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Author Topic: Nestboxes, eggs and hauling jobs  (Read 1613 times)

SyrusLD

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Nestboxes, eggs and hauling jobs
« on: May 24, 2015, 05:22:58 pm »

I got some nestboxes which have had eggs in them for years by now (and the respective animal sitting on top of them, of course).
It seems like my dwarves just don't want to get them out of there. I even created a stockpile for eggs immediatly next to the nestboxes but ... nothing. Then I designated them to be dumped. Still nothing. Next I made a burrow and put one dwarf in it, hauling labors all assigned etc. ... after half an eternity she finally decided to go dump the eggs of one of the nest boxes.
Since she still didn't touch (or even go near) the other one which I also wanted to be cleaned, I just assigned my whole fort to the burrow ... buuuuut ... with no success. Even after demolishing the nestbox - after about a month of waiting - they would not remove the eggs from where they dropped.
At least it solved my problem (for now) of making the croc lay new eggs (for breeding).

So, ... why do they not store or dump the eggs?
They are not forbidden. The nestboxes are inside, so that I can make them not get disturbed.


Or are the hauling jobs just not getting executed anymore because the dwarves try to remove the (literally) thousands of stones and ores I got laying around after mining out a whole level of the map (4x4 embark)?
...and got unbelievable amounts of other stuff lying around, like bars, clothes, clothing (had 2 clothing shop run repeating "make [clothing]" / "make bag" jobs for ~10 years without break), same with alcohol and food/prepared meals/plant stuff...
That all on about 65 adult dwarves and 10-15 children....

But why would it affect only these eggs?
Everything else gets done eventually, just not these damn eggs that I actually NEED to have removed so that the crocodiles will finally start breeding (again). (Looks like the new batch of eggs is also not going to hatch...)

I'm starting to go stark raving mad here... D:


EDIT:
They also don't seem to remove what I bought from the trade depot anymore.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2015, 05:25:08 pm by SyrusLD »
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Strangler of a Sasquatch, Troglodytes and a Cyclops,
Slayer of a Giantess, whom he burned alive.
Died in a Heroic Fight with a Grizzly Bear.

NW_Kohaku

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Re: Nestboxes, eggs and hauling jobs
« Reply #1 on: May 24, 2015, 05:42:13 pm »

OK, well, are you sure your stockpile settings are correct? Make sure that, under "Additional Settings", you have "Allow Plant/Animal" active.  (I once had a problem with unchecking that causing a stockpile to become useless...)

If you can get them to take the eggs sometimes, but only after a delay, it may well be that you don't have sufficient hauling.  Try turning off labors

Also, centralize your fortress and design your fortress for efficiency over all.  Minecarts exist for making hauling easier - use them.  Put a stockile under or near problem areas, and then set up minecart hauling to take from the stockpile to cart, then have the cart either guided to a quantum dump stockpile tile, or else set up automated tracks for connecting "greenhouse" wood collection or farm crops with their respective industries. Remember that guided carts need no tracks, and obvious routes you use all the time can be set up to be automated. 
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SyrusLD

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Re: Nestboxes, eggs and hauling jobs
« Reply #2 on: May 24, 2015, 07:21:22 pm »

Stockpiles are set to Eggs only pretty much, but the additional options I did not touch. They also don't use wheelbarrows (anymore), since those were getting clogged up (see Wheelbarrow not getting emptied bug). The stockpiles are also set to take from anywhere. (That caused some problems for me before since I tend to accidently turn it to "links only"...)

As I said, I have a few thousand items lying around everywhere, it is not getting fewer. Thing is, other items get moved alright (except for my Giant Tiger corpses and the old clothing, which is set to "dump"). The fortress is quite compact I'd say, except for the connection to the caverns which is currently completly sealed off by a draw bridge at each cavern level.

My fortress (slow internet users beware, big pictures):
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Except for the last screen, each screen is just one level down from the one before. The fortress runs quite efficiently I'd say, the two main (and only) stairs with 2x4 stairways going up and down allow for quick access of each level without much colliding. High traffic areas are set along the main routes, just in case.

