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[MrSidnet]

Hey, another new player to this game...

My mechanics workshop some reason wont create any rock mechanisms.  I get the message:
Mason cancels construct mechanisms: needs rock

I've created several fortresses(all failed) before, and not had any problems making mechanisms, so I must just be forgetting something.
I have plenty of full stone stockpile and bar/block stockpiles.  I have someone assigned to be a mechanic, but cant figure out what is wrong.

Also, I cant seem to dig my channels..
Edit: My channels are finally now built, and idea on why it took so long?

Any help appreciated.

[ April 02, 2007: Message edited by: MrSidnet ]

[Bas Cost Budde]

Have you really got *rock* in the stockpile? There is a (small) chance you have only light and dark stone.

Check the jobs queue to see whether there are a lot of pending hauling jobs for stone. That may explain: a rock scheduled for hauling is not available for another task yet.

The larger your stockpile, the worse this gets.  That is, when many dwarves have stone hauling set as job, not all of them may get to actually hauling a stone, but for every possible hauler a rock gets scheduled.

[MrSidnet]

Thanks for the reply, but I figured out the problem

I had the mechanics workshop built inside a 3x3 square with one door.  The entrance to the room was on the middle right, so the workshop was actually blocking off the doorway, locking my poor dwarf inside.  I just mined some more rock from the wall, and it solved the problem.

As this shows in green  http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Mechanic%27s_Workshop
, the only part the dwarfs cannot walk on is the dark green part.  And that was the part that was blocking the doorway.

[Bas Cost Budde]

*slams forehead* so many possibilities...  

Edit: as for the channels, tasks closer to the 'gate' (that is where you go when you press [g]) get priority over tasks further away. When a miner is 'free' and has to decide what is next, he will most likely mine a piece closest to the gate.

[ April 02, 2007: Message edited by: Bas Cost Budde ]

[MrSidnet]

That last piece of information about the task priority is really handy to know.  Thanks.
I know the channels were interrupted due to there being stones in the way, but once they were hauled away, it still didnt get built.

I don't know what the problem was, but it's resolved now.

[Bas Cost Budde]

You say 'interrupted' and not 'suspended', which indeed is a locking state. I assume you don't mean suspended.

Have you monitored the activities of the miner(s) in your fort? They do eat and drink, and even sleep, at most inconvenient intervals.

Are your channels some distance from their quarters? Such that a miner may start on the job, realize he's hungry, run back to the food stores and eats, starts on the job again, realizes he's really thirsty, drinks something at the food stores, mines a little in the vincinity, takes a break...

"Sheer luck" comes into play in the sequence of all this life. I seem to have a lot of this type of luck, because my channels usually do not take much time.

Then, I have had most channels so far really close to the dining hall.

[MrSidnet]

I read somewhere that to avoid accidental flooding of your fortress, you can always just mine a separate entrance into the cliff wall for your farms.
Seemed like a good idea at the time, until I noticed the large amount of time it took to just go from one mineshaft to the other.  I ended up linking them together now.  But when I was building the channels, yes the dwarfs had a long distance to travel.  Maybe I will make my dining room more accessible as well.

But all is not well yet.  I have yet to figure out the problem, but lets try to explain:

##########~~~
##....#####~~
##....._CX~~~
##....####~~~
##....####~~~
##.#######~~~

Where C is the mechanism, not yet in place and X is the finished floodgate

First a shaft was dug to the river, then a floodgate ( X ) was built, then the channel ( _ ) then a lever (offscreen)and finally the lever was linked to the floodgate.

A dwarf brought a mechanism toward the floodgate, stopped for several minutes, then left the mechanism beside the floodgate.  The queue for the lever still says "Link a building to trigg"

Any ideas on this one?  I have yet to create one successful irrigation farm   :confused:

[Slartibartfast]

quote:Originally posted by Bas Cost Budde:
<STRONG>Tasks closer to the 'gate' (that is where you go when you press [g]) get priority over tasks further away. When a miner is 'free' and has to decide what is next, he will most likely mine a piece closest to the gate.</STRONG>

I'm pretty sure that's innacurate, its not proximity to the gate that creates precedence, but rather the game "scans" digging jobs Up->Down Left->Right, so the jobs more to the left get precedence, and of those jobs of equal "leftness", the uppermost one gets precedence.

code:

147
258
369
 ^
 -
An illustration of the way I think job precedence is ordered, where the smaller the number, the earlier the job will get done.

[ April 02, 2007: Message edited by: Slartibartfast ]

[ktrey]

I agree with Slartibartfast on the priority thing, just based on how I've seen trees get chopped and herbs gathered.

