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[PatrikLundell]

There's currently a bug fest surrounding sending squads out of the fortress on missions, with severe crashes, equipment allocation trouble (including, I believe, allocation of the same piece of equipment to multiple dorfs). In addition to that, dorfs returning drop equipment left, right, and center, and room allocations are removed as squad members leave. I suspect the same issues occur for messengers.

I'd suggest squad members offsite should be retained in the fortress in the "inactive" state (like inbound performance troupe members, merchants, etc.) while on a mission, and be removed from the fortress only when they're reported dead or become members of another entity (i.e. occupy a site or are reported to side with an entity they've been imprisoned by, if that happens).

This ought to mean that offsite fortress members would retain their rooms and private/squad equipment, and would just keep those when returning (as well as not being considered new citizens). Once units are removed from the fortress, their equipment should be either confiscated by the fortress (as if they'd died), or removed from the fortress (if the items were carried offsite). Squad allocated equipment would likewise either be returned to the fortress if it remains locally (and, I guess, still allocated to the squad position), or removed from the fortress and squad if offsite.

Occupying squad members returned by a messenger as "workers" would be "new" members of the fortress (as opposed to the messenger, who'd just return), as they'd have been removed from the fortress when they occupied the site (unless there's a new mission state where squads may be on occupation duty, while still members of the fortress, as I think I've seen suggested somewhere, in which they'd just return when the squad is recalled), and their equipment would be "new" equipment from the fortress perspective (again, as it would have been removed when they became members of the site).

The purpose of this suggestion is to make it easier to manage offsite assets for the player (room allocation, returning squad members ought to retain their equipment and only drop things as part of the upgrading cycle, etc.), as well as to possibly provide an easier way to address some of the bugs associated with missions.

[FantasticDorf]

Im usually not always concise myself with my posts, but i had difficulty picking apart your five paragraphs. Toady makes a effort to least read the opening message of each suggestion, but i suppose just like the FotF i hope you wouldn't mind me deconstructing it.

Correct me if im wrong or have added anything ontop of what you're saying unintentionally but you want seperate UI recognition that

A. The Fortress person is off-site, but still counted on applicable fortress records, population count and UI.

B. A brief explanation of the bug at hand that equipment/rooms are reprised unnesecarily and a suggestion to keep without a good reason of if the squadmember has died/is not feasibly coming back by having the 'census profile' of the dwarf loaded in at the fort to keep them anchored.

I think this suggestion would be improved by some controls to exile people already departed to free up fortress members on-site via similar UI, to order them to stay in position where they are and otherwise integrate with the conquered site.

• Captured fortress citizens should have ransom demands/messages delivered to your proposed UI, a simple look at their general screen alongside their room holdings for instance and a broad notification when the diplomat arrives. Prisoners from other civs using the same anchored system in order to correctly ransom and redeliver in return.

To add, already offloading workers onto another site raises your global fortress population with caches of dwarves stationed waiting as reinforcements elsewhere while rooms are occupied to be resummoned in the aftermath of a calamity to repopulate the fortress, sending dwarves away does have some merits currently.

[PatrikLundell]

No, it's not actually a UI suggestion, but a technical one. UI wise it would be nice if citizens on missions were displayed in the units list as being on a mission (and even the kind of mission), but I would have no problem with them just "disappearing" as is currently the case.

It seems to me that a number of bugs are caused by unloading units and their items and then trying to retie the connections when they return. If that's correct you may well avoid some bugs by making sure never to save/load the fortress while any units are traveling, as I believe the units at least, and probably the items as well, remain in DF's data structures until a save is loaded, at which time the offloaded units are simply not loaded, but I haven't tried to investigate that angle.

Exiling people on an artifact search years long drinking binge might be helpful in some cases and might be made feasible if they're retained while traveling, but that's mainly a fringe benefit.

If you exile/send people away, I'd expect that to happen, i.e. their connections are severed and they immediately become visitors, so nothing would change in those cases if the suggestion is taken up. It might allow the implementation of new kinds of missions where units are stationed at various sites until further notice, while still remaining fortress citizens, but that would be different from sending them away (and it would require some reason for the mechanism to exist: sending several squads to occupy a site leaving one or more squads as local forces of that site, while the remainder being there only to enable the conquest and to deter rebellion, but being possible to recall is one such case, while sending off workers will remain rather pointless until there's some kind of economy like structure in which they'd make a difference).

[Urist9876]

Sounds like a good one.

I don't like how bedrooms and all other assignments get messed up when squads go on mission.
It is both a lot of hassle and makes no sense from immersion perspective.

The other bugs are causing me to limit missions, mostly to nearby sites and making backups before I do.

If this would remove those bugs great.

But then it might create new problems: if a soldier dies, how to get his equipment on his death location? I'd like to find his XX decorated armor XX with my adventurers.

[PatrikLundell]

I'm sure the various bugs can be fixed by plugging holes in the current logic, but I think retaining characters and resources is cleaner and ought to have the beneficial side effects of keeping assignments.

I don't think there's any difference between unloading equipment from the fortress at the unit's exit from the map and delaying that action until the unit's death outside of the fortress or the units permanent allocation as a member of a different entity. If the equipment is unloaded when the unit leaves the fortress, the task of deallocating the carried equipment from the squad still remains to be performed when the unit dies outside of the fortress, and placement of the equipment by the body for scavengers to take likewise ought to be performed. If, on the other hand, the carried equipment is unloaded from the fortress upon death in foreign lands, the clearing of the equipment from the squad can be performed at the same time, and the task of placing the equipment by the body remains the same (if that's done at all). Obviously, if the unit joins a different entity (e.g. as the new administrator of a conquered site, or just part of the conquering force in the current logic) the equipment deallocation from both the fortress and the squad out to be performed, but there's no death yet, so there's no placement of equipment required. It's the up to the general active world logic to handle equipment replacement/stashing/scattering and the eventual death of the unit (possibly at the hands of your adventurer), as the unit becomes a general hist fig in the world when the tie to the fortress is severed.