I realize now I should've labelled the stuff a bit.
The stockpile directly south of the nest boxes inside is the egg stockpile. The door is accessable, but not to pets.
The stockpile west of the butcher's shops is a meat stockpile, it doesn't really get used either. The stockpile outside is for refuse and corpses with a dumping spot in the middle, there's another refuse stockpile (the old one) inside on the food level, with another atom smasher next to it.

(I'm open to questions and suggestions. Main issue are still the eggs not getting removed from the nest boxes though.)

I noticed that the demolished nest boxes on the outside - the green ones - also don't get hauled away. Same goes for the rope lying outside and near the well and the corpses. The wood is slowly being carried inside, I don't mind that that much though. Going by the amount of stone left lying around, I'd guess the massive area I had them mine out is what causes a lot of the hauling issues - as you said; I probably lack haulers. I actually don't have any dwarves completly without jobs, I prefer if everyone got something to do, since I never have everyone do anything anyway. For example I stopped producing food and alcohol now, I got enough to last for a few centuries anyway. Carpenters and masons also got nothing to do ... I know, it's not the most effective way of handling it all, but it worked fairly nicely so far. Burrows always worked alright for me when I needed something to be done. Just now with the eggs they didn't work at all somehow, which confuses me...


EDIT:
About Minecarts...I have never before set up minecarts in Fortress mode. I didn't think they'd be of much use or they would be too much FUN considering the vertical setup of the fortress. The only things that really get hauled a long way are stones (due to the large area dug out) and wood. But both these don't just get taken from one location to another, their "starting point" constantly changes.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2015, 08:16:38 pm by SyrusLD »
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Strangler of a Sasquatch, Troglodytes and a Cyclops,
Slayer of a Giantess, whom he burned alive.
Died in a Heroic Fight with a Grizzly Bear.

NW_Kohaku

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Re: Nestboxes, eggs and hauling jobs
« Reply #3 on: May 24, 2015, 09:30:58 pm »

... That fortress layout...


Beyond that... try out minecarts.  Just go by the step-by-step tutorial for how minecarts work.  These things are a GODSEND.  Just get comfortable with them, and you'll never know how you lived without them.  Remember - you don't even need tracks if you use "guided" carts.  They just flat let dwarves carry 10 logs at once, and make hauling a million times easier.

As it stands, I'm thinking I'm going to stand by my assessment that it's either a job acceptance problem involving something like burrows not covering the proper stockpile, or a stockpile setting snafu, or your haulers just plain not having time to haul food. 

Alternately, just go into your z-kitchen menu, turn off everything but eggs for cooking, and order some roasts, and see if the cook poaches directly from the nest.
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"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Nestboxes, eggs and hauling jobs
« Reply #4 on: May 24, 2015, 10:42:52 pm »

OK, here, to show what I mean, I uploaded some images...

I use a partially customized tileset so sorry for any confusion.

My current fortress just got its first big migrant wave in the second Spring.  As such, I'm still excavating things seriously, and as I don't have a volcano, I'm spending a lot of time mining to make aquifer water power a magma pump that loads an impulse-driven minecart.  As such, my fort is notably incomplete, and I actually have a few things running in sand layer in a big ugly rectangle like the one in the first pic.

My current fortress is also built on a ramp philosophy.  Supposedly, they make pathfinding faster because DF pathfinder checks for ramps before it checks for stairs.  Plus, it's a little more difficult to plan around, so I decided to do it for a change.

Spoiler: Pictures (click to show/hide)

You should notice that the vast majority of industry fits basically inside a single screen, if you just go down vertically.  (Incidentally, I highly recommend changing the controls so that 0 is down, and 5 is up, rather than shift-5 and ctrl-5, which is far more cumbersome for constant up/down movement.)  Other industry, if necessary, will just be a few other channels down to a nearby area.