[JT]

Yeah, it's just a basic nested for loop:

code:

for(int x = 0; x <= MAX_X; x++) {
  for(int y = 0; y <= MAX_Y; y++) {
    }
  }

As has always been said, the dwarves don't pick the jobs, the jobs pick the dwarves.  Every so often when a "check for mining" routine runs (which must run fairly often, because dwarves have instantaneous responses for mining designations), it finds the first tile using that algorithm.  Since the innermost loop runs through Y coordinates, meaning that it finishes a whole column before it moves to the outermost loop again and checks the next X coordinate, top-to-bottom is scanned before left-to-right.

</nerd>

Looking at your floodgate system above, you actually won't be able to flood the farm with that.  You can have one of two floodgate systems:

1) Permanently-filled channel leading to a floodgate, or
2) A floodgate adjacent to a river, leading to an empty channel, which leads to a floodgate.

A floodgate only floods outwards when it's adjacent to an empty space and a filled channel.  Otherwise, the floodgate simply spills into nearby channels.

Thus, a floodgate like

code:

#######~~~
._X___X~~~
#######~~~

is actually useless -- it will spill into the channel on the left but will not flood the floor beyond.

You can, of course, take advantage of this to do certain creative things with floodgates and channels.  For instance, this is what I did when I accidentally trapped a miner and had to remove the floodgate to get him out:

code:

##########~~~~~
......####~~~~~
......X__##~~~~
......_.__X~~~~
......#####~~~~
###########~~~~

The floodgate from the river floods into the channel to its left, and follows the channel to the floodgate above.  The floodgate, when opened, spills out to the left and floods the room, and spills out to the south but is contained by the channel so it doesn't flood back onto itself (if I understand correctly, I could have even left out the space in between the curving channel and the formerly-misplaced floodgate's channel and still had a perfectly safe system, but it's better to be sure).

[naradaman]

Dwarves also like to mine in a continuous path. If there's a marked square connected to the one they just finished, they'll go for that over anything else.

[MrSidnet]

Well, this is what I was planning:

code:

  
########~~
########~~
#...####~~
#...X__X~~
#...####~~
#.######~~

1. Carve out room and tunnel
2. Place first floodgate (beside the river)
3. Build Lever
4. Attach Mechanism to Floodgate and Lever
5. Build Channel
6. Build second floodgate (left most one)
7. Attach Mechanism to 2nd Floodgate and Lever.

And this what I ended up with:

code:

  
########~~
########~~
#...####~~
#...._CX~~
#...####~~
#.######~~

Where C is the dropped mechanism

Somewhere along the way, my plan went awry.  I dont recall, but I guess I put step 5 in between 2 and 4.  So now I have a mechanism sitting on top of the channel, doing nothing.  The queue on the lever is still trying to attach the mechanism, and every so often, a dwarf goes up there, sits on top of the mechanism for a couple minutes, and walks away. I've seen dwarfs walk on empty channels, so I don't think that is the problem.  I could see maybe if I was forgetting some important step, but I dont understand why a dwarf goes up there just to chill for a few minutes, then walk away leaving everything as it was.

Maybe I should just stick to Nile farming for a couple more years.

Oh also, I was dealing with 8 dwarfs for the first year, then 5 more guys came, then another 10.  Im up to 23 dwarfs, and and feeling slightly overwhelmed.  Should I kill a couple off?  I dont think I can deal with 23 right now, I just started playing this game last week.

[puke]

at larger numbers, you have to stop woring bout individual dwarfs and just queue up general orders.  

you just have to accept that they wont be as effecient as they would if you managed them individually, but that the effency loss is an acceptable trade for manageability.

[Core Xii]

Floodgates and mechanisms can be a little glitchy at times. Once my mechanic was attaching a mechanism to a floodgate next to the magma flow up north. For some bizarre reason, we went standing on a magma flow tile of a magma smelter, freezed there for a while, then walked away to do something else... I waited for him to re-queue the job and try again, and he did the exact same thing again. Then I cancelled the task altogether and re-rigged the lever... and it worked.

[Bas Cost Budde]

It is possible to control a 52-dwarf fortress per individual. It just takes more time. When I have felt overwhelmed, I always paused the game, took a piece of paper (somehow I usually fail to take a whole sheet   and made some sort of drawing to regain overview.

I once tried maintaining labor profiles outside DF, but that is unbearable. I will try the utility posted here http://www.bay12games.com/cgi-local/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000811  some day.