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[jonveck]

I'm having the issue for all the items they brought, but for instance, the merchants brought about 200 various fish, I bought two stacks of cave lobsters, and in my stock screen those two stacks are now white while all the merchants' remaining wares are red.  That's fine and normal, except now the merchants have left and their wares remain on my stocks screen, clogging it up.  I select one of the red stacks and zoom to it, and it takes me to an empty tile near where the caravan left my region.

Similarly, I set up an oceanic cage farming system and a caught a crab (in addition to make other creatures), only to have a sea current wash the crab in his cage a few tiles away and for it to disappear.  Now, he shows up in my stock screen in his cage, shows up in the unit listing, but zooming to his location pops me to an empty space with no way to affect him in any way.  It's frustrating.

Has anyone else had similar problems?  What causes it?  Is there a solution?  I do not mind if it's DFHack related.  'Autodump' appears to successfully target the merchants' goods, but I can't seem to get it to affect the crab in its cage.

[Niccolo]

There is a solution! Get your bookkeeper to update the books. If you have a bookkeeper and he has an office, he will periodically go and do that anyway. You'll see that every now and then he gets a task "updating records".

Once he's done that, your stocks will be sorted.

[Quietust]

There is a solution! Get your bookkeeper to update the books. If you have a bookkeeper and he has an office, he will periodically go and do that anyway. You'll see that every now and then he gets a task "updating records".

Once he's done that, your stocks will be sorted.

That's not how the bookkeeper works - it's impossible for your stocks to ever be out of date, just lacking precision.

It sounds like what's going on is that the merchants didn't get offloaded (to a unit-*.dat file) when they left the map.

The second problem (regarding water currents) is a long-standing bug that dates back to 40d in which water can push items to "nowhere" and cause them to seemingly disappear from the map (though your dwarves can still walk to the tile and pick the items up).

[Niccolo]

There is a solution! Get your bookkeeper to update the books. If you have a bookkeeper and he has an office, he will periodically go and do that anyway. You'll see that every now and then he gets a task "updating records".

Once he's done that, your stocks will be sorted.

That's not how the bookkeeper works - it's impossible for your stocks to ever be out of date, just lacking precision.

It sounds like what's going on is that the merchants didn't get offloaded (to a unit-*.dat file) when they left the map.

The second problem (regarding water currents) is a long-standing bug that dates back to 40d in which water can push items to "nowhere" and cause them to seemingly disappear from the map (though your dwarves can still walk to the tile and pick the items up).

Seriously? So why then, when my bookkeeper is finished, do I see him periodically going back and working on the stocks even though it's all done?

[Quietust]

Seriously? So why then, when my bookkeeper is finished, do I see him periodically going back and working on the stocks even though it's all done?

Because the game keeps track of how many items are in your fortress along with how many the bookkeeper last counted, so as that number increases it creates additional "update stockpile records" jobs to keep your bookkeeper busy. Or something along those lines - I haven't located and studied the code for that yet.

[Niccolo]

So it's just flavour? Huh.

[smjjames]

So it's just flavour? Huh.

Pretty important flavor if you want to be able to manage your stuff.

[Niccolo]

So it's just flavour? Huh.

Pretty important flavor if you want to be able to manage your stuff.

Okay, okay, I'm getting mixed signals.

Once the bookkeeper has completely updated the records once, that's it, and any other time he goes back and repeats the "update stockpile records" job he's not actually doing anything useful. Is that correct?

[smjjames]

So it's just flavour? Huh.

Pretty important flavor if you want to be able to manage your stuff.

Okay, okay, I'm getting mixed signals.

Once the bookkeeper has completely updated the records once, that's it, and any other time he goes back and repeats the "update stockpile records" job he's not actually doing anything useful. Is that correct?

He's keeping it at whatever precision you set it to. After a while, he/she gets really good at it and doesn't take long before going back to whatever usual duties they have.

[Quietust]

It helps to know that the game doesn't actually keep track of the specific items the bookkeeper knows about - it just keeps track of how many items you have, along with how much work your bookkeeper has done toward "updating stockpile records". If the bookkeeper hasn't done enough work, the Stocks screen simply rounds off the numbers for each category and prevents you from seeing the exact item list if the category is too large (e.g. even with low precision, you can see all 9 ropes you've made, but you won't be able to see each of your 58 barrels).

If you are continually creating more and more items in your fortress, your bookkeeper will always be busy, but if you create a huge number of items and then get rid of all of them (e.g. excavate an entire mountain and then atomsmash the junk stones), your bookkeeper won't need to do anything more.

[smjjames]

Best to just set it at highest precision. I always make a chair and table ASAP when I first embark so that my bookkeeper/craftsdwarf can get to work. They get pretty good at it quickly too.