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Author Topic: dwarves hauling their meals halfway across the map  (Read 819 times)

Zack Weinberg

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dwarves hauling their meals halfway across the map
« on: October 12, 2007, 01:55:00 am »
So I have the big main part of my fortress just on the east side of the cave river, with a big nice dining room.  I also have a room with a few tables and beds and a food stockpile in it, not officially designated as any sort of dining area or barracks, right next to the magma flow.  The idea is that the furnace operators and metalsmiths don't have to walk so far for food.

This appears to have worked insofar as it goes, but it's had an odd side effect: many of the other dwarves have taken to grabbing meals from the main food stockpile (which is in the main dining room) and carrying them all the way over to the little pseudo-dining area to eat them.  So now they are spending a lot of time walking back and forth, and it completely vitiates my attempt to keep non-prepared food out of that area so there wouldn't be seeds to clear up.

Why are they doing this?  The only weird thing about the main dining room that I can think of is that I didn't give the nobles separate dining rooms; I put their tables in the main dining area and designated each of them its own dining room completely overlapping the general-use one.  Does that break the general-use dining room?  Or do my dwarves just prefer the ambience of the magma flow?

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Sappho

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Re: dwarves hauling their meals halfway across the map
« Reply #1 on: October 12, 2007, 02:42:00 am »
As it turns out, dwarves are not terribly intelligent.  They don't make their decisions based on rational thoughts like "which dining room is closer to me," but rather they have their priorities set by basic location.  You might have noticed, if you've played for a while, that miners will always dig the top-left-most designated rock first, and work their way to the lower-right of the map, no matter what they are closer to, and no matter what is easier or more logical to do.  Pretty much every decision made by the dwarves is based on a system like this.  Unfortunately I don't know the details of the programming regarding dining room choice, but it sounds to me like they might take the furthest right available room before using the ones to the left.

I can tell you with 98.84% certainty that assigning a table to each of the nobles does not affect the room for the other dwarves, they will still use it normally.  Actually, you might want to try assigning the dining rooms near the magma to the dwarves stationed over there.  This would prevent the others from using those areas.

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Turgid Bolk

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Re: dwarves hauling their meals halfway across the map
« Reply #2 on: October 12, 2007, 03:52:00 am »
It can't be the room furthest to the right, I've had them choose tables in the upper left. Very frustrating.
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Thallone

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Re: dwarves hauling their meals halfway across the map
« Reply #3 on: October 12, 2007, 07:23:00 am »
quote:
Originally posted by Turgid Bolk:
<STRONG>It can't be the room furthest to the right, I've had them choose tables in the upper left. Very frustrating.</STRONG>

i'm pretty sure he meant the other right, AKA left.
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