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[Romantic Warrior]

If dwarves preferring death to a quick bite to ear is a design decision, someone needs a spanking.

What we really need isn't a stop-gap measure like "Pull leverl now"(though it ain't a bad idea". We need a job and job priority management system. Imagine the weapon screen from the military menu but for jobs. That way I don't have to scroll through sixty screens to enable wood cutting if I want maaadddd deforestation(or whatever).

Then we need a way to prioritize jobs, globally and individually. You could structure it like this:
"pull lever #1: top priorty, interrupt task, at any cost.
eat: high priority, do not interrupt task.
drink: high priority, do not interrupt task.
sleep: high priority, do not interrupt task.
woodcutting: medium priority.
woodhauling: low priority."

Tasks would be organized from top to bottom. At the top, pulling a level will be the absolute highest priority. Normally this would just mean he'd do that before anything else but with the "interrupt task" tag, he'll stop whatever he is doing to pull that lever. With "at any cost," he won't stop even if attacked. Perhaps make that last part contingent on personality. If there is a high priority job, a dwarf will do that before a lower priority job. Eat, drink and sleep are high priority but they are set so as not to interrupt other tasks. If a dwarf is hungry, he'll finish his current task first. This 'dorf will haul wood but only if higher priority jobs aren't available. So he won't chop down a tree and then run a million miles back to the fort with it, he'll cut everything down and THEN haul wood. Putting food, booze/water, and sleep at a low priority would be possible but it would make your dwarves unhappy.

Now, I was just thinking, "What if I want more jobs than that?" A pyramid type thing where you rank every job from top(highest priority) to bottom(lowest) would allow you lots of flexibility but it would be tiresome. "Very low" and "very high" priority settings would make this more flexible.
 

quote:Originally posted by The-Moon:
<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?</STRONG>

The first post in this topic, fourth point. Utilities. teleport.exe.

I'll leave it up to you to connect the dots.     :p

[ February 24, 2008: Message edited by: Romantic Warrior ]

[Kogan Loloklam]

Thank you for the "lever room" suggestion. I will be doing that almost immediately. It's so simple, I'm surprised I didn't think of it.

[DarkAvenger]

lever room with a door

make the dwarf military and command him into the room, lock the door

presto now all he can do is fall asleep or pull a lever

(unfortunately falling asleep still happens and it can really ruin you if your not prepared)

[umiman]

I have no frigging clue what you guys are talking about. Then again, this is the internet, and people tend to exaggerate a lot on the internet. It's fantastic how people instantly notice and blather on about when things go wrong, but when it goes right (which more often it does), they never seem to remember.

Dwarves instantly run to pull levers the moment they are assigned. You can even tell because one milisecond after assigning the pull lever job, there will be big, bright, capital green A right next to it. And more often than not, it would be a dwarf that's bloody right next to the area. The only reason it takes long is probably because they are far away, which isn't their fault, it's the designer of the fortress's.

Not once have I ever seen dwarves retreat from pulling a lever at the last moment, even in the old days when dwarves would carry a stone two steps before getting a drink (what? three... four years ago? you know, back when you couldn't use bags that were decorated and you couldn't build instruments).

I don't think any of you will be satisfied until you can manually pull levers yourself since no matter what anyone does, you're going to find some way to go, "it's not fast enough" or

"my fortress died to a rabid monkey because dwarf xyz didn't pull a lever fast enough which I thought would be a good idea to place on the very top of the dark tower of death beside the other five levers that needed to be pulled before this one could. NOT MY FAULT!!!!" or

"my fortress died because in a moment of sheer genius, I decided to place the lever operating the drawbridge right next to the drawbridge, right in the open, and right in the view of the enemy archers but my dwarf was too afraid to pull it. NOT MY FAULT!!!"

[Kagus]

I've never even had an emergency lever, let alone pulled it.  The only times I've had lever have been for controlled (ha ha) cave-ins.  I just never stick around in a fort long enough to warrant a defense system.

[Kogan Loloklam]

quote:Originally posted by umiman:
<STRONG>
Dwarves instantly run to pull levers the moment they are assigned. You can even tell because one milisecond after assigning the pull lever job, there will be big, bright, capital green A right next to it. And more often than not, it would be a dwarf that's bloody right next to the area. The only reason it takes long is probably because they are far away, which isn't their fault, it's the designer of the fortress's.

