Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Marksdwarves won't shoot Giant Badgers without a [K]ill order  (Read 923 times)

nomad_delta

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile

So my current embark seems to be regularly invading by the notorious conga-line of Giant Badgers and I've already lost plenty of dwarves to random attacks by them when they Enrage!

So I tried stationing my military dwarves (either a handful of swords-dwarves or a squad of 10 crossbow-dwarves) outside in the field near where the badgers were conga-dancing and my outside-dwarves were working to protect them...

...but my dwarves don't seem to consider the Giant Badgers hostile until they Enrage, so they don't attack.  I can give them a [K]ill order for *one* of the badgers and they'll all chase it around the map, but this just leaves them strung out all over the place and only one badger down if I'm lucky...  meanwhile the *other* badgers Enrage and kill random woodcutters or fisherdwarves and haulers and such.

Is there anything I can do to station my dwarves or have them patrol an area and automatically attack Giant Badgers, regular badgers, badger-men, and anything generally badger-like and dangerous?

--nomad_delta
Logged

DrKillPatient

  • Bay Watcher
  • The yak falls infinitely
    • View Profile
Re: Marksdwarves won't shoot Giant Badgers without a [K]ill order
« Reply #1 on: May 19, 2011, 04:45:17 pm »

You can hit k, then r to select a number of enemies in a rectangle. That allows you to select the whole conga line.
Logged
"Frankly, if you're hanging out with people who tell you to use v.begin() instead of &v[0], you need to rethink your social circle."
    Scott Meyers, Effective STL

I've written bash scripts to make using DF easier under Linux!

nomad_delta

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Marksdwarves won't shoot Giant Badgers without a [K]ill order
« Reply #2 on: May 19, 2011, 05:29:27 pm »

You can hit k, then r to select a number of enemies in a rectangle. That allows you to select the whole conga line.

Holy crap, are you serious?  I had no idea a squad could have multiple [K]ill orders active at the same time, by any method.  I'm going to try this out right away -- THANKS!  :)  Do you happen to know how they treat the list?  Do they all focus on one at a time and go down the list in order until they're all dead, or do they scatter and attack anything on the list a random, separately?  (I'll probably find this out when I try it...)

I wonder if there's some way to have the military treat certain animals as always hostile, though.  I mean, when goblins or trolls or whatever show up I don't have to tell my military to kill them one-by-one, they just *know* that goblins are bad news and will fight them on sight.  I want my military dwarves to behave exactly the same way when they see a Giant Badger, or a grizzly bear, or a cougar, or whatever.  Maybe there's a [tag] in the raws on certain creatures (like goblins and their mounts, trolls, etc) so the dwarves know to attack them?

What'd be great is if there were a "treat creature type as hostile" screen in the menus similar to the menu for deciding which foods are ok to "Cook" or "Brew".  That way we could decide that Giant Badgers (and Fluffy Wamblers!) are evil and put out a standing order to kill them on sight.

--nomad_delta
Logged

MythagoWoods

  • Bay Watcher
  • Beware it's deadly sway!
    • View Profile
Re: Marksdwarves won't shoot Giant Badgers without a [K]ill order
« Reply #3 on: May 19, 2011, 05:42:46 pm »

You can hit k, then r to select a number of enemies in a rectangle. That allows you to select the whole conga line.

I... did not know that.  Damn that'll save me a lot of time and cannon fodder dwarves when the Conga line of Doom arrives.
Logged
My cows are war trainable. BEWARE THE BATTLE CATTLE!

sharpie

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Marksdwarves won't shoot Giant Badgers without a [K]ill order
« Reply #4 on: May 19, 2011, 05:51:59 pm »

You can also hold shift when selecting which military group or which animals from the list.  So for example, you hit then hold [shift] while pressing [a], then , then [c], then press [k], you will effectively issue your kill order to all military groups.  That kill order can be expanded the same way, by holding shift.
Logged

FluidDynamite

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Marksdwarves won't shoot Giant Badgers without a [K]ill order
« Reply #5 on: May 19, 2011, 09:01:25 pm »

You can hit k, then r to select a number of enemies in a rectangle. That allows you to select the whole conga line.

FluidDynamite cancels read thread: Going to "facepalm moments you had". >.>
Logged

Lagslayer

  • Bay Watcher
  • stand-up philosopher
    • View Profile
Re: Marksdwarves won't shoot Giant Badgers without a [K]ill order
« Reply #6 on: May 19, 2011, 09:06:56 pm »

Quite frankly, I'd be reluctant to take on a giant badger as well.

Kestrel

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Marksdwarves won't shoot Giant Badgers without a [K]ill order
« Reply #7 on: May 19, 2011, 09:24:35 pm »

You can hit k, then r to select a number of enemies in a rectangle. That allows you to select the whole conga line.

I... did not know that.  Damn that'll save me a lot of time and cannon fodder dwarves when the Conga line of Doom arrives.
It's amazing what happens when you read the in-game menus.
Logged
Goblin 6 (to Goblin 7): I heard that I died.
Goblin 7 (to Goblin 6): I died.
Goblin 6 (to Goblin 7): It was inevitable.
Goblin 7 (to Goblin 6): It was inevitable.

evileeyore

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Marksdwarves won't shoot Giant Badgers without a [K]ill order
« Reply #8 on: May 19, 2011, 10:43:42 pm »

Quite frankly, I'd be reluctant to take on a giant badger as well.
Not even for an UristSnack*?







* It's booze.
Logged

Mechatronic

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Marksdwarves won't shoot Giant Badgers without a [K]ill order
« Reply #9 on: May 20, 2011, 12:01:30 am »

You can also hit l for a list of things on the map you can kill. Note that this includes animals and merchants.

Squads will attack one enemy at a time IIRC. You can hit p to select individual dwarves from squads, then select a squad to give each dwarf in it separate orders. So you can assign each dwarf to a specific invader to kill.
Logged