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Author Topic: Fish - or, more specifically, lack of fish  (Read 748 times)

narhiril

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Fish - or, more specifically, lack of fish
« on: February 11, 2011, 11:31:07 am »
Greetings all.

I've noticed that in most of my fortresses, fish seem to go extinct after a while.  Most notably, this happened in my most recent fort, which is in a hot wasteland without a stream.  I tapped an aquifer to feed my wells, and my lone fisherdwarf seemed more than happy to fish in the reservoir for a couple of seasons.  After a year or so, I noticed that I was getting a fairly steady supply of turtle shells.  This continued for a few seasons.

Then, inexplicably, this just stopped.  Upon breaching the caverns, I find the exact same problem.  The fisherdwarf goes fishing in both caverns and the reservoir constantly, but he hasn't caught a thing in years, despite the waters being labelled as fish-able.  I have never actually seen a caught cave fish or lobster that hasn't been imported from caravans - though I sometimes see them swimming around in the underground lakes which my message feed insists contain "nothing to catch."  This is not the first time this has happened, so I cruised around the bug reports looking for something similar to my predicament, but the only one I found that resembled this problem was listed as fixed in 31.05.  I am playing in 31.18.

Is anyone else having a similar problem?  If so, is there a known cause of this issue?
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Girlinhat

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Re: Fish - or, more specifically, lack of fish
« Reply #1 on: February 11, 2011, 11:36:35 am »
Fish are vermin, at least the catchable ones.  Vermin as well as large creatures, have a population limit.  Giant Cave Spider has 2-3 per biome, most vermin are in the dozens, but there's only so many, and they're only created in world gen.  If you kill them, they're gone for good, which is why old forts can easily run out of huntable food and fish, and why it's so important to capture that cave dragon when it appears, because they won't be replaced.
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Sphalerite

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Re: Fish - or, more specifically, lack of fish
« Reply #2 on: February 11, 2011, 11:38:06 am »
This is a known issue.  Biomes have a limited, finite population of creatures when you embark.  Vermin-type creatures, including turtles, never reproduce, so once you have fished them all you never get any more.  This is most obvious when fishing from murky pools, which don't have much of a population to begin with, but with a decade or two of fishing it's even possible to depopulate the ocean.  Also, underground water rarely if ever seems to have anything to catch at all, which I suspect to be a bug.
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Girlinhat

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Re: Fish - or, more specifically, lack of fish
« Reply #3 on: February 11, 2011, 11:39:33 am »
Also: Embark on the line of two or more biomes, catch more critters.  Even if they're identical biomes, they're still separate breeding zones.
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MijRai

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Re: Fish - or, more specifically, lack of fish
« Reply #4 on: February 11, 2011, 11:42:29 am »
What year is it? As the others said, extinction is both possible and inevitable.
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rephikul

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Re: Fish - or, more specifically, lack of fish
« Reply #5 on: February 11, 2011, 11:49:56 am »
go to their raw and change their pop count to 30000:30000
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Internet Kraken

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Re: Fish - or, more specifically, lack of fish
« Reply #6 on: February 11, 2011, 02:05:24 pm »
Yes, somehow a single fisherdwarf can apparently deplete an entire ocean worth of fish. That's what keeps happening in my forts.

As for caves, I've never caught a single fish in them for some reason.
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narhiril

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Re: Fish - or, more specifically, lack of fish
« Reply #7 on: February 11, 2011, 02:38:41 pm »
Quote from: rephikul on February 11, 2011, 11:49:56 am
go to their raw and change their pop count to 30000:30000

This should at least help the next time I gen a world.  I recall reading somewhere that clowns had an unlimited population - is there a way to copy this and apply it to fish, or to make fish reproduce?  Maybe a way to play around with [CHILD] tags?
« Last Edit: February 11, 2011, 02:54:11 pm by narhiril »
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Girlinhat

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Re: Fish - or, more specifically, lack of fish
« Reply #8 on: February 11, 2011, 04:35:16 pm »
Things caught by fishing are considered vermin, which is why you never catch carp or whales.  Vermin do not reproduce, even with the child tag.  Ergo, impossible to have a replenishing supply of fishable critters.  Not much to help with it, except to wait until next release.
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