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Author Topic: Forgotten jobs  (Read 1221 times)

Rinin_Rus

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Forgotten jobs
« on: May 20, 2015, 04:17:21 am »

I'm wondering is it only my problem or known  bug. Sometimes dwarfs just forget about some jobs, forever. Workflow set to brew some drinks? Job in still could wait forever, both brewers busy with "no job" Though if I'll remove job, wait a moment and order it again. They'll suddenly "remember".

Armorer was wandered around without work for months, but when I canceled forge deconstruction and ordered it again, he suddenly remembered to do it.

Dormitory expanding was the same, 7 beds was installed fast, 3 was waiting to be installed, for months with 30+ idlers in fort and no result till reordering.

Nothing is suspended, all jobs are 100% doable, workers are free and just walking around with "no job" And as for workshop orders. "Do now!" didn't help, only cancel and order again.

In this save, for example, you could look at still (level -1 left bottom corner). It got at least one "Forgotten" job to brew on repeat, which blocks all other jobs. Wait for week, and nothing will change, but promote any other job in this still and it'll be done immediately.

http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=10875
« Last Edit: May 20, 2015, 04:21:13 am by Rinin_Rus »
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Forgotten jobs
« Reply #1 on: May 20, 2015, 05:24:14 am »

Yes, I've had serious problems, although they've mostly gone away for some reason. I reported it on the bug tracker, but after adding new preconditions for checking it for each one I met on order to check it I gave up. It seemed to boil down to:
- Pure vanilla DF. No DFHack or any other utilities whatsoever used.
- Never having used any utilities with the fortress (showing the problems remained without any utilities wasn't good enough).
- Fortress started with the latest version of the hour (Reported using 0.40.23, and 0.40.24 had just been released but not yet supported by Lazy Newb Pack. Showing the problem remained when run with 0.40.24 vanilla wasn't enough).

I stopped using workflow because it's worse with eternally blocking jobs never done than having to set up jobs again.
My situation was very bad for two fortresses (started with 0.40.23 and 0.40.24 respectively), with wall segments forgotten, digging designations in the middle of rooms never processed, a paved road that was nearly completed for several years, rampant workshop job blockage, including manager ordered ones, etc. Basically every type of job got forgotten at one time or another.
I don't know what caused the problem to be virtually gone, though. I've stopped using workflow, as I said above, and the Lazy Newb Pack version number has increased without any change to the underlying DF version, so maybe the bug tracker people were correct in it being a utility issue, even though I don't understand how that would affect things like digging.
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Rinin_Rus

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Re: Forgotten jobs
« Reply #2 on: May 20, 2015, 06:01:42 am »

PatrikLundell, As I understand you are still using dfhack, but workflow disabled? I can play without workflow, but can't imagine playing 50+ fortress without DwarfTherapist, and some dfhack stuff helps a lot with FPS.
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Forgotten jobs
« Reply #3 on: May 20, 2015, 06:22:16 am »

Correct. I still use Lazy Newb Pack with DFHack, DT, Announcement Filter, and the Phoebus tile set, but gave up Workflow only. If DFHack is set up as I usually dol, I should still use performance tweaks and pure bug fixes.

A theory I had was that the amount of available jobs somehow pushed open a leak so jobs still show up in the jobs list, but are lost from the invisible presumed available jobs list (a behavior that would be quite possible with leaky multi threading, but DF is single threaded, AFAIK). I've reduced the set of invisible jobs (i.e. jobs that are available, but never listed until taken) by aggressively using QS with limited size feeder stockpiles (every empty stockpile tile generates a "haul here" job, if I understand things correctly). However, if invisible job reduction has any effect or not is completely unknown. I haven't had any "undug tile" problems even when designating fairly large areas for digging (but the recollection is not to be trusted, because once you hit the massive job loss problem, you tend to "correct" any suspected cases without thinking about it and without waiting to confirm it's a lost job, not just a tardy allocation).

I tend to run my dorfs ragged, getting them to do something at all times (harder with the new job scheduling, because the are now reported as "idle" between each job), with more than 0 unemployed dorfs a management failure. Seems to have a social cost, though, and they're extremely bad at forming relations and, further on, generating dorflings.
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Rinin_Rus

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Re: Forgotten jobs
« Reply #4 on: May 20, 2015, 06:35:54 am »

I think I'll just restart with new fortress without workflow. I'll try stockflow, but probably it's broken the same way if it reuse some workflow code.
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Corona688

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Re: Forgotten jobs
« Reply #5 on: May 21, 2015, 03:32:59 pm »

DFhack works by plugging numbers into raw memory.  It doesn't have true knowledge of the way the game works, and can't force the game to actually check a number after it's been changed.  DF may be in some 'wait until orders are added to the list' situation.  Just plugging something into the list doesn't fix it, because it's not waiting on the list, it's waiting until someone calls 'add job' in the menu.