(Of course, I also prefer to have more segregated quarters and the capacity to cut portions of my fortress off from one another in the case of emergencies, so I may well dig another rampway on the other end of my dining hall, bisecting it, and have some duplicate features on the east end if I decide to take the fortress more seriously.  I mostly only made this fort to play with the new crops...)
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
"Not yet"

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SyrusLD

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Re: Nestboxes, eggs and hauling jobs
« Reply #5 on: May 25, 2015, 06:46:22 am »

Well, mind you, this is an 18 year old fortress, which just grew and grew, still running fine FPS-wise and only starting to drop to 35 FPS (but still going around 40-45 FPS half the time) once I dug out that whole level out of ... well, boredom. Since I had not a single siege until just now. It seems that finally hitting the 80-dwarves mark has triggered goblin sieges after all that time of very rare Werelizard and Ettins (etc.) attacks.


Anyway, the stockpiles were much, much smaller quite some time ago, before I just went nuts on production. But I do agree, I do neither need such big farm plots, nor do I need this many workshops. Except for the living quarters getting too big now - yes, the vertical design is something to look into for my next fortress - the production areas were actually working very efficiently I'd say, at least compared to anything I had before. I also like my two main stair-designs ... (probably until a fight breaks out on them and dwarves fall to their death).
Weirdly that wall was not once climbed by anything. They all just pathed through the heavily trap-ridden corridors under the wall. The two trader entrances got artifact hatches on them and drawbridges in case I feel like closing them up in the face of danger.
The outdoor pasture is for war-trained Giant Tigers and Grizzlys. I like having them outside in case of attack. For some reason the cavern moss does not regrow even though there is water on all three levels. Don't really need my sheep up there anyway to be honest.

This fortress is pretty much at the point of "I got everything ... let's get MORE ... MUCH MORE!". Started out small and pretty much just went insane from the lack of invasions. I should've just slaughtered the elves themselves, not just their "precious trees"...but heh.
(I also only recently learned that "Pots" are the same as "Large Pots"... so no need to look out for Fire Clay anymore... made me feel quite stupid.)


Ah well, this fortress just has accumulated many flaws over its long life, going from "let's try to be efficient" to "let's just gather as much stuff as possible" (Created Wealth: 36'414'205 ... mostly food I'd guess, been quite unlucky with artifacts).
I should think about starting a new one, with keeping in mind your suggestions and with trying to utilize the minecarts for once. I must say I learned a lot on this run, a lot of "what not to do", but also things that I didn't know before. I'm still quite new to fortress building, as you might have guessed, and it's probably more of a challenge to me to not just mine everything I see, chop every tree I find and produce whatever I can make.


On your new fortress:
Well, the downramps were at first a bit confusing, but it makes sense now.
Still not sure whether ramps or stairs are preferable. For going down one level a ramp is obviously also less work for the miner. I'm probably always thinking about it wrong, thinking that ramps make paths longer than stairs - which is much dependent on the situation they are used in. Overall I tend to not use them as they tend to confuse me over time, probably because I'm not used to them. But they are definatly safer since dwarves won't fall down several z-levels when getting knocked out by anything.
Quantum stockpiling via minecarts is also a good idea, in my previous fortress I had a quantum stockpile for stone via dumping. This time I wanted to see how much space a normal stonepile would need, and before I started going insane on the mining orders it wasn't as much as I had expected. Pretty much only a sixth of the size of the first stone-stockpile level was more than enough. But indeed, quantum stockpiles keep access paths shorter.
Mhmhmh,...a lot to consider for a new fortress.

Also, I like having the limit for migrants at 55, but seeing how goblin sieges only seem to appear when you hit 80 dwarves, I need to rethink that as well. Because it took me up till now (18 years) to have enough children and children's children to get up to that number.

(Up and down is < and > [shift+<] for me, using a German keyboard that key is just right to my left shift key and very easily accessable.)


Well, well. Thank you for all those suggestions, they are much welcome. I see I still have much to learn, mostly about modesty, I guess. Still a lot to try and figure out.
This might have diverted a bit from the actually question, but I guess overall the problem with the eggs not being removed is easily explained with the insane amount of stuff cluttering everything.


EDIT: Yup, the small goblin siege (10 goblins...laughable) also pathed through the corridor and didn't even make it to my military. That wall is actually working quite nicely for how useless it actually is. Btw, would an overhang prevent thing from climbing above it? I've always been thinking about adding one.

