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[Antikythera]

i 've played a few games since finding DF.

starting to do well in the initial building but whenever the first sign of trouble shows up, usually a goblin ambush of one of my wood choppers, every dwarf in my fortress rushes out headlong into the wilderness to comit hari kari on the goblin pikes.

the fortress is usually fairly well prepared, loads of traps on the entrance, and the wood chopper is usually a fairly expendable member of the team but with ever dwarf running outside its a quick way to turn a 50 dwarf fort into a 10 dwarf fort.

what am i doing wrong?

unreleated question - if i make a channel loop from a river, through a section of my fort and back to the river, will i be able to fish as successfully as if i was fishing directly into the river?

[Biowraith]

Not sure why they'd all immediately run outside - maybe the goblins killed one dwarf and now the rest are trying to bury the body (or steal the socks)?

In any case, to keep them from doing that: create a burrow ('w') that covers the inside of your fort - basically anywhere you're happy for the dwarves to be when trouble shows up.  When trouble does show up go [m]ilitary->[a]lerts then tab to the rightmost column and select the burrow.  All dwarves not in an active military squad will now stay in the burrow - and if outside, will immediately stop what they're doing and run back.

[Uristocrat]

You want to set up burrows and assign all civilians to that burrow as part of an alert (I have a "siege" alert just for this).  That said, any dwarves that are off in the wilderness somewhere will still get scared by the goblins and run in some random direction (often an incredibly stupid direction).  I've suggested on the suggestions board that they should go straight for their burrows, even suicidally, but they don't.

As for the other question, all that matters is that there are fish in that part of the map (vermin fish don't count; only some invisible number somewhere that I don't really understand either counts).  The water source doesn't have to be connected to anything.  So you can fill a one-tile pond somewhere and fish from it if there are any fish in that area.

[JmzLost]

If they're running out when the woods dwarf dies, it's probably to recover the corpse or clothes.  Before messing with burrows, check the orders menu for your dwarfs.  'o' is the orders menu, 'F' is the automatic forbid menu.  You can set it to automatically forbid your dwarfs when they die 'c', forbid their clothes when they die 'i', and forbid non-hunted creatures when they die 'o', like any goblins or Rhesus Macaques killed by your defenses/military.

After that, you can try learning how to manage burrows.

JMZ

[Antikythera]

thanks for your help.

according to this it seems my problem is not uncommon.

[Scaraban]

yes dorfs are famous for their lemming rushes

[zilpin]

...every dwarf in my fortress rushes out headlong into the wilderness to comit hari kari on the goblin pikes.

What dishonor did so many warriors commit in order to demand this ritual?
Oh, right.  Mandates.
Time to give the nobles something to do.

For the civilians who feel the divine wind push them to mass suicide, Burrows are best solution.

[plisskin]

When in doubt, mass forbid everything with <d> <:b:> <f> in the direction they're running. Forbid like a tyrant until they get back in the hole.

Definitely use the <m>ilitary <a>lerts screen for setting the *CIV* alert to a safe burrow like Blowraith suggested, because setting dwarves to burrows individually can be wonky and unreliable. I like to set my safe burrows right on top of my farm labors zone and food/drink stocks so that dorfs can still do something useful while cowering in fear of the green menace.

I had to futz with the 'b' up there because the BBS tags were somehow going off, making everything bold.