Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Suicidal Cats  (Read 1710 times)

Rakushun

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Suicidal Cats
« on: April 25, 2012, 02:03:13 pm »

So I embark next to a major river with a 8 z-level sheer cliff above it. My two vermin hunting cats immediately attempt suicide by flinging themselves off the cliff and into the river. They break all their legs and are now in 7/7 water dozens of tiles from accessible shore. I write them off for dead.

Months later, I notice that they're still treading water where they fell. I have my miner dig along the shore over to them and they crawl out. I pen them in my food stockpile so they won't try to off themselves again.  ::) Cats.
Logged

psychologicalshock

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Suicidal Cats
« Reply #1 on: April 25, 2012, 02:12:41 pm »

Sounds like you've got some finely marinated cats, butcher stand time.
Logged

Old Greg

  • Bay Watcher
  • It was evitable.
    • View Profile
Re: Suicidal Cats
« Reply #2 on: April 25, 2012, 02:12:59 pm »

Wow. Normally you have to try to drown kittens in the river.

See if you can get this trait to breed true.

NonconsensualSurgery

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Suicidal Cats
« Reply #3 on: April 25, 2012, 02:13:50 pm »

Waterfalls are stupid-dangerous due to stuff thinking it can path along the edge of the falls without consideration of how the water currents will push them.

Losing cats is no big deal, but you may also get mass dwarf suicide.
Logged
Never had a bat massacre people with an axe before.
EDIT2: Oh god, the bat has got a title now.

Loud Whispers

  • Bay Watcher
  • They said we have to aim higher, so we dug deeper.
    • View Profile
    • I APPLAUD YOU SIRRAH
Re: Suicidal Cats
« Reply #4 on: April 25, 2012, 02:17:02 pm »

Swimming.

Cats.

Immediately mash a metal spike through their skull and burn the corpses, they're going to evolve into Tigers, and further the catvolution aggressively.

Rakushun

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Suicidal Cats
« Reply #5 on: April 25, 2012, 03:13:20 pm »

Waterfalls are stupid-dangerous due to stuff thinking it can path along the edge of the falls without consideration of how the water currents will push them.

Losing cats is no big deal, but you may also get mass dwarf suicide.

While there is a waterfall on the map, the cats in question were floating dozens of tiles away from the bottom of it. I highly doubt they went down in the waterfall. I'll wall off the shallow area just to be safe, though. I already marked both rivers as restricted traffic zones. Also, two new kittens just arrived and one of them has already flung itself off the cliff just like the two before.
Logged

rtg593

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Suicidal Cats
« Reply #6 on: April 25, 2012, 03:17:14 pm »

Lol, they're probably trying to chase the flying lungfish.
Logged
Is it because light travels faster than sound,
that people appear bright until you hear them speak?

GhostDwemer

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Suicidal Cats
« Reply #7 on: April 25, 2012, 04:11:35 pm »

Waterfalls are stupid-dangerous due to stuff thinking it can path along the edge of the falls without consideration of how the water currents will push them.

Losing cats is no big deal, but you may also get mass dwarf suicide.

While there is a waterfall on the map, the cats in question were floating dozens of tiles away from the bottom of it. I highly doubt they went down in the waterfall. I'll wall off the shallow area just to be safe, though. I already marked both rivers as restricted traffic zones. Also, two new kittens just arrived and one of them has already flung itself off the cliff just like the two before.

They did not "fling themselves off the cliff." Nothing in DF flings itself off a cliff, unless it is dodging. The cats attempted to path across the waterfall and were washed over the edge. Restricted traffic zones do NOTHING to prevent this. Animals don't take traffic zones into account, and dwarfs will still take the restricted path if it is the only path available. Restricted does not mean "don't go here." It means "don't go here unless you have to."

You should definitely wall off the sides of the river at the top of the falls, all the way back to where the water is 7/7, and/or build a bridge over the river.
Logged

Rakushun

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Suicidal Cats
« Reply #8 on: April 25, 2012, 06:50:47 pm »

I was using something called hyperbole, which is an extravagant statement or figure of speech not meant to be taken literally. I know all that about restricted traffic zones, I put them up to discourage dwarves. I did wall back to the 7/7, but I'm still not convinced it was the waterfall because they were nowhere near the waterfall and the waterfall is all the way at the edge of the map with no reason to path past it. Maybe they went in there anyway and were washed many dozens of tiles downstream in the lower river before treading water in one place for months on end. Whatever.
Logged

Loud Whispers

  • Bay Watcher
  • They said we have to aim higher, so we dug deeper.
    • View Profile
    • I APPLAUD YOU SIRRAH
Re: Suicidal Cats
« Reply #9 on: April 26, 2012, 12:53:02 pm »

You get a few people talking about rhetoric on a forum, and the stain it leaves behind can't be removed. Even with magma :(

Morpha

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Suicidal Cats
« Reply #10 on: April 26, 2012, 02:08:34 pm »

Throw them in magma
Logged
Quote from: Gerottomo on May 03, 2012, 04:34:11 pm
That should be a new type of project, making a rug design in dwarf fortress (With accurate coloring)
"And so, after many deaths and much sacrifice, someone turned their fortress into a fully functioning self aware carpet that actively sought after sources of fresh blood."

The Giant Bat who decided an axe made a better weapon than claws:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108229.30

talysman

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Suicidal Cats
« Reply #11 on: April 26, 2012, 02:41:31 pm »

Waterfalls are stupid-dangerous due to stuff thinking it can path along the edge of the falls without consideration of how the water currents will push them.

Losing cats is no big deal, but you may also get mass dwarf suicide.

While there is a waterfall on the map, the cats in question were floating dozens of tiles away from the bottom of it. I highly doubt they went down in the waterfall. I'll wall off the shallow area just to be safe, though. I already marked both rivers as restricted traffic zones. Also, two new kittens just arrived and one of them has already flung itself off the cliff just like the two before.
They probably had paddled away from the waterfall by the time you noticed.

I had the same thing happen with my Suicide Falls fort. Wild boars attempted suicide and survived. By the time I went looking for them, some had paddled pretty far away from the falls. A couple others made it out of the river via an access route I'd carved for another reason and wandered into my fort. Stayed non-aggressive for a while, too, until one of them wandered repeatedly into a falling rock trap. That seemed to piss off another boar on a different z-level.
Logged

Mikael

  • Escaped Lunatic
    • View Profile
Re: Suicidal Cats
« Reply #12 on: April 27, 2012, 10:55:20 pm »

It seems like animals have no problem jumping into the waterfall over and over without fatal consequence.
What is worse is that in my current game my migrant wave started on the other side of the waterfall. That did not end well.
Immediately after, my only military dwarf decides to go for a drink at the waterfall. Sometimes I hate my dwarves.
Logged