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[nomad_delta]

So I just experienced my first tantrum spiral, and all I can say is... wow. Tantrum spirals are serious business.

Everything was going great and I was well on my way to a successful fortress, had a legendary dining room and a nice zoo started and all the dwarves had individual smoothed 4x1 bedrooms with nice cabinets for all, etc...

I also had a nicely fortified entrance with a zig-zag walkway with a few traps overlooked by a tower where my 10 marksdwarves were stationed along the wall of fortifications to rain pointy wooden/bony death sticks down upon any invaders.  I'd already fought off a couple ambushes and sieges this way without any goblins getting through to fight my 3 swordsdwarves waiting just around the corner inside.

Good thing, too 'cause so far I hadn't found any sources of weapons-grade metals on this map.  No iron, no silver, no copper, no nothing -- just mountains of Sphalerite.  If I ever figure out how to make Zinc weapons and armor I'll be all set.  I'd dug way down to the magma sea and set up a few magma smelters to start making huge piles of zinc bars, just in case.

So anyway... another siege showed up so I ordered everyone inside and my marksdwarves stationed up in the tower along the fortification wall, and everything was going awesome again -- they were firing off huge numbers of bolts at the incoming goblins, who would dodge either the bolts or the traps and fall off the walkway into the pit and have to go to the beginning of the zig-zag path to start over and get shot at some more... the goblins were mostly wearing iron armor which my marksdwarves were having trouble penetrating with their wood/bone bolts, but none had gotten through the entrance yet...

When suddenly the squad leader of my marksdwarf squad gets a "Pickup equipment" job and decides it would be a good idea to rush down the stairs from the fortification tower, out the entrance into the zig-zag trap walkway and right into the middle of the goblin horde.  I have no idea what he decided he desperately needed to pick up from outside, but the goblins tore him in half almost immediately as he was only in leather armor (again, no metal on this map so far...)

As soon as he died, the rest of my military went into an immediate spiral of "pickup equipment" rushing outside to pick up his stuff... including one of my swordsdwarves (who had the only steel short sword I'd managed to scrounge together) -- he at least put up a fight and sliced some goblins in half before they took him down, breaking the remaining siege, but by this time several were dead.

Apparently the marksdwarf captain was well liked because everything deteriorated rapidly from there.  Almost *everyone* became Very Unhappy all at once and a few started tantruming.  Eventually someone started a fist-fight and killed my woodworker, and the whole fortress devolved into a wanton barroom brawl of epic proportions.  Mayhem everywhere, miasma spreading everywhere because no one was hauling the refuse away, it was a mess...

_____

So here's my question:  does anyone have any idea what might have caused the "pickup equipment" job that started this whole thing?  Why did my marksdwarf squad leader leave the safety of his fortified tower to run outside into the middle of the goblins to pick something up?  I checked my

• rders menu [F]orbid settings afterward and found that I had indeed made a critical error in leaving the "Claim death objects" option enabled as it is by default... so I understand why my military ran outside to take the squad leader's stuff after he died, and I'll know to avoid that next time.

...but no other dwarves died outside, and my

• rders/[F]orbid settings were all at the defaults of "Forbid other death objects" so I can't figure out why he decided to run out there in the first place.

Any ideas?

--nomad_delta

[Sphalerite]

Dwarves tend to grab the highest-quality of whatever gear they've been assigned.  If a dwarf has a steel breastplate, and a dwarf somewhere else wearing a +steel breastplate+ suddenly dies, the first dwarf will run over to his dead companion and grab the higher-quality equipment off his dead former squadmate's body.  Your squad leader probably had the highest-quality gear, so when he died it triggered a mad scramble as everyone ran out to grab his stuff.

[nomad_delta]

Dwarves tend to grab the highest-quality of whatever gear they've been assigned.  If a dwarf has a steel breastplate, and a dwarf somewhere else wearing a +steel breastplate+ suddenly dies, the first dwarf will run over to his dead companion and grab the higher-quality equipment off his dead former squadmate's body.  Your squad leader probably had the highest-quality gear, so when he died it triggered a mad scramble as everyone ran out to grab his stuff.

That part I actually understood -- from now on I'm using the

• rders [F]orbid menu to set "Forbid your death items" first thing when starting a few fortress to prevent exactly this from happening.

What I don't understand is why my squad leader got the original "pickup equipment" job making him run out into the goblin horde to get killed in the first place.  There shouldn't have been any equipment out there for him to pick up, unless he just randomly decided he really wanted the goblin leader's scimitar and he was just going to walk out there and take it from him. 

