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[Nagidal]

I read somewhere in this forum that a good safe method to collect webs only from certain defined areas may easily be accomplished by defining burrows and assigning either the workshop or the weaver to burrows, but I can't find it anymore. I think that it was possible to have some sort of discontinuous burrows where you could pretty much select individual web tiles which to collect. Can you help me on this?

I have breached into the first cavern layer which is full of cave spider silk webs. However, a web-slinging forgotten beast has come and lives there too. So far the FB has been living calmly on the other side of the cavern pool for the past two years and does not seem to care that my dwarves regularly hunt dralthas and troglodytes just across the pool. I want to prevent that on a warm sunny day Urist McWeaver gets the idea to explore some way to the other side of the pool and collect some forgotten beast webs.

[Quarque]

Don't know the answer to your question, but I would wall off a section of the caverns, or otherwise kill the fb. If you rely on burrows it will wander into your fortress eventually.

[PatrikLundell]

Burows can be discontinuous, yes. You can add and remove as you like (although the key used are different from other removal keys, of course. A clear candidate for UI overhaul key reallocation). To use a web collector burrow I assume you'd paint a burrow over the areas you want web to be collected in, PLUS all the areas the dorfs need for their other activities (eating, sleeping, socializing, praying, etc.), and then assign the web collectors to that burrow. Note, though, that civilian alerts override restrictions from other burrows, so unless your civilian alert also exclude the FB habitat a surface gobbo invasion and a civilian alert would release your web collectors to collect webs anywhere in the civ alert burrow.

I would never allow general access to a cavern with an FB in it, though.

[Starver]

Burrows define where a member of that burrow can pick up a job(-end-point, ?either end?), unless something has changed that I haven't noticed.  It can be highly discontinuous (e.g., I presume from your read idea, at webs-to-be-collected tiles and the collecting workshop only) but it doesn't stop transit via whatever terrain might be pathed through on the way to the web, web to workshop, workshop back to web and (if ever Needs require) food/drink sources from whereverthehelltheyarewhentheyUrgentlyNeed.

If you bear this in mind, I think you can probably keep them wandering too far from the 'safe' collection mass and thus not into areas you don't want them to (and are webbed, which might even be the dangerous aspect, such as you describe).

You don't need to be "spot perfect", though. You can probably define the whole non-FB side of the pool as a WebBurrow (to coin a name), include the Loom they collect to in it as well and I also suggest you add the bedrooms/dining/drinking areas of your choice as well (if you don't want to aggressively work them until they can't stand it any more) unless you already have NeedsBurrow(s) set up and you can just give them 'membership' of both/all when you juggle them into the job (without losing track of who-is-in-what after several improperly implemented job-swaps).

Some of this depends on layout. You might want to be a bit fancier with inclusion/exclusion of the area or even volume involved if there's a potentially concave zone where you don't want them 'walking straight between the points of a crescent Moon' for any reason. It seems like you know this well enough to arrange the safety range you clearly understand enough about, though.


(As Quarque said, this doesn't help the FB stay content to stay 'on the opposite bank', but I was assuming you have defensive features/patrols preped to take it down if it tries to investigate you... If you don't, then all the obvious caveats apply.)

(And ninjaed a second time while adding in the above ninja-response.)

[PatrikLundell]

Burrows restrict both the start point and the end point for a job (but, unfortunately, job allocation doesn't check burrow restrictions before allocating hauling jobs, resulting in cancellation spam for items outside the burrow when the stockpile is inside).

As mentioned, burrows only restrict the job start/end points and does not affect pathing in any way (including the infuriating case of ordering something built inside a burrow with room to stand to build it inside, but the pathing deciding to select a point to stand that's outside, resulting in a job cancellation: you can't use burrows [or pathing restrictions, for that matter] to get the morons from standing on the correct side of a wall they're building to stop them from bricking themselves in).

[Starver]

Off-topic (of request) but there are two tricks I use to have (e.g) walls built from a prefered side and not from the other.

1) When wanting to be outside of anywhere with convex features, build the/a corner last. Two walls meeting at an angle, that will enclose a space you don't want to be walled within, can be built up-to-but-not-8ncluding that corner, which is a diagonal passage, then ask for the corner as a final micromanagistic flourish and it will be built (if you've chosen a corner with a place to stand at all) safely from the outside as the seal is made. Local speleography (twisty turny caves, whatever pre-dig or post-digging cavities you have to work with) can usually supply you with handy points to put up such walls with a final (or indeed penultimate, etc) 'keystone' wall to build that serves your purpose.

2) If that's not possible (you wish to build yourself into a totally convex figure) or otherwise you don't want that fuss, set to construct a wall on the spot(s) you need to prevent building from, but suspend it immediately (if material choice is important for the real building site, make it a material item that is clearly not what you want to use in the true target structure(s)). Once the way is blocked (in the intended way) by the real wall, cancel the work-blocking wall.


