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[Max™]

I have had a similar sort of thing happen when military are training or killing something with fastdwarf 1 0 on. Toggling it off or switching to 0 1 fixes it, but if you don't catch it they can get stuck and starve to death/dehydrate from it.

[Walen]

I seem to have a similar problem playing my forts in 40.x (my interest in DF didn't really kick in with earlier releases but I think this is specific for the current series). Wouldn't go as far as to claim it is completely broken yet something is seriously wrong with it. Contrary to OP I haven't been able to 100% replicate this behaviour. Everything is fine most of the time only that *sometimes* my dwarves seem to get frozen in place during fights.

My example fort has a 40 tile long entrance corridor with my military welcoming the guests at the end of it. As I understand the intended behaviour whenever something enters their line of sight (in my case around the middle of the corridor) they should rush blindly to their doom. Well I managed to deal with a ~40 goblin visit first time with poorly equipped and untrained squads with acceptable losses given the circumstances. Next winter only laughable 10 gobbos came to meet my superior (in numbers, skill and equipment) by then army. Guess what, my axelords in full armor got obliterated because even copper weapons penetrate steel eventually if you fail to make a single attack for a few combat log pages. At this point I just rage quit. Strangely marksdwarves on the balcony released just three bolts before saying screw it - first time around half their number produced a hail of missiles as intended. I guess save scumming is legitimate in such a situation but there were a few other things (besides completely slaughtered occupants) in my fort I was dissatisfied with so I just regenerated the world.

I believe the problem lies somewhere within squad control logic. I noticed there is a slight delay between issuing orders and your dorfs actually reacting. You can easily observe that soldiers not only not move in a formation due to different movement speed but also start walking at seemingly random (though usually short enough) intervals. Most observable with kill order on moving targets. Dwarves think, move to the last known position, stop to think (all cluttering in a single tile) and repeat until enemy entering their vision causes them to go bloodlust. This happens quite frankly rarely but according to Murphy's laws only at the single most unfortunate moments. A workouround that appears to work in most cases is to just issue different move or attack order or even deactivate the squad temporarily (didn't help in the above example though - when dorfs finally snapped out they were already decimated and completely panicked).

On a related note I recall a very similar problem with wild animals not attacking as supposed. Once I had a troll visit me from below. Instead of going full rampage mode it decided to hang out around my meeting zone picking on single pieces of furniture from time to time. My dorfs didn't even panic at all (no job cancellations). It lasted for two whole seasons when I lost my patience after losing the last bed (desert embark with barren cavern so no wood to chop) and mobilized the miners. The troll didn't even retaliate once. I had giant rats run around my main hall (rats tend to be properly panicked) multiple times and a family of boar men sightseeing my fortress as it was being dug out once all the while being invisible to my minions. So mayby the issue at hand is a bit broader. Nonetheless with your own military that kind of FUN is not fun at all. It is gamebreaking once it happens and the workaround fails.

Come to think of it there might be situations that this affects sieging goblins (I mean single squads of them among the whole force) as well but it may be hard to definitely observe it the way I am currently playing as either I have the advantage that it does not really matter or I have such a disadvantage/screwed something so fundamental that it does not make any difference.

I am really looking forward to proper implementation of fruit harvesting but fixing this is right after that on my personal wishlist. The longstanding bugs being fixed in the current 40.x series are nice to see, as a new player I personally experienced a great chunk of them but they are just a mere nuisance compared to this.

[Prudent Viper]

are people just not playing fort mode?

I'm still playing 40.09. Seems the most stable of all the releases.

[Myroc]

Just ran into this. Had a Minotaur attack just now, sent my reasonably equipped military to deal with it. It ended up with twelve hammerdwarves and about as many civilians just lounging around it doing absolutely nothing. Fortunately, he didn't get to cause much damage since he spent much of the time beating up an engraver with a (giant cave spider silk left glove) with little effect, but took me a good while reissuing orders and deactivating/reactivating squads until they realize that they should probably start attacking.

I have DFHack running in the background, if it's relevant.

[Sirbug]

I remember back in 0.34 demons tended to just freeze once there's enough of them. I blame memory shortage.

[Absentia]

I've had this happen to me, both with wild animals (annoying) and goblins (FUN). Just sort of comes and goes.

[Chief10]

I've had this exact problem before, but it only happened one time on one fort.

[shlorf]

Had this happen a couple of times now, it's very annoying. I think disbanding the squad completely, leader and all and drafting the soldiers again fixes it, tho.

[Kourne]

Dropping back in after ages because I got into playing Dwarf Fortress again and what should I say... I experienced the exact same thing. I tried to order them to attack, station, schedule changes... they just stood there and got the crap beaten out of them by a troglodyte wearing a goddamn sock. That eventually made me anbandon the fort, since they got inside and I couldn't do anything. Then again what was I supposed to do after 80% of your population died. :/

Regards, Kourne

[Z1000000m]

I had cave critters ignore my dwarves, but slaughter animals.

Other than that, cant tell you. I dont even get sieges in this version for whatever reason.

[Thisfox]

I thought nothing of this until the fiery FB arrived in the lower level kitchen area (some idiot had left a floodgate open. Uh. Oops. That would be me then...) I locked some dorfs in the bedroom complex (if nothing else, it means that we have someone to survive till migrants) and sent in the military. About half arrived, and half ... stood about. And one bloke locked in the bedrooms woke up and ran in furious circles.

Eventually I had the beast licked (In the Hospital, which will never be the same again) but many of my military had every reason to turn up and never ever did.
My theory had been that some of them were off doing... stuff. Carrying tables and training dogs, and just didn't think it necessary to stop those jobs to deal with a fiery pterodactyl setting the booze supply on fire.

I was torn between being fascinated as the pterodactyl burned itself to death, and frustrated as I looked at the half of the military who suddenly couldn't negotiate a staircase they had been negotiating perfectly for years now.

Perhaps it was just smoke-induced fps-crash. I don't know.

Reindeer cheese burns for -sodding- ever.

[Romegypt]

Just take out the save and redownload the game. It's worked the couple times it happened to me. After you've redownloaded the game, put the save in the save file, and play it.

[Thisfox]

"take out the save"...

I'm not sure where one would take it out. Or what to do with it when it's out. Take it out to the movies? {{shrug}}

Anyhow, two "years" onward, I'm still carving slabs, our population is finally up to about half of what it once was instead of a tenth, but we didn't get murderous ghosts, just a lot of child and baby ghosts. And the cheese finally went out. Which helps. I tried to get the dwarves to hoist water on it for a while, but no one would. It's now a really really smelly burnt rotten cheese, so I've built a wall around it as a monument to insane burny things.

Why do you redownload the game? Was everlasting burny smelly reindeer cheese a bug they recently fixed?

[fourpotatoes]

I thought I was the only one! This bug combined with a marksdwarf deciding to start shooting a friendly led to a massive tantrum spiral recently. It was on 0.40.13 with a world generated several versions ago, no mods and no DFhack. I haven't got a good test case for a bug report, however.

[nightdagger]

Just to chime in, I did have this happen with a goblin siege, stationed military just stood there and got whalloped for a bit.  Saving and reloading the game sparked a massive orgy of gobbo blood, though.