Not once have I ever seen dwarves retreat from pulling a lever at the last moment, even in the old days when dwarves would carry a stone two steps before getting a drink (what? three... four years ago? you know, back when you couldn't use bags that were decorated and you couldn't build instruments).
</STRONG>

Yes, intelligent design can handle this problem, SUCH AS BUILDING A LEVER ROOM WHERE DWARVES CONGREGATE!

Unlike you, I have had a dwarf retreat from pulling a lever. The reason was faulty fortress design, like you said. The entrence room was the only access to the archery room, which had the lever in it. Once the goblins crossed the bridge and entered the fort, they were in the room my dwarves had to run through to get to the lever. My dwarves ran rather then pull the lever.

Likewise, the situation preceding that very event was waiting for the dwarves to run up and throw the switch. I didn't do it as soon as the goblins showed up, it taught me a lesson, but the wait was more then it would have been had I had a lever room.

So just because you never experienced it doesn't mean it can't happen.

(Edit: Fixed my capitalization problem, leading people to think I was talking about Intelligent Design rather then intelligent design.)

[ February 25, 2008: Message edited by: Kogan Loloklam ]

[ShadeJS]

This is my first post-- There's always the universal DF solution: Pause the game, view the dwarf, Militarily activate him / her, step ahead a few steps, de-activate him / her. It works well for levers and getting traders to the depot.

[umiman]

Kogan: Err... this is Intelligent Design.

Anyway, I know that dwarves would obviously retreat from pulling a lever if there were enemies there. That's bloody obvious. The reason I've never seen it is because I never placed levers in places where the enemy would interrupt my lever-pulling activities because... you know... it's the smart thing to do.

Placing levers at an obvious invasion point is like playing ping pong with a wombat.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Well, the lever delay between requesting the lever pulled and when a dwarf reaches it can be a problem on small (2x2) sites where invaders are spawned effectively right on your front steps.

This is one of the reasons I consider traps an important part at least of early fortress design - they will handle any situation while you simply do not have enough dwarves to set up a meaningful military or to have dwarves set off for lever duty.

That said, once you really get sieges, you usually have a lot of dwarves. Thus, it shouldn't be a problem to have some set to do only the rare jobs (health care). Your broker would be a prime candidate since she will turn legendary in appraisal in virtually no time anyway - and it would have the benefit that she is more likely to be free to handle a "trader requested" within the season.

So, I would suggest simply having some dwarves for such odd jobs and put the lever inside or near your meeting hall.

Deathworks

[Thakh]

Crud.  Good point.
And there I go thinking that 2x2 maps are easier to defend.

[Sus]

I've had the exact same problem from time to time, even with levers sitting right there in the main dining hall.

A workaround of sorts is to define a burro(w) that contains the levers and nothing else, and use a custom civvie alert to restrict everybody there.

I suppose if you're feeling particularly creative, you could design a lever room with the basic amenities (food & drink stockpile, bed, possibly cabinet(s) and a well) and assign one of your useless peasants there on a permanent basis. Bonus points for assigning the lever room food stockpile to (t)ake from your main food stockpile.

Or you could name one of your dorfs "Ringo" and see if he becomes "a born Lever-puller"... *groan*

[Yag Alone]

eh? 38a? erm... Don't you think you went a bit too far back in time?

The burrow solution is quite efficient.

A lever room needs at least 3 dedicated trapped dwarves.
If there's only one, you can bet he'll be sleeping/drinking/eating/loitering when he is needed...

[umiman]

Holy necro batman

[Yaotzin]

Wouldn't it be better to rely on pressure plates for the truly critical stuff?

[Yag Alone]

Wouldn't it be better to rely on pressure plates for the truly critical stuff?

Pressure plates will only be activated for as long as the critter walk on it. Your drawbridge will be raised, indeed, but will quickly get back to it's "open buffet" position as soon as the gobbo move.

You will have to build some cunning device in order to make it work. A water-based set/reset memory cell should do the trick...