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[jaybee]

I am trying to get catapults going in my fortress. Unfortunately when I try to give my dwarves practice using them they spend ages walking to the deepest bowels of my fortress to get stones, when there are plenty lying right next to them. Is there any way to get them to use closer stones?

[ShadowDragon8685]

They're probably pathfinding to the nearest stone using Z-Axis calculations. There's two things for it:

1: Set up the practice room with a trench in front of a wall and a way to climb down and back up to the practice room from the trench. Lock them in, and they'll have a closed system of stone to work with.

2 (Preferred): As 1, but use Ballastae and ballasta bolts instead. Much faster reloads means much faster training anyway, and you'll have a limited amount of bolts, so they'll never be able to go somewhere ridiculous to get them.

[jaybee]

damn, I set up my practice area adjacent to a major housing area that I want swept clean of stone. my real hope here was to basically destroy rock, not recyle it. oh well...

I don't know about any crazy calculations, they are literally wading through miles of stone on their way to that one special one somewhere far away.

[ShadowDragon8685]

quote:Originally posted by jaybee:
<STRONG>damn, I set up my practice area adjacent to a major housing area that I want swept clean of stone. my real hope here was to basically destroy rock, not recyle it. oh well...

I don't know about any crazy calculations, they are literally wading through miles of stone on their way to that one special one somewhere far away.</STRONG>

Build a lot of roads and drawbridges. Or just set up a large stone-horde and accept that it's gonna take awhile for it to get clean.

[Derakon]

quote:Originally posted by jaybee:
<STRONG>I don't know about any crazy calculations, they are literally wading through miles of stone on their way to that one special one somewhere far away.</STRONG>

When the dwarf picks up the "load catapult" job, he asks himself, "What's the closest stone to where I am right now, assuming I could walk through solid rock?" And then he picks that stone, and will accept no other, and will walk as far as it takes to pick up that stone, ignoring everything else he sees along the way.

Sink some staircases near your catapults and they won't walk as far.

[BurnedToast]

make a dump zone under a drawbridge and use it to smash all your excess stone (and other various garbage) into nothing.

[jaybee]

so catapults just aren't the answer to clearing stone. I'm going to have to manually tag for dumping every stone I want out of this area?

[Derakon]

Catapults will destroy stone, and they'll give your dwarves statboosts while doing so. But the only quick way to clear stone out is to designate it for dumping and have a legion of haulers. The other methods people use tend to be more hands-off, but also much slower.

[jaybee]

well what I mean is - that while it's great that catapults can destroy stone at the same time as they train my guys, in practice it doesn't actually work since the guys will:
1. walk past the stones I want gone on their way to get stones on other levels, and
2. spend so much time walking that they're not doing much training.

not to mention the fact that if a dwarf spends about a 20:1 ratio of time walking to find stones vs. firing a catapult, catapults must not be terribly useful in actual combat situation. there present firing rate is about once every 2-3 minutes (of real time.)

[Moron]

I find this often happens with stone in general; dwarves will walk miles to get a stone and ignore closer ones whether they are building, making stone crafts or whatever. I think it might be something to do with when the stone was mined - ie the dwarves will automatically go to whichever stone was most recently mined at the time they decided they wanted a stone.

Of course by the time they get there it may no longer be recently mined so its not always that obvious.

[Quift]

bah, eventually the stones that you wish to have cleaned will be the closest ones. it might take time, but thats the way it works.

dumping the stones into magma or the chasm isn't very quick either but it allows you a greater control of which stones to dump. Remember that strong and agile dvarves are almost trice more efficient that normal ones.

build a gym!

[Puck]

I assume the catapult (mind you I never used one) is ABOVE all the stones in your fortress... in that case, build a stone stockpile RIGHT below your catapult, making the pathfinding (if it works as described) pick the stones from there.

ofc the other dwarves will ahve to move the stones there first, but thats no biggie imho, hauling would need to be done either way.

set the pile to only accept stones you want to get rid off and make sure there arent any other stockpiles accepting these, or let the catapult stonepile take from your other piles.

now if a catapult operator cannot take from a pile (which i assume he can, but anyway....) you would need to periodically remove the pile.

ofc this whole thing wont work, if you dont have any room left to pull it off, but if "pathfinding" is causing this, you should be able to trick it to use stones from a pile between the catapult and the major rockblob.

think "straight line between catapult and rocks", and block that with your catapult stone pile. add stairs to minimize walking distance.

[ June 12, 2008: Message edited by: Puck ]