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[DrCyano]

Howdy folks!

I just started using burrows in my fort to keep the cave-adapted Dorfs underground, but I'm running into an annoying problem: I receive a constant stream of job cancellation messages. The spam is becoming unmanageable!

How do you assign Dorfs to burrows without them constantly trying and cancelling "store item in stockpile" tasks for items outside their burrow?

Please help!

[Shonai_Dweller]

You can switch off the spam messages (o, x) or forbid everything outside the burrow. It is annoying, yes.

If dorfs can't physically reach something they won't generate spam, so locking them in with a drawbridge is sometimes better (use citizen alert burrow to get them all in place, close bridge, turn off alert).

[DrCyano]

I can't forbid because the items are in the other burrow and should be used by those other Dwarves.

Will (o, x) hide other causes of job cancellations? I don't want to miss the alert for a job cancelled due to Dwarves running in terror from a zombie.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I can't forbid because the items are in the other burrow and should be used by those other Dwarves.

Will (o, x) hide other causes of job cancellations? I don't want to miss the alert for a job cancelled due to Dwarves running in terror from a zombie.

Yeah, the game doesn't know what is a spammy cancellation and what you want to see. So you can't pick and choose.

Can you not just lock them in?

[PatrikLundell]

Hiding the spam will not cause the dorfs to work: they'll continue to take up the same tasks and drop them over and over, not doing anything useful.

However, you might be able to paint stockpiles over the items to be hauled and have those stockpiles give to the ones you want the stuff to be moved to. That should stop dorfs from take up the hauling jobs as the destination is outside of their burrow. I don't think that will stop workshop workers from trying to get input items from those stockpiles, though. To block that you'd probably need to use stockpiles linked to the workshops or workshop burrows (I've never used the latter, so I don't know how they work [or don't work]). Note, however, that stockpile and workshop linking is very easy to mess up, by e.g. forgetting that barrels have to be in linked stockpiles as well as the fruit/leaves, resulting in an "inexplicable" failure to produce booze.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Locking them in stops all spam. They don't take jobs from areas they can't path to. Use a civilian alert to get them underground, close the bridge. Turn off the alert.

[DrCyano]

Sounds like burrow assignments are mostly pointless. If I have to physically lock the Dwarves in their respective area, then what's the point? I could do that without burrows.

Here's what I'm actually trying to do: I have a shared living area (bedrooms, temple, meeting hall, etc), but I have a construction project on the surface and I only want non-cave adapted Dwarves working on it. I also have some areas that the Dwarves must avoid for the sake of morale (remains of previous sieges that didn't go so well). I can't just lock the Dwarves away because my food/booze production and apartment blocks are too centralized too lock up and still allow access to food and drink.

Any alternatives to burrows?

Edit: Fixed typo

[anewaname]

Two vectors:
- If you are attempting to control the flow of resources that didn't come from a workshop (logs, farmed food, corpse parts, or stone), then remove that type of hauling labor from those dwarfs not in that burrow (I can't recall if dfhack or DT allows sorting by burrows, but that is the sort of thing to make this tolerable... maybe nicknames or professions could be used to group which burrow you want them in).
- If you are trying to control the flow of workshop-produced items, then link the workshop to give to same-burrow stockpiles.

Is this your mega-bridge fort?

[Loam]

Burrow cancellation spam usually occurs for me when a dwarf is already hauling an item towards an out-of-burrow stockpile; since they don't just drop the item, they constantly re-take the job and re-cancel. Forbidding the hauled item, so that they drop it, has always solved the issue for me. Dwarves shouldn't take jobs outside the burrow, so once the in-progress hauling jobs are settled you shouldn't be seeing (too much) spam. But I've really only used burrows for civilian alerts.

Perhaps you can make you non-cave-adapted dwarves into a hauler/construction worker contingent: they'd have no burrow restrictions and do all the hauling/building/other tasks that required occasional trips outside. The rest of your (cave-adapted) dwarves would be restricted to burrows inside the fort, and do workshop jobs/anything not requiring outside work. The only problem I can think of there is if burrow-dwarves tried to claim items from outside... but I'm not sure they can do that, if the item is outside their burrow.

Needless to say, you'd need to make sure all of your relevant stockpiles were inside the fort, so burrow-dwarves could reach them. Perhaps you could also build outdoor housing for your construction crew to keep them non-cave-adapted.

[DrCyano]

Is this your mega-bridge fort?

Yes it is

Burrow cancellation spam usually occurs for me when a dwarf is already hauling an item towards an out-of-burrow stockpile; since they don't just drop the item, they constantly re-take the job and re-cancel. Forbidding the hauled item, so that they drop it, has always solved the issue for me. Dwarves shouldn't take jobs outside the burrow, so once the in-progress hauling jobs are settled you shouldn't be seeing (too much) spam. But I've really only used burrows for civilian alerts.

I hadn't thought of that. Maybe some of my Dwarves claimed logs on the surface before being burrowed and never gave up on their dreams of some day fetching it. I'll try using the job screen to find and forbid the desired logs.

Perhaps you can make you non-cave-adapted dwarves into a hauler/construction worker contingent: they'd have no burrow restrictions and do all the hauling/building/other tasks that required occasional trips outside. The rest of your (cave-adapted) dwarves would be restricted to burrows inside the fort, and do workshop jobs/anything not requiring outside work. The only problem I can think of there is if burrow-dwarves tried to claim items from outside... but I'm not sure they can do that, if the item is outside their burrow.

Needless to say, you'd need to make sure all of your relevant stockpiles were inside the fort, so burrow-dwarves could reach them. Perhaps you could also build outdoor housing for your construction crew to keep them non-cave-adapted.

Sounds like I'll need to keep ALL stockpiles underground (within the cave-adaptation burrow) to keep things from getting too complicated.

[Moeteru]

Dwarves shouldn't take jobs outside the burrow, so once the in-progress hauling jobs are settled you shouldn't be seeing (too much) spam.

It would be nice if it worked that way, but in my experience dwarves will keep trying to take hauling jobs as long as they can path to the item, regardless of whether it's inside or outside the burrow.
When a couple of elven visitors got killed in my entrance tunnel (by elven invaders), I immediately started to get cancellation spam even though the alert was active prior to the corpses being created.
It's possible that it works differently for normal non-alert burrows though.

[PatrikLundell]

Yes. The problem is that jobs apparently are taken based on pathability, and then checked against other* restrictions only after the job has been accepted.

other* restrictions: burrow permissions, item permission (such as e.g. forbidden), item category availability (buckets, cages), specific item availability (e.g. buckets allocated for water hauling but since having been destroyed). In some cases these failures cause the job to be dropped (workshop jobs for instance), but in some cases jobs that are actually impossible to perform for anyone are just dropped back into the job pool (and in many cases jobs that might be possible for someone else will still be picked up by the same moron on the next attempt, and dropped back into the pool again [and again and again...]).