Bay 12 Games Forum

My first attempt a 0.47.05 is the continuation of a 0.47.04 save where I've retired the fortress and made a new embark during the summer. However, when I started as normal (for me) to set up gathering zones around trees and designating plants to be picked the herbalists just got stuck under some trees.
I thought the issue was the scripts I've used to set these up (the zone one in particular had some technical issues due to DFHack changes). However, when I repeat it with the normal manual zone designation I see the same thing: The dorfs stand under an oak (because that's the tree they got stuck under previously, so that's were I designated the zone) and just stand there, longingly looking at the acorns above. Disabling gathering from trees will eventually get them to realize they can go back to gather the plants they can actually reach, and building step ladders will get them to get the acorns.
I haven't seen this problem in the past, but on the other hand I may have made step ladders by the time fruit ripens (but date flowers are edible and show up fairly early, so I feel I should have encountered the issue in 0.47.04).

The question: Is it only me (possibly cause by scripts), or is it a common issue, and, if so, is it new to 0.47.05?

Edit:
There does seem to be a change. When I repeat this with 0.47.04 (-r04 for LNP), embarking in a slightly different location, the dorfs take some time to get the fruit, but eventually does get it. With 0.47.05 (-r02 for LNP) they just stand there until getting thirsty, at which time they drop what they'd gathered before getting trapped on the ground to get a drink (and none of the fruit they stared at is actually in those piles).

This used not to be possible, with kids producing various kinds of junk, as they don't have any "real" skills. This kid had some armor crafting skill (just after claiming the forge), which I assume was gained while randomly playing in the metal crafter guild hall (where I've seen various demonstrations being performed).
A great flavor thing, in my view (Still appropriately rare. I've probably had 50+ kids mood before this).

Currently half the performance troupe members are absent from the troupes, with many of them settled somewhere to be with their masters since several decades, which doesn't really make sense.
In addition to this performance troupes seem to travel in split groups, rather than together, as you often get a single visitor (announced as an individual) who nevertheless petition on behalf of the whole group. Performance troupes ought to travel together unless there are reasons for members to lag behind, in which case they should strive to catch up and rejoin.

The reason these issues cause more trouble than they should is that petitioning performance troupes are currently bugged so that when a group petition is accepted, you often get bugged "friendly" character "returning" as a result. These characters are performance group members that weren't traveling in the "army" that petitioned, but either alone or in other "armies", and they hover around the map edge until killed by invaders, wildlife, or insanity (performance troupe members often being naked on arrival probably gives them a head start on the insanity track).

Even when the bugs are fixed, however, the troupe behavior ought to be adjusted as per the above.

I've smoothed a fair bit of wall on one level of a caverns (and engraved some as well. However, I just found a (un)fair number of "open space" holes on the level above, presumably resulting from logging (above "merely" smoothed as well as engraved). Those "open space" tiles are unpleasant because you can't walk on them, presumably flying critters can fly through them, and climbers might get through as well (not an issue in my case, but certainly when digging invaders come along in a year and a half), and they're also ugly (as I'll "have" to build floors on top of them instead of smoothing the rock surface, as planned.

I don't know what happens if you dig out the soil beneath a surface tree and then build a wall under the trunk. Will you get an unwalkable (but flyable) hole then as well?

I'd say this is a bug.

The human caravan showed up and brought two copies of "Records of Sleep", a manual concerned the secret of life and death. I didn't think those were supposed to be brought by caravans?

My expedition leader died over a year ago, and I'm getting impatient, as the lack of that position blocks petition management, as well as replacement for any others leaders that may die.

I've got deadly evil rain on part of my embark, and want to eventually clean up the mess. I can build a roof over the area that stops more of the goo from appearing, which has the negative side effect that it also blocks regular rain from cleaning it up.
Once the area is roofed over, I want to decontaminate the ground without having the dorfs step into it with their potentially bare feet (as there's no way to guarantee they won't discard their old socks and shoes just before going to work), and also to avoid the risk of their feet dragging it around:

- Building a dirt road clears the mess, but also has the dorf stand in it (although I haven't seen it dragged around, so if foot protection could be guaranteed [specific item uniforms on specific workers who are the only ones with building enabled?], it might work).
- Building a floor might work, as that's usually done from the side, but it would require extreme care with building material selection and probably dorf location at the time they take the job to avoid the morons from standing on the wrong side of the target tile, although burrows might cause cancellation spam rather than risk.
- Building a road might work, but I suspect the dorf would stand in the middle as with a dirt road (too long since I built any roads).
- Building a bridge probably has the same issue as with a road.
- Magma is dwarfy and all, but I don't want to burn down the fruit trees on the rest of the embark, but that can be avoided with a fire breach (i.e. floor/road [not wooden, of course]). Does regular (magma started) fire burn away contaminants?

Anyone who's got a good (preferably proven) solution?

More background: The area is currently contained behind a wall (with bridges to connect the wall to the embark edges), so I'm in no real hurry to deal with it, but eventually I'd like to get hold of some Sliver Barb and Glumprong logs. Also, some of the stupid visitors who decided to enter the embark at that section clutter the area with their corpses, which can complicate things (moving them out of the way in preparation for the decontamination), but some of their items are books which I think I want to get hold of.

I've had this problem for a while now: the number of visitors dwindle gradually over time. My current embark is extreme in that regard in that I had a visitor cap of 20 (for a pop of 22: don't want the visitors to outnumber the citizens). I received only a trickle of legitimate visitors, with the vast majority being villains, and for half a year after the 3 year mark, I received a steady trickle of villains, with not a single legitimate visitor.
Now, I'm sick and tired of the broken villains and questers, so I now kill them as they enter the embark using DFHack's "exterminate him" command (questers only when targeting my artifacts), but even without that, visitors die in droves as they stream into the embark during undead sieges (during a 3 month early siege they probably killed 20 visitors, most being villains, of course). It's possible DFHack's command somehow screws things up, but given my past experience (when I didn't exterminate anyone, but they still died in sieges), I suspect DF still think the visitors are at the embark as they haven't left. The reason for that thought is that I increased the visitor cap to 40, and I suddenly got a bunch of legitimate ones, in some cases without a single villain in between them!, although it already shows signs of drying up due to villain elimination (and a couple of questers) after just a month or so. The villain trickle, of course, continues (one every few days).