--nomad_delta

[Marthnn]

Did you Forbid used ammunition? If not, your marksdwarf probably decided some intact shot bolt was to be shot again.

I don't see anything else...

[nomad_delta]

Did you Forbid used ammunition? If not, your marksdwarf probably decided some intact shot bolt was to be shot again.

I don't see anything else...

Yup; I hadn't messed with any of the default [F]orbid settings, and used ammunition was forbidden by default.  Good idea, though.

One thought I had was if maybe somehow the goblins had shot his masterwork bone crossbow out of his hand and it had somehow flown through the fortifications and landed down in the entranceway... I've seen weapons get knocked out of hangs in melee fighting, can it happen when getting hit by or dodging incoming bolts as well?  Can dropped weapons fly through fortifications?

Actually now that I think about it, the goblins didn't have any archers anyway, so scratch that idea...

[Marthnn]

Weapons don't get knocked out, the holding hand gets severed from the body, or so I've seen.

Did your marksdwarf use a shield?

Maybe a goblin got his hand/arm cut off and, as it is written in the (o)rder (F)orbid menu, "Forbidding of death objects occurs at time of death".
Except that I've never seen that, and I should have if it was possible.

[Stoup]

Did you make sure, perhaps, that the exit from this tower didn't lead down to the entrance? If that was his only way down perhaps he left to go grab more ammunition.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Dwarves tend to grab the highest-quality of whatever gear they've been assigned.  If a dwarf has a steel breastplate, and a dwarf somewhere else wearing a +steel breastplate+ suddenly dies, the first dwarf will run over to his dead companion and grab the higher-quality equipment off his dead former squadmate's body.  Your squad leader probably had the highest-quality gear, so when he died it triggered a mad scramble as everyone ran out to grab his stuff.

Also, if the captain saw that some nifty bit o' gear on a gobbo was better than what he was currently wearing, he'd likely run down to it the moment said gobbo was dead. Forbid-on-death is VITAL.

Did you Forbid used ammunition? If not, your marksdwarf probably decided some intact shot bolt was to be shot again.

...Or this...


Also, put some warning kilns in any caves you embark on--they'll give you warning if a voracious cave crawler decides to path up into your fort, pausing to smash said kilns and destroy your not-yet-deconstructed wagon, kill half your dwarves and some livestock, and turn your expedition leader into a sometimes-tantruming wreck who kills a duck and destroys a few trade depots before your remaining four try to survive and make the fort work again.
No, I don't have experience with this. I was using Kobold Camp at the time, which made it everything harder.

[nomad_delta]

Weapons don't get knocked out, the holding hand gets severed from the body, or so I've seen.

Did your marksdwarf use a shield?

Maybe a goblin got his hand/arm cut off and, as it is written in the (o)rder (F)orbid menu, "Forbidding of death objects occurs at time of death".
Except that I've never seen that, and I should have if it was possible.

hey now there's an idea!  I do have all my marksdwarves use shields.  They just have crappy wooden ones due to my aforementioned lack of metals, so if a goblin's shield-arm got sliced off it's quite likely that whatever shield the goblin had would have been "better" than the ones my dwarves had.  So far this theory makes the most sense.  I wish there was some way I could go back and watch it again in slow-mo to see exactly what happened.

EDIT: I think next time if I ever see this starting to happen again, I'll try using d-b-f to forbid everything in the area surrounding the goblins and see if that cancels the "pickup equipment" job.  That and I'll check to see if there's any goblins with their arms lopped off and shields lying on the ground un-forbidden.

I wonder if there's some way to test this with !!SCIENCE!!, 'cause if a goblin's shield dropped along with a chopped-off arm doesn't get forbidden when "Forbid other death objects" is enabled, that's probably a bug we should report in the tracker.

--nomad_delta

[Psieye]

I've had this happen too and I specifically tailor my archery uniform to not use shields or anything the goblins would carry. My marksdwarf captain just decided to ignore the pile of ammo right next to him and walk all the into the middle of the goblin frey to pick up something. I didn't have the attention to spare at the time to pause and check on the 'j'obs menu exactly what he was after (or if the 'j'obs menu shows what the target of a Pickup Equipment job is). Well, time was rewound for me due to DF crashing, maybe it'll happen again. I'll try and make a save of it (instead of being distracted looking at the bronze colossus in the pond wiping out a squad of amphibious mounts while their riders all drown).


By the way, if you want to know how to 'cheat' (edit the raws) and turn zinc ore or bars into some weapons grade metal, do ask.