Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mylar]

In each corner of my central dining room I have ponds with statues in the center, my dwarves love em.

I've been trying to get some fish into them for a few game years... FINALLY one of my "capture live fish" jobs goes through and I have a squirming cave fish sitting in my animal stockpile. I assign it to one of my ponds and a noble releases it into it's new home shortly thereafter.

So there I am, all proud and happy as I watch my little white fish symbol pop back and forth in the pond... a cat walked up to it and the fish dissapeared, I leaned forward, all upset and ready to set the cat to butcherable, when the fish resurfaced... I watched for a while longer and the fish occasionally blinks out, I guess going deeper inot the pond.

As I'm now satisified that my new fish is safe from the roaming cats, I go to queue up a few more "capture live fish" jobs to fill my other three ponds. Scrolling back to my dining room I notice a hungry dwarf beelining for my pond... Sure enough he waded straight in, grabbed the fish and wandered over to the table... I paused on his way there and viewed him, he was hungry, he had a live cave fish in his inventory as hauled, and his preferances did not mention fish at all. Unpause and he sits down, slaps the still squiming fish down on one of my masterpiece tables, and tucks in.

Needless to say, I hve not bothered stocking any more fish in my dining room ponds. I put one in an aquarium near some housing to see if it would face a similar fate, but so far dwarves have let that fish live.

I have a VERY well stocked larder with all the foods and alchohol that a dwarf could ever want. I even buy the cow cheese from the humans despite it's stupid expense.... Why oh why did that mason decide the HAD to have sushi?

[Eagle of Fire]

When looking for something to eat, dwarves will look for the item to the topest left corner of the map and then continue to look toward down right. The game mechanic is made that way.

So, I'd suggest that you try it again but place your food stockpile "above" your pond and see what happen. Maybe in another fort if you can't move your current food stock?  

[Mylar]

That cannot be it, because of that very behavior I placed my food processing and storage in the top left quadrant of my fortress..

I really need to compress it and toss it in the archive, but here is a quick breakdown
xxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxFood|Housingxxxxx
xxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Dining---------
xxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxx
xStores|xWorkshopsxx
xxxxxxx|xxxxxxxxxxxx

More to the issue I have with this behavior: Why is a live fish considered edible when a raw fish isn't? And why is a Fish that has been specifically assigned to a pond fair game to be eaten?

[Solara]

This is a known bug, they'll eat cave lobsters and purring maggots too.

[ September 17, 2007: Message edited by: Solara ]

[Pacho]

Dwarves just go for the nearest piece of food they can find.  The fish just happens to be that one piece of food.

I've noticed that once the economy is up and running, dwarves tend to go after cooked meals instead of raw stuff.  I've had dwarves starve because I only had mountains of raw eatable plants and no biscuits.

[martinuzz]

Haha I posted a bug report with the same name on this issue. My solution to the problem is to place a food stockpile around your pond/aquarium and keep it filled.
Then the odds of a hungry dwarf going fishing are much smaller.

[Mylar]

I figured it was a "closest eatable item" thing... Kinda puts a damper on my plans to have ponds in my Nobel's offices. Chances are they would wake up hungry and snack on their pet fish rather then going to get real food.

[Eagle of Fire]

Hummm... Why then are my stockpiles always filled to the bottom while my food piles are in the upward section of my fortress?

Maybe it have something to do with the farm emplacement...

[martinuzz]

quote:Originally posted by Mylar:
<STRONG>I figured it was a "closest eatable item" thing... Kinda puts a damper on my plans to have ponds in my Nobel's offices. Chances are they would wake up hungry and snack on their pet fish rather then going to get real food.</STRONG>

You can still build your ponds in the nobles' offices.. Just build the food stockpile around it and when your noble wakes up he will be closer to the food in the stockpile then to the fish. Note: You can smooth/engrave under a stockpile.

[Silveron]

quote:Originally posted by Eagle of Fire:
<STRONG>Hummm... Why then are my stockpiles always filled to the bottom while my food piles are in the upward section of my fortress?

Maybe it have something to do with the farm emplacement...</STRONG>

From what I have watched... Single items will go to the closest unassigned open space in a stockpile. Filled barrels and bins will fill in from top left to bottom right. Empty bins and barrels will follow the single item behavior in their stockpiles.