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[Farmerbob]

  I was thinking the other day that there have been a lot of complaints about our dwarves overworking themselves.  Has anyone actually compared the level of overworking before and after installing a chief medical dwarf?  Perhaps it is intended that this position control tendencies towards overwork, and that said tendencies were intentionally included, in order to give the chief medical dwarf something to do when nobody has been mangled recently.  Now the question would be - can your chief medical dwarf make a dwarf go get some sleep, or make them go eat/drink?  Has anyone seen this happening?

[Hyndis]

Dwarves will stop doing a job if they are starving or dehydrated and go fetch food at all costs, including leaving any assigned burrow they're in. They get unhappy thoughts from this of course, but a dwarf should not starve so long as food/drink is available somewhere on the map the dwarf can path to, and assuming that you're not making a death chamber at the end of an absurdly long maze and assigning the dwarves you don't like to that burrow with no food or water, such that by the time they finally reach your dining hall they drop dead our of thirst just inches away from touching that barrel of delicious booze...


There doesn't seem to be any way to prevent this if there are a lot of jobs that need done. If there are only a few jobs the dwarf will finish the job and then go idle, and he'll eat/drink/sleep on his own. If there is a job on repeat the dwarf will keep doing it until he's very hungry, thirsty, or tired, and while he will have unhappy thoughts he should not die from them.

Just build a legendary dining hall and you should be okay. A mist generator also works wonders.

[Farmerbob]

Hyndis, your comments are on the mark as far as my experience goes, however thats not what I am thinking about.

The Chief Medical Dwarf is a new position.  Perhaps part of the reason for their existence is to help prevent overwork, by ensuring that regular food, drink, and rest breaks are taken?

Has anyone explored this?  I rarely build large fortresses, or maintain them for more than a couple years gamewise, as I'm still exploring defensive architecture and waiting for the melting and military bugs to be addressed before trying to build anything large and long term.

[Motigg]

I haven't noticed any change.  I still get very few masterpieces out of my 2 Legendary craftsdwarves (Jobs are on repeat since I'm lazy and have some 2000 or so Dolomite I'm trying to rid myself of, plus I could buy out the caravans if I really wanted to...) even with the Chief Medical Dwarf assigned.  He doesn't really seem to do anything if no ones injured.

[Hyndis]

He doesn't work that way. He's just your chief doctor guy. Without him the health care system does not work.


...though with the current bugs, the health care system may not work anyways...

[Farmerbob]

Well, I think I'll move this on over to the suggestions thread.  Chief medical dwarf and assign him a couple assistants.  The chief medical dwarf watches for overwork (and obviously injured dwarves) and the assistants will actually take food or drink, or drag a dwarf off to his quarters to get some rest.  Perhaps the sheriff might get involved in the case of a fey dwarf gone mad.

[rdwulfe]

Dwarves will stop doing a job if they are starving or dehydrated and go fetch food at all costs, including leaving any assigned burrow they're in. They get unhappy thoughts from this of course, but a dwarf should not starve so long as food/drink is available somewhere on the map the dwarf can path to, and assuming that you're not making a death chamber at the end of an absurdly long maze and assigning the dwarves you don't like to that burrow with no food or water, such that by the time they finally reach your dining hall they drop dead our of thirst just inches away from touching that barrel of delicious booze...

You know, there are times I begin to wonder if I am cruel and ... dare I say? .. Evil enough to play this game. I... I am shamed, I had not thought of that. And it's beautiful. Poetic. The dwarf drops dead, mere inches from his goal, grasping out towards the precious food, which taunts him with it's proximity, and gasps his last anorexic breath.

I love it.

[Kogan Loloklam]

The real neat thing about dwarf fortress is it encourages people to weaponize ANYTHING.

You find an interesting reaction involving turtle bones? Someone will make a weapon out of it eventually.

Take, for instance, Deathwork's ingenious design for breaching aquafurs. Since the worst sieges occur in the winter, I spent long effort trying to figure out how to weaponize it. A kind of cave-in system is what I am working on right now. My theory is if I build three constructed floor tiles off from a "landing ramp" with a little Torii-like structure made of constructed rock walls and pillars, with one on the other side, I can trap an entire goblin force into a "flooding chamber". Such chamber will freeze come winter, killing any who survive the year-long swim.