rooms to rot and never picked up again (if they've got chests the food is stored there). For this reason I never assign any food to militia.
- When returning from raids they turn civilian briefly and may drop their gear (and regardless, returning from raids may corrupt your save fatally, to crash when DF decides to check for upgrades later [possibly finding none, but it seems the crash happens on the check, not actual replacement]).

Edit: Corrected after Loci's comment.
« Last Edit: August 13, 2019, 01:59:58 am by PatrikLundell »
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ibanix

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Re: Why do my Dwarves drop crap everywhere?
« Reply #5 on: August 12, 2019, 05:03:21 pm »

So, to prevent this behavior:

1) Make squads not want to upgrade gear, or have them upgrade all at the same time;
2) Don't assign food to militia;
3) Use raids with care / not at all
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Loci

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Re: Why do my Dwarves drop crap everywhere?
« Reply #6 on: August 13, 2019, 12:21:24 am »

- When going off duty food is dropped, and I assume the same goes for equipment if "replace" is active.

Nope. Dwarves with Mining, Wood Cutting, or Hunting labors active will drop all their military equipment (including rations) when going off duty due to uniform conflicts. Dwarves without those labors (and whose orders remain "Inactive = Uniformed") will retain their assigned equipment and collected rations when transitioning on/off duty.

Here's a trivial test save; you can cancel the station order and activate/deactivate the squad all you like (or wait for the schedule to do it for you) to verify the rations remain properly packed. However, if you enable Mining, Wood Cutting, or Hunting on any of the dwarves, those dwarves will drop and abandon their rations with each duty transition.

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PatrikLundell

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Re: Why do my Dwarves drop crap everywhere?
« Reply #7 on: August 13, 2019, 01:58:48 am »

Thanks for the correction, Loci.

Yes, I didn't actually mean replace clothing, but the setting to NOT be uniformed when off duty.

However, when it comes to food, I stopped assigning food to militia due to the rampant miasma in their rooms, and I don't mix "uniformed" labor with militia (I've tried to assign those jobs to dorfs who dislike martial skills if possible). However, I stopped assigning food a fair while ago (probably 0.40.X), but haven't seen anything to indicate things have changed.
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Loci

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Re: Why do my Dwarves drop crap everywhere?
« Reply #8 on: August 13, 2019, 04:01:11 pm »

There are likely other problems with abandoned rations, and I don't generally bother since dwarves will eat their rations then immediately travel to the food stockpile to replace them, defeating the purpose of carrying rations in the first place. Add in the seeds left lying around military hot zones for non-combatants to bungle in to collect and the downsides pretty clearly outweigh the benefits in my opinion.

Still, the most common source of abandoned rations, particularly for new players, is likely to be the known bug with uniform conflicts. If you should happen to isolate some other cause, please log a separate bug report.
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Why do my Dwarves drop crap everywhere?
« Reply #9 on: August 14, 2019, 02:23:07 am »

It will be quite some time before I'll play DF again, as I won't until the raid crash bug has been fixed. However, memory allowing, I'll refrain from disabling food in militia (accepting the reasonably mild disadvantages from carrying it) and see if I can find any food hoarding.
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