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[Tekkud the Farmer]

Hi all,

I'm having an extremely irritating problem inside DF v40.13: My cavern cage traps caught some blind cave ogres lately and I want to just let my military dwarves have some fun with them. But no matter what I do, I can't seem to get my squads to attack the damn monster. I've tried everything I could think of: I asked my macedwarves to kill it directly (squad->k->ogre), I stationed my macedwarves near it (squad->m), I tried asking my crossbowdwarves to do the same thing. I commanded the ogre to be chained outside, to be put in a cage outside, and also ordering the chain to be deconstructed so the ogre is left to wander free (it worked for I think the first ogre but not the other two). All combinations did not work at all; my military was content to just stand about 2 tiles away from the ogre while perhaps one or two stood right on top of him (the archer squad not exempt), and did not even swing their weapons at all. And it got me extremely frustrated because the ogre was starting to prey on my civilians who were being good citizens, minding their own business and throwing the refuse outside, and all the military could do was just STAND THERE. I really need help with this, can someone tell me if this is a bug or not? Either case, how do I get my military to actually work?

Below is a screenshot of the ogre's combat log, you can see just how many times the militia captain allowed the ogre to take swipes at him:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here's a screenshot of my military standing around the (chained) ogre at my entrance (note the lack of combat logs):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

More info on my military:
I have a squad of 9 macedwarves and 1 axedwarf, fully equipped with iron armor and silver maces (an iron axe for the axedwarf). About half of them are mace lords due to danger-room training. (Ended up with this squad composition due to the large amounts of galena on my site.)
Another squad of 10 crossbowdwarves with full leather armor, and definitely some bolts available. I was making wooden bolts for them to train with throughout the play, and I just imported 100+ metal bolts (bronze and similar) from the dwarven caravan last season.
A third squad of 1 lonely crossbowdwarf, also fully equipped, didn't send this one out against the ogre.
The final squad of 4 more macedwarves and 1 speardwarf. All also fully equipped and danger-rrom trained, though since they're made up of the newer migrants they aren't as experienced.
Schedule set for them to cycle between training and resting every month, and to guard the entrance every sixth month to prevent cave adaptation. (Screenshots available on request.)

I know killing stuff on a chain definitely works in this version and fort. I couldn't get my macedwarves to mince the naked mole dogs I caught, but the smaller squad with the speardwarf did it very quickly. So maybe it's something with maces that's causing the problem? Or is it something to do with the size of the creature?

I've just reverted back to the old save when it's just the start of winter, ready to do the right thing once someone provides a solution.
If you need any more info I'd be glad to provide.

[kevinfragger2427]

Ooooh, keep the save where you have the bug, and report it to the bugtracker. That's a good one. It may actually be a problem with the state of the creature. (being chained, the game may have labelled it as an inactive object, so the dwarves may be ignoring it because of this)

[Tekkud the Farmer]

Will the bug tracker accept it? Because I'm not exactly sure what causes it to happen, i.e. how to replicate it. I was able to order a successful kill on one of the ogres for a moment, after releasing it from his chain. But for another ogre, after it was reluctantly released from its chain as well, my military continued to hang around it doing nothing while it engaged my civilians, who fought back with no problems. (At least, they fought as well as a civilian can be expected to fight against the hulking eyeless brute. Which is to say they scratched and punched uselessly at the beast's limbs until they got their skulls pounded in.)

[bluephoenix]

There is already a thread about it, the bug has been around for a while but hasn't been looked at yet for some reason.
Thread  bugreport

[PatrikLundell]

My understanding is that you should release hostile monsters using special procedures if you want to fight them. Haven't yet had an opportunity to do that myself yet, though.
I think there are two ways of doing that:
1. Hook a lever to the cage and release the monster by pulling the lever, with your militia at the ready.
2. Place the cage at one of the 8 squares around a hole (with a hatch to prevent the monsters from getting out), and then "pit" the monster. There's a wiki page describing the process. You can then either greet the monster with your militia waiting in the room below, pit first and enter afterwards, or have some monster disposal facilities down the hole (lava is a dwarven favourite). I think this is actually the same as just releasing them, with the benefit that they can't attack the civilian releasing them, so the bug might still affect you.

Someone who actually knows how this works might provide better info. Post your save on the tracker, with all the relevant info you can think of. If they can get anything useful out of the save, they will, and if it's too late they will still look at your description, but then sadly shrug if the save cannot provide any info.

[Tekkud the Farmer]

Alright, I've added the world save to the notes for this bug: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=8250
Thanks for the replies you guys have given, they're appreciated! 

And they really haven't looked at this bug yet, for some reason. That's really unfortunate, seeing how common as well as how frustrating/game-breaking it is.    Hope it gets ironed out soon.