Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Chattox]

I just embarked on a new site, absolutely perfect for my needs. I set my miners digging and they get to it no problem. Once they've dug out an area large enough to move everyone in, I set a food stockpile down there and a garbage zone and set everything that isn't food to be dumped there. I wait for a little while, nothing happens. The dwarves that aren't miners wont go underground. I set some building orders down there and they wont go and build it! What's going on?

EDIT: My miners then got stuck underground and nearly died of thirst as the booze was on the surface and they were too stupid to walk up the ramps to get to it. However, I then told them to dig a straight stairwell to the surface, which they did, and this fixed the problem. It would seem that dwarfs hate ramps rather than being underground. This has never happened before, though 

[Cotes]

Disconnected stairs/ramps, possibly. Note that ramps can only be used to climb on top of a wall they are next to, not floors. Even if the floor is supported by a wall that is next to the ramp as well. That often causes problems if you are not paying attention.

Are you getting any job cancellation announcements, and are you miners still getting up to surface?

EDIT: In that case you are almost certainly just not understanding how ramps are supposed to work or missing something.

A design like this is not viable:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Needs to have a wall with open space above it next to the ramp. They can't be used to climb directly on a floor with no solid wall underneath.

[Chattox]

Neither of those, the problem was fixed by a stairwell, but before that the miners were stuck in the entrance hall, dying of thirst. Meanwhile the other dwarfs stood around on the surface, wondering where their friends had gone.

[Cotes]

But the problem was not (likely, anyway) that the dwarves were too stupid to use ramps, but you making bad ramp design. Check your ramps carefully.

[fox967]

Ive had problems with ramps, too. For some reason the dwarfs would not use them to go up/down.

It wasnt anything complex, either. It was just a corridor with a ramp at the end, that led to a corridor (going the same way) on the lower Z level.
The strange thing is, after i learned that the dwarfs were having problems, i dug another corridor, the exact same way as before, and they used it fine. There was nothing that i could see that
should have caused them problems.

[Lytha]

Yep, definitely disconnected ramps. The ramp must lead to a wall on the same z-level. One z-level above needs to be dug out. You probably cut down one of the walls and then everything became wonky.

Don't worry, Chattox, this happens to everyone once in a while. At least you got the miners back out before they died and left you on the surface, without any picks.

[Cotes]

Indeed. My most common screw up is accidentally assigning tiles beneath ones assigned for channeling for mining, which makes the miners remove the ramps behind them as they dig tunnels. There's actually a risk of killing them in process when you have a huge sprawling mining complex and a lot else on your mind - You just plain don't check the area or the miners often enough to notice in time.

Still, what fox described there is strange. I quite often end up making spiral (or rather, helix) staircases through caverns, which leads to a plentiful mix of constructed and dug ramps, walls and floors. You'd think I'd come across any possible bugs... Then again, maybe I'll try starting one as a 1 tile wide staircase next time, rather than a 3 tile wide. It is possible I just don't notice since there's always three ramps per level (when I'm done anyway), making the dwarves just walk around the bugged ones.

[fox967]

Indeed. My most common screw up is accidentally assigning tiles beneath ones assigned for channeling for mining, which makes the miners remove the ramps behind them as they dig tunnels. There's actually a risk of killing them in process when you have a huge sprawling mining complex and a lot else on your mind - You just plain don't check the area or the miners often enough to notice in time.

Still, what fox described there is strange. I quite often end up making spiral (or rather, helix) staircases through caverns, which leads to a plentiful mix of constructed and dug ramps, walls and floors. You'd think I'd come across any possible bugs... Then again, maybe I'll try starting one as a 1 tile wide staircase next time, rather than a 3 tile wide. It is possible I just don't notice since there's always three ramps per level (when I'm done anyway), making the dwarves just walk around the bugged ones.

Heh, maybe it was just me, i dont know. But i checked all possible things (that i could think of) that stopped the dwarfs using the ramp. I even tried creating a squad and stationing them in the corridor, but still they didnt use it. Its possible i just fecked up somehow. Who knows?

[Chattox]

I think what I did wrong was having the passage go back on itself, underground. Basically it meant there were no walls for the bottom ramp to lead onto, just floors. I had no idea they needed walls.

Don't worry, I've secured my retard hat to my head and it shall remain there for the rest of the day.

[Jeoshua]

I ran into this same issue with my glorious sloped main stairwell.  The problem is, Ramps are directional, and only accept people going up one way (as you can discover in Adventure mode)... but they don't tell you which direction they are...

[Hans Lemurson]

It's a pity that functional and non-functional ramps look identical.  Ramps retain the same appearance regardless of where and how much connectivity they have.  It's not like the slopes in Sim City where you can tell the difference between edge-connected and corner-connected slopes.

[ullrich]

His ramp could be perfectly fine.

There has been several times for me that dwarf pathfinding would just break and make areas that are accesable inaccesable, normally fixed by adding another path. One such example for my moat:
x = up down stairs
d = down stairs
u = up stairs
- = walls
*  = normal ground

top:
**         *
**         *
*d         *
********
******** (main path accross)
********
*d         *
**         *
**         *
levels below:
--         -
--         -
-x         -
--         -
--         -
--         -
-x         -
--         -
--         -
final level:
--****-
--****-
-u****-
--****-
--****-
--****-
-u****-
--****-
--****-

Then randomly 2 years in half way towards the bottum of my moat the stairs became unusable by dwarves.

Or much simpler channeled into a dryed out murky pool (places a ramp),
**********
**               
*r
**
**********
So I could close of the edge with walls which i breached to keep my moat straight and fill the pool up again, the dwarves built 2 of the walls, and then the entire murky pool became inaccesable till I built another route into it.
--------------
--********- (built)               
-r********* (inaccesable)
--********-(built)
--------------