So my suggestion would be putting a job into the manager manually.  It'd know to check, and might see all of them when it goes to add yours.
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Forgotten jobs
« Reply #6 on: May 21, 2015, 05:21:53 pm »

When my problems were rampant, manually adding manager jobs did not shake any of the "lost" ones lose, and at least once manager ordered jobs got lost (produce X items in a workshop, but stalled at one of them. Manual removal of the offending job and manual recreation of it got the responsible dorf to respond immediately, which is how the lost jobs behave).
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Grahar

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Re: Forgotten jobs
« Reply #7 on: May 30, 2015, 06:11:28 pm »

I have the same problem with cage assignment jobs. In earlier years of the same fortress, assigning creatures to a cage was rather simple, and somewhat quickly done. Now, everything that includes bringing animals/prisoners from or to cages will not be done. It does not matter which orders are given, or which labors are activated.

I finally managed to assign a giant tiger to a pasture by deconstructing its cage, redefining the pasture and then assigning the giant tiger to the pasture (not that it matters, since the female giant tiger on this pasture does not seem to be interested). The goblin cages, however, are still ignored, even after de-/ and reconstructing them.
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Forgotten jobs
« Reply #8 on: May 31, 2015, 03:08:53 am »

I recently had problems with goblin captives in cages. I ordered all of them to be put in a single cage, but the dorfs were extremely sluggish in performing the orders (which cannot be cancelled, since that will let the goblins lose instead). After half a season I had some commotion as the visiting caravan guards decided to attack a rare goblin transfer, and it was repeated the next season, with that caravan's guards (from the same batch of transfer orders).
Strangely enough, transfer of animals between cages does not seem to be much of a problem.

I don't consider extremely sluggish order response to be the same problem as that of jobs completely lost, however. I don't think your problem is the same as my "forgotten jobs" problem either, because that one was affecting everything at random, while your problem seems to be localized and persistent.

Do you have any goblin hauling jobs in your jobs list? If you have a bunch of them at least some should show up, even if they're unallocated (I don't remember is animal hauling is of the class of jobs where only some of them are listed [dumping items is in that category]). You said you've tried various job mixes, so I assume animal hauling is among those, but I'm not sure which job category caging actually belongs to. I don't have too many good ideas of what to try, unfortunately.

If you use Dwarf Therapist you can check the tigers' sexual orientations there.
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Loci

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Re: Forgotten jobs
« Reply #9 on: May 31, 2015, 02:58:54 pm »

It has been reported that hostile creatures may require animal hauling and animal training labors to move. If you have no dwarves with both labors active, no work gets done; if only one dwarf has the appropriate labors then the jobs tend to go very slowly (particularly if that dwarf has other responsibilities as well).
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Forgotten jobs
« Reply #10 on: May 31, 2015, 04:59:21 pm »

Thanks Loci!

That explains the issue quite clearly.
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Grahar

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Re: Forgotten jobs
« Reply #11 on: June 03, 2015, 12:02:25 pm »

It has been reported that hostile creatures may require animal hauling and animal training labors to move. If you have no dwarves with both labors active, no work gets done; if only one dwarf has the appropriate labors then the jobs tend to go very slowly (particularly if that dwarf has other responsibilities as well).

Thanks, I will try that. I have only two animal trainers and I assigned them no other labors, out of fear that my kangaroos go rogue if their trainers are busy pushing goblins around.
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Forgotten jobs
« Reply #12 on: June 03, 2015, 01:06:00 pm »

You can play it safe by caging the kangaroos while hauling goblins. However, if you don't have a huge number of kangaroos one trainer ought to get to them in time. I think kangaroos are considered as grazers, which means you'll have to get them out of the cages in a timely manner so they don't starve, though.
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oriramikad

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Re: Forgotten jobs
« Reply #13 on: June 03, 2015, 02:52:48 pm »

This happens to me with vanilla DF. My smoothing and engraving jobs disappear from the job list and I have to redesignate them before one of my engravers will take notice.
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