EDIT2: Well, meh. I just found out that I can turn down the population requirements for sieges. I guess the next fort will have them even though only having 50 dwarves then! Yet another thing that will be different next time. I will definatly look into minecarts as well, they seem interesting and quite FUN from what I read so far. Every time I go "this fortress will be the one that I play till year 50!" ... and then I just stop playing it because it didn't really turn out as I wanted it to be and I got new ideas for a new fortress! I'd say 18 years is still quite some time. I really enjoy seeing a fortress grow through child births though, starting small and gradually getting bigger. Though I noticed that most of the children in this latest fort are actually from only a few dwarves...probably need to encourage more relationships.
« Last Edit: May 25, 2015, 07:57:33 am by SyrusLD »
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In Remembrance of Bengel Hairybasement,
Strangler of a Sasquatch, Troglodytes and a Cyclops,
Slayer of a Giantess, whom he burned alive.
Died in a Heroic Fight with a Grizzly Bear.

infrequentLurker

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Re: Nestboxes, eggs and hauling jobs
« Reply #6 on: May 25, 2015, 09:54:44 am »

This almost sounds like this guy's problem -http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=150880.0

Basically his shops and jobs shut down because workflow manager, a thing that comes with lazy newb, has some odd issues as the jobs pile up.  Something goes slightly awry with one job, then everything behind it gets stuck in limbo.

If this is the case, try messing with the order of jobs/canceling & re-ordering the jobs at workshops.  That it hit hauling is not mentioned on the thread, but perhaps try forbidding your entire embark (multi z designation at its best), advance one step to allow all standing jobs involving anything on your embark to clear, then unforbid either piecemeal or whole embark.  Either of these has potential to be annoying and not work, though.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Nestboxes, eggs and hauling jobs
« Reply #7 on: May 25, 2015, 10:10:03 am »

Well, again, try forbidding everything but croc eggs for cooking in the z-kitchen menu, and tell the cooks to make some egg roasts.  That should send them running directly for the only food available.

But, yeah, I prefer smaller forts, so I lower the pop requirements for most things so that I can access everything around 80 dwarves, myself. 

And yes, climbing can be prevented by an overhang, although I believe it needs to be at least 2z above the ground, as a 1z overhang can be grabbed from the ground. Fortifications are also unclimbable, although enemies can jump through a diagonal fortification overhang if already climbing. 

Also, I prefer to avoid giant open walls just because of giant keas more than anything else.  If you have a zombie raven outbreak or roc, wide open spaces are a major liability.  Hence, I prefer to build towards having a roof over absolutely everything.

I don't know the mechanics of climbing as it relates to pathfinding, but I believe that it involves a serious traffic penalty.  That is, they'll only try climbing 1 z per every 25 tiles it would save them on a trip, or something, although I'm just guessing at that number. Hence, if you have multiple entrances, they'll likely find the entrance to be "closer", although Toady has said that he's trying to code it so that if siegers die on certain tiles, they'll have increasing traffic penalties to your killzones so that they are avoided through more and more elaborate means.  I'm not sure that's been coded yet, however.

As for cavern moss, it only grows in "subterranean" tiles if you have tapped at least one cavern.  It requires no water on soil layers like your red sand.  It requires mud on stone.  Whether there is water on the floor or not is irrelevant.  In fact, it's a nuisance since, if you want to stop tower caps from clogging your plumbing, you need to pave your plumbing. Unless you're hit by a strange bug that stopped its growth, the problem is likely something like the fact that all the mud is absent on the stone layers and you're not leaving open soil layers underground.  When the tower-caps grow, they remove the mud from their tile, and prevent more things from growing where they once stood.  I generally just use an open soil layer (remains of my first stockpile) as my pasture. 

Also, keep in mind that a non-grazer only needs a pasture of 1 tile.  This keeps them from wandering around and eating FPS.  Better still is just loading your 80 friggin' poults, 60 keets, 40 kittens, and other assorted excess animals into a cage in your dining hall where they don't even think about pathing at all, and give eating dwarves happy thoughts.  (Apparently, when they said they were fond of turkeys, it's not SO fond they're any less happy to see 70 turkeys jammed into a cage with 30 war bears.)

