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[MaxZero]

Hi all

I had a little search on the subject of troops picking up waterskins and found some things that were a bit out of date so I figured I would ask.

I've made a very nice binfull of waterskins which the troops are all ignoring. Is there anything I do to at least encourage them to go and get one? In addition, a prior discussion on backpacks mentioned that Dwarves tend to switch backpacks, leaving claimed food to rot in places. Does this behavior still happen and/or does anyone use backpacks in their fort?

Secondly, do any of you guys give squads free time and other jobs around the fortress to satisfy unhappy thoughts like not doing anything creative? Are there other techniques to minimizing possible impact of these?

Cheers!

[PatrikLundell]

There are at least two issues with food and waterskins:
1. The old one is that militia that go off duty drop/store any food in their backpacks in their rooms (in a chest/bag if they have one) and never pick it up again. If out on the floor it rots and spreads miasma. I haven't seen that happening with waterskins.

2. Raiding is severely bugged in many aspects (including a crash inducing bug). One issue is that militia equipment tends to be dropped when raiders return and they all become civilians (despite the squad being on duty), and the waterskins seem to remain allocated to militia but never picked up again (often/always without any other waterskin being picked up either). Issue #1 stopped me from ever allocating food to militia, so I don't know how it (fails to) interact with raiding.

Bins cause issues of various kinds, as access to bin contents are subject to multiple bugs.

I try to have the winter as Rest and Recreation season in my fortresses to allow dorfs to pick up on socializing/praying/reading, although gobbo sieges and cleaning up the mess generated by them tends to make the occurrence spotty.

So far I haven't done anything to address work needs, apart from having all dorfs that have mooded in militia squads and give them one or two months of training per year (typically during autumn/winter [counting it as "recreation"]).

[anewaname]

I have about 50 waterskins being carried by dwarfs and I haven't changed their uniform or supply settings for 8+ dwarf years. Are your squads expected to carry supplies? Are they set to "Inactive = Uniformed"? Are they having problems equipping other uniform items (a failure to equip certain armor items might delay the wearing of backpacks and waterskins, in the same way that a dwarf that cannot pick up a crossbow will not equip the quiver and bolts)?

All military equipment except ammo is kept in bins and there are rarely conflict messages, but with Inactive=CivilianClothes, there might be spam when the squad goes on-duty as several dwarfs go for the same bin.

Training schedules are two months on-duty then one month off-duty, and every new migrant is given a "craft" skill. There are sets of workshops that auto-queue a few jobs each month or season and only allow lower-skilled dwarfs to work there. So, many Dabbling craftdwarfs, mostly weaponsmiths.

I have a few backpacks in use and have seen no rotted food but could have missed it. There is a stockpile for Refuse Items and food that becomes rotted would be moved there.

[PatrikLundell]

Food stored in dorfs' rooms are not hauled to the refuse stockpile as they're marked as owned.

[Pvt. Pirate]

can i still sell owned stuff?

[Symmetry]

Food stored in dorfs' rooms are not hauled to the refuse stockpile as they're marked as owned.

dfhack has a periodic fix for this when run through LNP by default.

[PatrikLundell]

Food stored in dorfs' rooms are not hauled to the refuse stockpile as they're marked as owned.

dfhack has a periodic fix for this when run through LNP by default.

DFHack isn't part of DF, so it's not used by everyone (although I do). "cleanowned" isn't as much a fix as a mitigation, as it causes the dropped items to be reclaimed and sometimes hauled away before they rot, rather than blocking the dropping of the items in the first place.

[daggaz]

Isn't the "fix" for the rotten food problem, to simply make military dwarves' bedrooms above ground?  Now their rotten olm sandwiches won't make miasma, and they avoid cave adaption at the same time.  Plus you get to make a cool castle and set up a tower/subterranean bunker system for guarding your domain and protecting visitors and migrants.

[Superdorf]

Isn't the "fix" for the rotten food problem, to simply make military dwarves' bedrooms above ground?  Now their rotten olm sandwiches won't make miasma, and they avoid cave adaption at the same time.  Plus you get to make a cool castle and set up a tower/subterranean bunker system for guarding your domain and protecting visitors and migrants.

Heyy, that never occurred to me! I gotta try that sometime; I tend to shove my bedrooms above-ground anyway...

