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[Stromko]

Well I just lost a nice little fort, it's become too frustrating, because I lost track of one of the migrant waves(didn't have a chance to set their jobs as they walked up) and one of them was a hunter. It also happens I have a huge infestation of zombie elephants, walking nigh-unkillable siege engines. I should add I know this is a pretty common occurence, I guess I'm just venting and giving others a fresh place to vent about it too.  

So of course the hunter attacks a pack of zombie elephants, somehow deciding to do so at the extreme northwest edge of the map, dies, and now every Tom, Dick, and Udnikildrem in my fort wants to go out and get a nice pair of boots, not to mention the ammo and crossbow out there.

Even locking everybody in the fort isn't an elegant solution, watching an endless line of dwarves run up to the entrance and then turn back when they realize they aren't allowed gets old real fast.      

It'd serve as a good reason to build up and have a nice standing army to try and beat back the elephants, if I didn't have so long to go and if the endless questing for odds'n'ends off the corpse didn't drain untold cycles of productivity. It's certainly going to require Champions to make any dent on packs of undead elephants, so I'd have a long long way to go, and the fact that if I allow soldiers access to the outside they seem to prefer to go grab the dead hunter's stuff above all else is kind of a non-starter too(lost five recruits that way, multiplying my 'store in stockpile'/'gather equipment' problems).

It'd be nice if we had an option to just shut off hunting, on maps where it's clearly too dangerous. All I've got is packs of zombie everything, crossbow aren't good at killing them so any hunting expedition is doomed to failure.

Now that I think about it, I believe I heard there'll be a 'mark area forbidden' option in the next version of DF, so that might help too so long as dwarves don't just walk up and stop when they reach the forbidden area. If it stops them from even -thinking- of interacting with the forbidden area, it'd be a perfect solution to un-accessable corpses and items.

edit: It's not just the corpses they're trying to jam in stockpiles, Zargen, they also want the clothes for themselves. There's no way to tell them to stop clothing themselves more, even if I got rid of all the stockpiles and didn't want anybody to equip anything they were carrying (which unfortunately occured with five of my recruits), they'd still go out for their boots.  

[ October 18, 2007: Message edited by: Stromko ]

[Zargen]

Isn't there a 'Dwarves do not gather corpses' command? Or at least dont gather refuse from outside >.o

[kuro_suna]

quote:Originally posted by Zargen:
<STRONG>Isn't there a 'Dwarves do not gather corpses' command? Or at least dont gather refuse from outside >.o</STRONG>

their is a "don't gather refuse from outside" option but dwarf corpses are not considered refuse,

....
though human and elf traders killed by elephants just get tossed in with the rest of the fort's garbage,  that can't be good for foreign relations

[Stromko]

Hrm, I suppose it'd be inevitable that a caravan guard or something would get stomped by the elephants and that'd cause the same problem I'm seeing with the dead hunter, and the typical escalation as more and more folks run out and get killed.

So I just have to hope the 'forbid area' marking in the next version works, and stops inaccessible equipment from interrupting dwarves and causing them to announce order cancellations constantly.

For the time being I might just keep all my dwarves inside and turn off order cancellation spam though. All the dorks running up to gates to grab it and giving up are certainly hurting productiity but it's survivable I think.

[pushy]

quote:Originally posted by Stromko:
<STRONG>It'd be nice if we had an option to just shut off hunting, on maps where it's clearly too dangerous.</STRONG>

Umm, you do. Highlight any trappers/hunters you've got in your fortress, press [p]-[l] to bring up their Labor options and scroll down to Hunting (near the top of the third 'page') and press Enter to deactivate it. The hunter/trapper will drop his/her gear and proceed with less interesting activities such as hauling (or whatever other things s/he is assigned to do)

[Fedor]

If you want to play on, there are things you can do to reduce the problem.  The most immediately useful is simply to make a one-grid stockpile under the dead dwarf that accepts everything currently in the grid - body, clothes, weapon, etc..  Then either use the 'j' menu to remove suspicious tasks or just disallow going outside for long enough to clear all pending jobs.

Other options exist.  You can:
* delete all stockpiles that accept the kinds of things the deceased was carrying.  A lot of these stockpiles aren't helpful in most cases anyway and just tie up haulers.
* turn off burial until the coast is clear (or you have another death)
* aaaand the ever-reliable Dwarven standby:  Nuke the world with lava and loot the smoking remains! :evil:

[ October 18, 2007: Message edited by: Fedor ]

[Fedor]

quote:Originally posted by pushy:
<STRONG>Umm, you do. Highlight any trappers/hunters you've got in your fortress, press [p]-[l] to bring up their Labor options and scroll down to Hunting (near the top of the third 'page') and press Enter to deactivate it. The hunter/trapper will drop his/her gear and proceed with less interesting activities such as hauling (or whatever other things s/he is assigned to do)</STRONG>

However ... if you get enough hunterdwarves, you will get a House Fer representative.  Hunters/trappers who don't get suitable jobs may (only when the Dwarven Economy is on?  Either way?) eventually refuse to work at anything.  I now have two of them who just would not accept any civilian task (wouldn't even trap).  All they wanted to do was complain to their guild and wander around  with "no job" tasked.  Eventually I lost patience and made them low-level marksdwarves stationed at points of danger.

[Stromko]

Pushy, turning off hunting is what I always do, my fortress got messed up because a migrant wave showed up when I was busy with other things and, just once, they managed to get to their jobs before I could reset them. One of them turned out to be a trapper, impossible to differentiate from the other trappers who I'd already gotten to, and had himself killed on the top left side of the map before I knew what he was doing.

That stockpile idea is a good one though! Thanks Fedor, I'll see if that works. Apparently some of the dwarves have 'claimed' items outside and will try to get them anyway though, or use 'Pickup Equipment' jobs (even as civilians) to go for them, but this should eliminate the Store in Stockpile jobs and keep most dwarves away.

[ October 18, 2007: Message edited by: Stromko ]

[apache1990]

Somehow I managed to have absolutely NO wildlife outside my fortress, so I just draft all my hunters into the military.

[Jaqie Fox]

one very easy way to fix this problem is to use the 'granite.exe' third party tool to 'wall off' the corpse and items inside walls... they dont even bother trying that anymore as there is no route.

[pushy]

quote:Originally posted by apache1990:
<STRONG>Somehow I managed to have absolutely NO wildlife outside my fortress, so I just draft all my hunters into the military.</STRONG>

Happened with me once as well. I made the hunters fill any gaps I needed filled in my fledgling fortress.

[jellyman]

On the 'no way to tell the immigrant hunter from the reassigned hunter' problem:  I always give all my immigrants customer profession names when I reassign their tasks.  That way I can identify the immigrants on my unit list as the ones with the standard game issued professions.

[Thallone]

Ways to correct this in the future:
1) Assign Everyone custom professions as they arrive (even the nobles and children)
2) Reassign everyone's jobs with the dwarven foreman (even the nobles and children)
3) In the foreman, at all times ensure that the colums for hunter and trapper are cleared