A special variation is building a perimiter wall atop a lower layer of wall (with internal flooring) or out over a void (ditto). External convex corners need to be built before both corner-adjacent walls are complete. Though you can set one of them up - and indeed need to if it's a floating level, building a temporary floor in the other position for access and maybe first support. When the corner is built (and 'hangs off' the first corner-adjacent block) you can deconstruct any temp floor you needed to build and put that last wall in.

If it's a wall atop a wall without any inner floor, instead choose a block as much exactly opposite your access point (or blocks close to equidistant betwixt any two same-level accesses to the wall-top) and then once that's built, build the next adjacent pair, accessed from either side, and then the next next adj. builds, etc, until you have just one wall (per buildable access) to fill in. Creative scaffolding/catwalk access (that you later remove in a logical manner) can add options for you, depending on how much tenacity you can muster.


But there are other ways of doing this. It's just a matter of knowing where you want to get things to and how things need to go to get you there, working backwards in your mind if it's needing such a mental workout that it doesn't seem obvious from the start.

[PatrikLundell]

"Work blocking" walls don't block work. In fact, it's not uncommon for an intended wall to be suspended because a moron decided to stand on that tile rather than the free tile on the other side.

The problem with building such that a dorf can build itself in is that the place to build from is selected based on where the dorf was at the time the job was taken, or, sometimes, where the building material is: it should be on the "outside".

[Starver]

The few times (1) doesn't suffice, I've never knowingly had a problem with (2). And yet had mysterious "job suspended" issues when putting the last "wall atop a wall" gap in place when that construction job was defined with all neighbouring barriers and the sole 'work from' surface in place - rare and maybe even a known bug long fixed.

But I definitey have digressed from the subject at hand. OP didn't ask about that, not sure why I wrote about that (and not even with pretty diagrams to illustrate).

[vjek]

... Can you help me on this?  ...

While not specifically about burrows, one thing not everyone knows is that all cavern layers spawn webs. 
This means if you breach the caverns, then mine out huge areas of the same layers the caverns are in, all of those mined out areas in those layers will have silk appear in them.
That makes it very easy and safe to collect typically far more webs/silk thread than you ever need, especially if you start it immediately after embark.
Then the FB's and Blind Cave Ogres can play in the rest of the caverns without interruption.

[Nagidal]

all cavern layers spawn webs. 
This means if you breach the caverns, then mine out huge areas of the same layers the caverns are in, all of those mined out areas in those layers will have silk appear in them.
That makes it very easy and safe to collect typically far more webs/silk thread than you ever need, especially if you start it immediately after embark.
Then the FB's and Blind Cave Ogres can play in the rest of the caverns without interruption.

Excellent suggestion! In the wiki it goes. I will try this.

[Nagidal]

I would never allow general access to a cavern with an FB in it, though.

Originally the FB spawned where my dwarves were and it wiped out almost all my military. I designed a cave-in trap with a chained stray duck as a bait, but before I opened the access to this trap the FB has disappeared. Later another FB appeared, but it did not care for this cave-in trap. Maybe because it was blind (blind scorpion), maybe because the door it was supposed to destroy had forbidden passage, whatever. Later I saw both FBs on the other side of the pond, FB1 killing FB2. I believe there must be a way how both FBs got to the other side of the pond. Yet, FB1 doesn't seem to seek path to my fortress, neither through my normal cave access, nor through the cave-in trap. I can upload some saves about this, if you are interested. (I have backed up seasonal saves, too).

[PatrikLundell]

FB behavior seems to have changed in 0.47.X. All the ones I've had have completely ignored locked doors, and only approach doors to the fortress if they're unlocked, with the intent to pass through them. I've revised my FB handling strategy accordingly, and so lock them in between two locked doors using single tick stepping when the FB approaches the entrance (using drawbridges is FAR too slow to be useful). Once locked in, the FBs pace back and forth rather than destroying any of the doors, while being killed by menacing spikes on repeat. I've verified that the FBs still have the building destroyer ability, but apparently the behavior overrides it so it remains unused.

When it comes to pathing into the fortress, I've had issues with that as well in 0.47.04: when they're sufficiently far away the don't seem to care that there's an open path into the fortress (and it was the same with an undead blind cave ogre). It's known since a long time that pathing through water is buggy, and I've seen nothing in the release notes to indicate that has changed.

[Moeteru]

There's an often overlooked setting in the burrow menu called "limit workshops to burrow" (default hotkey w). If you turn this on then "RES" appears next to the burrow name and workshops inside that burrow will only create jobs using items which are also inside the burrow.
Just define a burrow which includes your looms and the "safe" parts of the caverns but no other workshops, then turn that option on. You don't need to assign your weavers to the burrow or anything. Just by existing it will have the desired effect.

[Nagidal]

There's an often overlooked setting in the burrow menu called "limit workshops to burrow" (default hotkey w).

I think that was exactly it, Moeteru. Thank you very much.