[FantasticDorf]

I always keep a worker's militia of people running jobs (smiths etc) out of the captain of the guard + militia squad with the intention of them never leaving site (it'd break squad management to have them go missing/captured abroad) with no training schedule so they can keep working limited fortress jobs, and a lot of war beasts to pad them up (war beasts offsite are buggy and have names making it harder to distinguish, so i keep them away)

I've been unable to find a nice medium because 24/7 individual idle train drilling does work to raise skills and also makes them exercise a lot, but squads set to training get benefit of sparring and leadership + teacher, i dont touch the others because station and burrow guarding duties have issues with backpacks, for whatever reason they tend to end up going hungry when within them.

Should i set up a training period once every two seasons?

[zhamz]

Not sure about the food problems, but my current work strategy has been my most successful in terms of happiness.

I have 4 squads (more but 4 is good for example) Spring Squad,
Summer Squad, Autumn Squad, Winter Squad.

Each is scheduled for Training during the seasonal months, all other months set to inactive. They all are inactive = Uniformed.

Then each season rotate each squad through work duties.

Military Training
Labor (hauling, building, etc..)
Resource (Mining, Butchery, Wood Cutting etc...)
Crafting (Cooking, Carpentry, Mason, Weaving, metal etc..)

So a squad during its season is military, then next season is labor, next season is resource, etc...  I change their active labor skills through DT every season.

All the dorfs stay diversified, trained, and well socialized.  For those few that don't conform to this and insist on being unhappy, I have a reserve squad that I put them in and assign them specialized duty, which usually means they are a noble.

[Pvt. Pirate]

still haven't figured out that schedule thing - i tried following the wiki guides and it just didn't work as intended.

[zhamz]

still haven't figured out that schedule thing - i tried following the wiki guides and it just didn't work as intended.

As far as I can tell you have to setup the schedule AND you have to manually toggle the barracks. If you don't do both then it seems random what the dwarves actually do.  Which makes the whole schedule pointless as far as training goes, not sure about patrols etc..

If you have the schedule to train but a barracks isn't set for them to train at, then sometimes they train, sometimes they do labors/socialize etc...

If you have the barracks set for them to train but not the schedule then sometimes they train and sometimes they do labors/socialize etc...

But if you have both the barracks and the schedule set to train then they WILL be at the barracks training (except for running around eating and sleeping).

I also do the third step and remove all their labors while I want them to train, but I don't think its needed.

That is the best I can figure.

[anewaname]

This is mostly what zhamz covered, but some parts are clarified...

A dwarf in a squad needs a place to train (barracks or archery target). That is what the 'T' at the barracks represent, "you dwarfs can train here". Give them the place to train, and they will train sometimes when they are off-duty (Individual Combat Drills and Archery Practice only). This activity is like going to the tavern or the temple, it can be interrupted by the need to do other work (but the dwarf may need to rest first). Basically, the dwarf's sense of duty, respect for military skills, or eagerness to "do the right thing" gets them into the barracks for some solo training. So, some dwarfs with free time will be at the tavern instead of the barracks...

You can also set their squad to Active (using Squads menu or Military Alerts menu), then they will follow their Schedule. So if you still have the default schedule, they will go on-duty and train constantly. When they are on Active duty, they will do Individual Combat Drills until they have a few ranks in some skills, then they will start training together with Sparring, Demonstrations, and other stuff.

You should not need to remove their labors when they are on Active duty. A dwarf with Carpentry labor enabled who is on an Active 12-month-per-year schedule will never respond to jobs at the workshop, even when they are set to "Now".

[FantasticDorf]

Training only pertains to demonstrations, and you can tell them to be uniformed or un-uniformed via schedule specifically by editing the schedule order with e on the schedule screen (needs shift + enter to confirm the changes). Including setting the numbers of dwarves required to be at the demonstration which is at default of ten but can be edited to be half that number or somewhere inbetween or 0 to force them all to drill (might be good for ranged units if using the range is considered a demonstration).

I've found a fine balance in training my soldiers once a season (the middle month) as a sort of clock for myself on time progression now. Some other military tips is that telling squad members to equip a specific material will bookmark that as its top capacity limit. For example, i play a bit of the masterwork modification, there's lots of tiers of armors with efficiencies but if i set my squads via broad uniforms to equip iron armor pieces only, they'll pick up availible inferior products but always stop improving to the quality of iron gear. Telling them to equip broadly listed metal objects will make them perpetually pick up stronger metal armors.

• In default vanilla, setting to copper, bronze or iron (depending on resources) would be cheap enough, then unsetting squad commanders and important soldiers to 'metal' would make them pick up and replace equipment to steel or adamantine grade, if modded variants are availible they'll also pick up stronger cloth + silk and leather passive/actively set clothing depending on how you've made your armor list