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[ErrorJustin]

Very similar to someone else's story with a fire imp. My dwarves are caught in an infinite loop of trying to retrieve an item, and then being scared by some Troglodytes that are in a cave about 5 Z-levels up. They Trogs wouldn't be visible , to boot. There's at least one layer of rock between them and the area my dwarves are in.

Edit: I take it back. They aren't on a cave, they're on a cliff face. So it's possible my dwarves' line of side does reach all the way up there, and the trogs are legitimately scaring them away.

But the problem is... even if this isn't a formal "bug," it's still broken my fortress. The only way to stop the cycle is to completely turn off item hauling. I tried drafting my dwarves, but there's no path to the trogs. I can't MAKE a path, because the miners get too scared to get  close enough to mine...

[ November 09, 2007: Message edited by: ErrorJustin ]

[Tahin]

Yeah. "Fear" is pretty broken at the moment. In regard to fixes, do you, by chance, happen to have any marksdwarves?

[Erasmus Darwin]

I ran into a similar problem.  There were some ant men on top of an inaccessible cliff overlooking my starting location.  My miners didn't even grab their gear before running away from the wagon and got stuck in a similar "go grab pick, MONSTER!, run away, I still need my pick" loop.

Fortunately, there were a few workarounds.  First, I drafted them so they could go grab their gear.  Then I undrafted and let them start mining a little further away from where the ant men were.

Unfortunately, I ran into a new problem.  I wasted enough time trying to figure things out that my dwarves had become thirsty and were stuck in a similar fetch/flee loop with the kegs.  However, I used the new forbid option (WHICH ROCKS) to forbid the entire wagon and contents, and they happily drank from the nearby brook.

Finally, I tunneled to where the ant men were.  Before I broke through, I grouped 6 of my 7 dwarves as a military squad and stationed them in the tunnel.  Then I dug out the final square and quickly militarized the remaining miner.  My dwarves charged the ant men and quickly knocked 2 of them off the edge of the cliff.  The ant men flew a good 8-12 squares past the edge of the cliff before plummeting to the ground below.  Didn't even receive a scratch.

Anyway, in your case, rather than turning off item hauling, you should just forbid the few items that're causing the dwarves trouble.  You might want to also designate the area as a restricted traffic zone to minimize job cancellations and other grief.  You might also be able to sneak a miner through there by tunneling underground before trying to come up through the cliff.  Hopefully, the extra layer of rock will shield the miner from monster panic.

[ErrorJustin]

I'm not even sure what item my Dwarves are trying to get, so I haven't been able to forbid it, unfortunately. MY only hope is to try a more elaborate mining setup. But there's a BUNCH of Trogs in the cave, so all I'll really be doing is accelerating the end of this fortress, ha.

In regards to Fear - yeah, it does seem broken. I had a Berserk camel (don't ask), and all my Dwarves were freaking out, running away from it. When I militerized them, they killed the camel no problem, barely receiving a scratch.

[BDR]

This sorta gives me an idea; I think fear should be *learned*, not omnipresent.  IOW, your dwarves won't initially be afraid of anything they haven't seen before, but if a monster proves hard to kill and/or starts to tear dwarves apart, they'll get scared quickly.

[elkman]

I had a sort of similar problem in which a giant eagle at 2 z levels from the surface made my miners cancel their mining jobs at around 15 z levels below ground.

[Stromko]

quote:Originally posted by BDR:
<STRONG>This sorta gives me an idea; I think fear should be *learned*, not omnipresent.</STRONG>

I think trolls and werewolves are legitimately scary to civilian dwarves, and they shouldn't have to learn that. I think the simplest solution would be a command sort of like Forbid, except with the opposite effect of making civilians ignore the creature. It'd be useful for all cases where the creature is not a legitimate threat, like digging near the pit and seeing trogs 8 floors down. It'd be a disruption but you'd have a fix.