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[chewd]

Sometimes it takes far too long to get someone to pull a lever... Many times ive sat & waited for someone to pull the lever as the gobbys come storming across the drawbridge.

So far my tactics to combat this prob are as follows.

1. Put all the levers in one (or two) rooms

2. Put that room near the food supply, meeting hall, whatever

3. when someone finally goes in the room, lock them in. (sometimes the lil bastards get ONE step away from the lever, & then decide to go take a break instead)

4. When all this fails, use teleport.exe to teleport someone in, & lock them in. (anybody gotten teleport to work with 38a yet?)

So... if you guys have any further methods to make lever-pulling happen faster, plz let me know... & if some genius memory hacker wants to make a program that lets you pull them yourself, ill name my firstborn/mayor/next fort after you  

[Quintin Stone]

I've moved my levers much closer to the main stairway of my fortress.  These stairs are the point where all the dwarves gather when I order them inside, because they are 1 level below natural ground.  So the dwarves sit there, try to accomplish an outdoor task only to cancel it and return back underground.  There should be plenty of inactive dwarves now right next to the emergency levers.

[mwoody450]

This might be a bit offtopic, but I have to ask: if you're going to play with stuff like teleport.exe whenever dealing with a difficult situation, why play?  I mean, I understand in the very rare cases where it's an ouright bug - like heal.exe since they don't bring wounded dwarves water or food any more (though I won't even use that) - but I just don't understand how the game can remain fun when you cheat outright.

Rereading that, it sounds argumentative, but I don't mean it to be; I'm really asking out of curiosity.  I know from experience in other games that once I allow myself to modify things to my advantage, I lose all interest in playing forever, and I'm just curious how other peoples' mindset differs.

[chewd]

I have some forts where i dont cheat... but most of the time i cheat my arse off. The game doesnt lose anything from it IMO

Thanks for the pointer quinton... ill hafta try that out.

[Untelligent]

You could use pressure plates... They do the same thing as levers, except they activate when certain creatures/water/magma stand/flow on/over them. Very customizable too; you can set a specific range of creatures or depth to activate the plate.

[ February 08, 2008: Message edited by: Untelligent ]

[The-Moon]

I was just thinking last night.

That it would be a great idea, to add in a second pull option.

"Pull Lever Now"

When you select this option, the closest person drops whatever hes doing and then goes and pulls that lever. Nothing else can make that person stop, food, drink, injury.

In fact, for no reason should that person not pull that lever. Even monster targeting the dwarf should not make him not pull that lever.

The only way the lever doesn't get pulled, is if the dwarf dies.

[ February 09, 2008: Message edited by: The-Moon ]

[Squeegy]

See Updating Rick's Utilities in the Modding section.

[The-Moon]

quote:Originally posted by Squeegy:
<STRONG>See Updating Rick's Utilities in the Modding section.</STRONG>

I don't get it. I just read that thread, and i didn't see anything which could have remotely had anything to do with this thread...

Which Post should i be looking at?

[Earthquake Damage]

quote:Originally posted by mwoody450:
<STRONG>This might be a bit offtopic, but I have to ask: if you're going to play with stuff like teleport.exe whenever dealing with a difficult situation, why play?</STRONG>

Suicidally lazy dwarves are not, to my knowledge, an intended feature of DF version 1.0.  If you have a lever that's meant to be pulled in an emergency situation, your dwarves should rush to pull the damned thing.  That they freely ignore the command in favor of food and drink is, while not a bug, a serious AI flaw.  Using a third party tool to work around problems like this is perfectly acceptable and really shouldn't warrant complaint (even in a SG setting IMO).

Similarly, the old "dwarf gets stuck on magma forge and starves to death" bug in 23a (and earlier) was clearly ridiculous.  Using teleport.exe to work around that problem was also a non-issue.

[ February 09, 2008: Message edited by: Earthquake Damage ]

[mwoody450]

quote:Originally posted by Earthquake Damage:
<STRONG>Suicidally lazy dwarves are not, to my knowledge, an intended feature of DF version 1.0.  If you have a lever that's meant to be pulled in an emergency situation, your dwarves should rush to pull the damned thing.  That they freely ignore the command in favor of food and drink is, while not a bug, a serious AI flaw.  Using a third party tool to work around problems like this is perfectly acceptable and really shouldn't warrant complaint (even in a SG setting IMO).</STRONG>

I don't know, it's always sounded like a design decision to me.  The nearest dwarf to the lever with no task enabled immediately runs to the lever and pulls it; that's as much haste as any task in DF warrants.  Outside of something like fear, hunger, thirst, or a baby absentmindedly hurled down a well, dwarves tend to be extremely single-minded creatures, and won't cancel what they're doing just because a nearby task has popped up.  After all, how are the dwarves to know when a lever must be pulled immediately?

I guess it just bothers me because it's so simple to fix by other means; it's not using a cheat to work around a bug, it's using a cheat to cover up bad fortress design.  Need a lever pulled now?  Grab the nearest dwarf, cancel his jobs, and tell him to pull it.  Done.  Have mission-critical levers that you want pulled immediately?  Put them in or next to a meeting area, statue garden, or zoo, and the children or nobles lounging about with no jobs will immediately yank it the second it is so ordered.

[The-Moon]

Well, thats why i just suggested that other option "Pull Now"

Pull Lever the normal command, would work the same.

But if there are invaders, or you just want a lever pulled right away, there should be a pull now command. Which gets the lever pulled "NOW!"

The one command would work normally. The second would make the dwarfs stop what there doing to pull the lever. That way if your building stuff and you don't want the dwarfs to stop building that, you use the first option.

[KaelGotDwarves]

I feel the same way when I activate military dwarves and find 3/4s of them eating, sleeping, drinking, or generally being lazy. Or when they leave the field of battle to eat/drink.

And then they get massacred.

There should be some option to tell dwarves that this is a life or death situation and that not going to eat for 30 seconds could save their family and home.

[The-Moon]

Yeah thats what there needs to be....

Lets see what happens. I'm sure Toady knows about this stuff, its pretty obvious.

But for right now getting that Pull Now Option Coded in would be great. If possible.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Well, major military revamp is coming for the army arc, so I can't wait :]

[Thakh]

I think what really would solve those problems, is the 'slap' feature from Dungeon Keeper.  Give a dwarf an unhappy thought, but make him stop doing his current job (may it be sleep/eat/haul things) and move on to the next one in queue!

PS. Not a serious post, the horrible groaning at the "non-suicidal" dwarves that get themselves and everyone around killed is just part of the fun of the game  
(eg. Boatmurdered)