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[TheSilverHammer]

I am sorry, but there isn't a clear way to describe this, but Ill try my best.  I really do not know the cause of the issue, just that it happened several times.

The bug:
Mechanic never finishes connecting a flood gate to a lever.  After an hour the task is till under way, and isn't suspended.    I can see the mechanic running to the gate, stay there for a while, then run away, only to return several minutes later.  Sometimes a different mechanic would go in his place and do the same thing.

The setup:
I made an aqueduct to carry water from a stream to an area I wanted to flood above ground.   The aqueduct had two branches.   On the south branch I installed an iron floodgate and connected it with no issues.   I had an iron floodgate I wanted to put in the north branch, but that would never get connected.    

The first error with this was that after a while, after it put the initial gears on the door (carried them to the door, worked on it, and then the gears disappeared) and then a few minutes after the mechanic left, it would cancel the job saying there was no path to the target (or something like that).

I moved the gate to a few different spots and made sure there was access to both sides and this still kept happening.   I even switched to a steel gate with the same result.   Finally, I created another extension (adding an extra bend to the north path that wasn't really needed) and built an external ramp and platform next to the aqueduct to work on the extended part.

At this point, I placed the steel floodgate on a wall accessible by this platform and once again tried to connect a lever to it.   This time it never gave me the 'path' error.   However, for the next several hours, the mechanic would run back and fourth between the gate and somewhere else (I presume the lever, I could never keep track of him).   Over a full game year, it never got installed, and when you looked at the lever, it had the action to connect to the flood gate with the green A for Active Task.  

Over that time I installed several other levers and everything else was done quickly, but that flood gate never got connected.  I have no idea what to do.  I am just going to build a wall and unbuild a wall as needed to regulate the north flow.

[0x517A5D]

As a diagnostic, try setting "announce all job cancellations" (o x x) and see if any relevant messages show up.  Maybe you're still getting the no-path cancellation but it's being filtered.  Or maybe some other cancellation message.

[TheSilverHammer]

I can check the lever being worked on and it always has the A active thing which it would not if it was canceled.  In the first few instances where it WAS canceled, it had the red S for suspended next to it.   In the latter cases it is definitely not canceled.

[Markham]

Whats happening here is that your mechanic is installing the mechanism in the flood gate, then installing the mechanism in the lever, but before he's done, he gets hungry, thirsty or tired and leaves.  Then when he's done or someone else comes in, they start over from scratch.  Its incredibly annoying at times, and I don't know why they have to reinstall the same mechanism if they already finished the floodgate part and went on to the lever part.

[0x517A5D]

Markham: I don't imagine so, not for a whole game year.  Even some totally unskilled mechanics should eventually have a large enough timeslot to make the connection.

[Dvalin]

Also, meal/drink/whatnot interruptions usually don't suspend the task, from what I've seen.

[Toady One]

Are all the free mechanisms everywhere accessible to the mechanic doing the job?  This is Bug 105, and one cause has been traced to mechanics not having access to the second mechanism they picked (in which case they just stand there).  If that's not it, looking at the save would be useful so I can mark down an additional cause for the behvaior.

[Markham]

In the old 2d version, I once had a few mechanics take four hours to link up a lever to a floodgate.  The death-by-magma was well deserved when I could finally pull it off.  They did the thing I described, even quitting in the act of carrying the mechanism to the lever after attaching the floodgate mechanism, and I've seen Dwarves in the new version do the same thing, but not as often.  If they take too long, they'll quit and everything will have to be reattached all over again.

[Shadowlord]

The cancelling-work-done-so-far-on-installing-mechanisms problem get notably worse the farther the devices being connected are from each other (in walking distance).

Put a lever and floodgate on opposite sides of the map and try to connect them. It generally takes a Very Long Time due to numerous repeated cancellations. (They don't suspend it, usually, but the work is reset as Markham said)

[TheSilverHammer]

They do have access.  I even placed the flood gate down on the ground with open walls and it still didn't work right.   I then replaced my flood gates with hatches (using open space holes on an overhang) and those installed just fine.

There is another issue, I have a drawbridge I want connected to a lever, which is already connected to another lever (I do not know if this matters) and this one never gets finsihed.  I see mechanics standing on the bridge for a long long time and then they leave (I presume they are tired and hungry) and come back at some point and continue.   This went on for a full game year and the lever never got connected.

As for sending you the save, do I just zip up the save folder?   How do I send it to you?  After zipping it, it is 12.5 megs.   I am not sure that works for a lot of emails, but I can try and send it.

I sent it to your gmail address.  It seems to have gone through.  I am also using version 33f.  I dunno when bug105 was fixed because there are no dates assoicated with them.

[ December 30, 2007: Message edited by: TheSilverHammer ]

[Toady One]

I've received the save and I'll look at it at some point.  Bug 105 hasn't been fixed yet.  The green ones with version numbers are fixed, the cyan ones have some issue and note associated with them and are still open, and the magenta ones are closed but not fixed (they weren't bugs or they weren't reproducible, etc.).

[TheSilverHammer]

Ok, when your playing it, on the first underground floor south of the kitchens is a lever near the wall (and one a little farther away).   That lever, when trying to connect to the first drawbridge (the first one gives you a choice for, the one that is suspended over water) it never finishes.    There is a ramp near the lever that goes up to the enclosed off river area, I put a lever up there (only a few tiles away from the first lever) and it connected just fine in a very short time.

The ones for the flood gates are gone, however, I suppose you can put a new lever near the ones that control the windmill and waterwheel pumps and then put a flood gate anywhere in the north aqueduct, and try and connect it (after the main pumps are off of course).  That one also never connected, and in some spots it canceled and in others it just didn't do anything.  If you look on the north aqueduct you can see an access ramp into it, and another access ramp just a bit south and to the left of it.   I think putting the gate between those (which means both sides are path-able) caused it to be connected forever.

Also in the base of the maze where the water dumps into off the north aqueduct, is a little open room where I also had tried to put the flood gate with the never ending connecting sequence.  You can try that there, I had also knocked out some of the walls so it was accessible from both sides.   There may be a restricted zone there, but that was for some other modifications after I gave up on the flood gate.

[Toady One]

All right, so one of the mechanisms is actually invisible in your river.  I have no idea how it got there, but you can zoom there from the stocks screen.  The mechanism screen apparently doesn't check where the items are, and the units don't check either, so the mechanic just walked over to the river and got confused.  I've added the checks, but I'm not sure what happened with the item in the first place.

[Markham]

For some reason things that end up in water disappear after being frozen, and don't reappear when the ice melts sometimes.  I've had it happen with an entire suit of armor once, and it didn't reappear until some years later when I dug out the frozen tile it had disappeared in.  Has this bug been mentioned yet?  It's probably what happened to the mechanism after a tantruming dwarf sent it into the river..

[Nesoo]

Things tend to go invisible when pushed by water flows as well (at least in 33g, haven't got 38a yet). I had a movie of cages being pushed by water and disappearing, then magically reappearing when dwarves pick them up to put them on a stockpile, but it was too big to post on the DFMA. It shouldn't be too hard to set it up again and make a smaller movie, if there's any interest in seeing it.