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[petroxus]

In my current fortress, a zombie camel perched at least 4 z-levels up on the edge of a vertical cliff completely disrupted all activity below even though he was not a threat based on the pathable distance to him.   If the camel could fly, shoot projectiles, or jump like the bionic woman I'd understand.  I chalk this up to "if dwarf is withing n-distance then have him freak out and cancel current task".

It took me quite a while to realize that there wasn't a stealth camel lurking about.

[Chariot]

i noticed with my current fort that falling seems to count as pathing for freaking out dwarves.
settled on a ruin and immediately walled my dwarves in and dug down. all was well except one mason trapped outside. my dwarves were happily taking things from the wagon with skeletons a few squares away untill i ramped up to let the mason in from outside. dwarves immediately panicked(understandable, was now a path), and they remained panicking even after i removed the ramp(was possible for skeletons to fall in and hurt them but no other way. as soon as i rewalled in that square, the dwarves calmed down and went back to accessing the wagon with skeletons on the other side of the wall

[Mr. Boh]

A similar thing happened to me with antmen. A couple of them sat on a cliff one level above my main entrance. I couldn't send soldiers up there, and when I dug a small staircase up a little ways away my soldiers wouldn't move up there when set to be stationed. I think they were trying to attack the antmen from the lower level, as they were one space next to and below the antmen and wouldn't budge.

The rest of my dwarves shuffled around outside waiting to die of thirst. It basically destroyed my fortress.

[ November 28, 2007: Message edited by: Mr. Boh ]

[Alfador]

Suggestion for personality profiles: Bravery vs. cowardice = chance to not flee from lesser or greater threats. Intelligent threat assessment: "I am an untrained peasant who could be killed by a kitten. I should probably run away from those five marksgoblins." versus "I am a Legendary miner wielding a steel pick and I also have full Adamantine plate. I have nothing to fear from the fox on top of that cliff over there."

...Until I mod in fire-breathing foxes, that is.

[EDIT: You probably think I'm joking about that last bit. Mind, I *did* intend to make you laugh, but I'm actually working on a mod that has a laundry list of real-life fox species to rival Toady's gibbons, plus a few supernatural sorts and maybe a playable humanoid civ. I'm also thinking of making a mod with all sorts of critters from Half-life. Just for fun, you understand: I'd just love to have a vortigaunt adventurer in full headcrab chitin armor. XD ]

[ November 28, 2007: Message edited by: Alfador ]

[Keldor]

The core problem is that if a dwarf EVER has a line of sight to a hostile creature, they panic and drop everything they're doing.  It doesn't matter if the monster is up a cliff, trapped in a pit, or behind a sturdy set of fortifications.  Compounding this is the fact that dwarves tend to move 2 squares away from where they could see the monster, then notice that they can no longer see it, and go back to whatever they were doing before, which usually brings them back within sight of the scary monster.  Repeat until they are either killed (if the monster CAN in fact reach them) or until they decide to take a nap or have dinner.

[ November 28, 2007: Message edited by: Keldor ]