Anyway, the FPS speed of ramps comes from the fact that, if a dwarf is trying to path upwards, they will check a tile for ramp connections in all 8 directions before finally checking for stairs (at least in previous version...), which means that pathfinding by stairs is slower.  In terms of movement speed, it's generally the same, although the horizontal displacement can cause interesting effects. 

For example, one could create an "inverted v" rampway.  At the top, two ramps 2-3 tiles wide go in opposite directions.  By the time a normal stairwell is 10zs down, a 2x2 up/down stairwell will be 1 tile from the other end of the stairwell, just as at the start.  By the time two ramps going downwards in different directions reach 10zs down, assuming they started 2 tiles apart, they will be 22 tiles apart.  You can put "inverted v"s on the two ends of an "inverted v" to have them come back together in a fractal design, so that a dwarf choosing a path from the top of a fortress can arrive either significantly further North or South without having to go vertical then horizontal.  (That is, if jewelry and metalworking are on the same floor, 10 tiles apart from one another, a dwarf 10 zs up on break can go either down the north or south ramps, and arrive at a workshop in probably 140 ticks, while it would take a central stair shaft 220 ticks if both industries were spaced as far apart. Although, of course, a nearly-as efficient plan could be made by stacking everything vertically rather than horizontally, an inverted v lets you stack a little more within the same space vertically, as well, provided it's enough z-floors down from the start to make enough of a difference.)

Presumably, an optimal design would have two columns of ramps in the center of the fort, with the left column having two-tile-wide ramps going downwards to the North every three tiles, and the right column having two-tile-wide ramps going downwards to the South every three tiles, with a North-to-South length of whatever your fort needs, which I doubt would be more than 15 or so in even the largest forts. Of course, the 4-tile width would have its own overhead in not being able to crowd as close to the rampway.  (I could make a picture if the description alone is confusing.)

That said, I'm mostly using ramps, myself, as a challenge.  They require support walls, which means more planning, as my stockpiles or dining hall require pillars of support walls in the middle of the pile.  I personally like to avoid giant rectangles just as a matter of taste, and tend towards the symmetric unless I'm trying to do something like carve along the natural rock walls of a mountain.  Hence, ramp building is a bit odd and interesting. I'm not 100% that it's actually definitely more efficient. 

Some of my older forts would have those hex-pod housing units, and then industries in a ring around them, which I would try to shape hex-ish, as well, for a sort of honeycomb effect, rather than this haphazard I-only-planned-one-set-of-buildings-at-a-time effect where I have ramps running West-East for housing, but nothing else.  (Needless to say, I put a lot of thought into design...)
« Last Edit: May 25, 2015, 10:16:16 am by NW_Kohaku »
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
"Not yet"

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SyrusLD

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Re: Nestboxes, eggs and hauling jobs
« Reply #8 on: May 26, 2015, 01:15:25 pm »

Alright, I finally got around to testing the "forbidding everything except for the eggs" ... and it worked. My two cooks took the eggs out of the nestboxes and used them.
Still quite weird why they weren't getting moved when I used burrows...


Anyway, I'll take a break for the moment and then at some point start a new fortress keeping your suggestions in mind, mostly trying to keep it all in moderation, just sticking with one or two dwarves per main job - not allowing them to do anything else, using minecarts and so on.
At one point I was thinking about creating a fortress where the living quarters would be along the walls of a cavern and pretty much completly live inside that cavern level. Especially if it was a map with only 1 cavern layer it might turn out quite a challenge and FUN. But I'll leave that for another time. You got me interested in minecarts; I will figure out how to utilize them first - and there're some other things I want to get into more first.
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In Remembrance of Bengel Hairybasement,
Strangler of a Sasquatch, Troglodytes and a Cyclops,
Slayer of a Giantess, whom he burned alive.
Died in a Heroic Fight with a Grizzly Bear.