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[rgon842]

Hello everyone. I've been playing DF for a while, and the thought of having dorfs flying around in fortress mode has always been in the back of my mind. Back in 40d, several pathing issues made dwarves with the [FLIER] tag completely unplayable. I've heard that Toady has smoothed out some of these issues, and I'm really looking forward to bearded balls of booze flying about.

From everyone's experience, what bugs/issues/nitpicks have you discovered so far in regards to flying dwarves in Fort Mode? Are there still pathing problems? Is it somewhat playable? Or have most of the issues been ironed out?

[Noble Digger]

I used flying dwarves for a few seasons to experiment in a layer-busting experiment fort. In general, they seem to only use flight to escape from being stuck or in water, and sometimes from enemies. I haven't observed dwarves flying up to inaccessible ledges to do work on those ledges, unfortunately, or vice versa (flying down).

[Dante]

This is relevant to my interests; I have been sperimenting with flying dwarves with the newest version.

Some random notes:
- Flying dwarves, if set as bookkeeper, will not be able to find their office, and will spam cancel messages.
- Flying dwarves will sometimes fly into holes in the ground (i.e. empty murky pools) and then not be able to path out again, and so just ...stop.
- Flying dwarves WILL mine, chop trees, gather herbs, and drink.
- I've had some cancel messages with them trying to eat, but not many. I don't know whether it depends on them trying to find a table or what.
- Flying dwarves will lead animals to be butchered or to milk; presumably to cages as well.
- Flying dwarves will haul.

[rgon842]

Thanks for the replies everyone  . Looking at those notes, I can see there are a few things still to be worked out regarding their pathing.

I did some experiments a few hours ago, and I've found the following:

* When building on the surface, it seems that flying dwarves do not use a tunnel I set up for bringing the construction material; rather, they simply fly over the walls to get what they need. It seems they also avoid my main entrance and prefer this 'side entrance' to the fort.

* Regarding the same walls: sometimes when flying over, dwarves will 'sorta' be stuck on top of the wall; they will sta there with a "No Job" activity, even though they should be hauling/mining/butchering kittens at that moment. It's kinda like when dwarves wall themselves in when building structures, and once you deconstruct a piece of the wall, they stick around for a while before resuming normal dwarf activities.

* It seems that dwarven caravans are utterly broken if dwarves can fly. Instead of leading pack animals, the merchants just move as fast as they can towards the trade depot, leaving the animals behind. This has the unfortunate side effect of activating the 'merchants have arrived and are unpacking event' without the goods that need unpacking; thus, even though they might bring merchandise, it is never made available for trading with your fort and thus no way to buy their stuff.


The last issue has occured 100% on every fort I started with flying dwarves, although this may need more testing. Could someone test the 'flying merchant bug' and post their results here?

[darkflagrance]

I posted in the wrong thread >_>

Oh, what the heck, couldn't hurt to have these here.

Flying threads.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59760.msg1342849#msg1342849

Also:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=19025.msg188279#msg188279
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=18743.msg184968#msg184968

[Toastergargletop]

I think i want to add flying dwarves to my game as a new caste of dwarves, maybe some sort of bat like mutation.  Im thinking wings are needed;  how accurate will i have to be with the body parts and will the [FLIER] tag be linked to the presence of wings?  If a wing gets hacked off, will the ability to fly be removed?

[darkflagrance]

I think i want to add flying dwarves to my game as a new caste of dwarves, maybe some sort of bat like mutation.  Im thinking wings are needed;  how accurate will i have to be with the body parts and will the [FLIER] tag be linked to the presence of wings?  If a wing gets hacked off, will the ability to fly be removed?

I've added wings before. The default wing bodypart has information in it that makes the [FLIER] tag depend on it and connects it to the upper body. So that also means that losing half of your wings will make you unable to fly, the same way losing half of your total amount of legs makes you unable to walk.