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[Poldon]

I was recently looking at my combat reports when I noticed that there were several unusual ones. Specifically, "The War Dog (name) is sparring." Only one is really recent though.



This I'm pretty sure is a result of the fact that I've assigned a war dog to each of my hammer dwarves (yes, I understand there are reasons not to do this, but I did it anyway for fun, except that they unfortunately burrow with the civilians during alerts.). I figured that maybe the dwarves accidentally hit one and it showed up as a sparring message, but when I looked it didn't really confirm or disprove that:



Okay, well maybe I'll wait for new reports like that in the meantime and try to find out for sure.

But then it gets even weirder. One of the war dogs that had previously been involved in a sparring session now encountered an Ibex, and the following report was given:



The dog apparently was still trying to spar, at least for one attack. I don't know why it snapped out of it afterward, but I wonder whether the flags can be messed up even more than that.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As an aside, I've seen the issue in past threads but haven't played again until recently, has anyone found a non-drastic solution to keeping marksdwarves from climbing through fortifications as soon as they are out of ammo?  I've got a wall that loks like this from a side cutaway:

(W)all
(f)loor
(F)ortification

Code: [Select]

W f W
F f W
W f W
They station on the second level and fire out and down, then climb THROUGH the fortifications (it's a long way to the nearest staircase, and I've observed them doing it) and either fall or climb down to fight in melee. Do I have to add floors jutting out one space to stop this, or is there something simpler?

Edit:
Here's some of the older reports, however I can't see what's in them anymore.

[Stovepipe Arnold]

Yeah, military dwarves will initiate a sparring session with anything that stumbles into the barracks. I've had a hammer lord get into a sparring match with a stray cat before. They usually only last for as long as it takes the non-military party to get the heck out of dodge.

[Naryar]

War dogs sparring are simply war dogs being in the way of sparring dwarves, more specifically in the way of a charge attack made by a sparring dwarf.

But yeah i've seen a jabberer "lightly tapping the target" and inflicting no damage when attacking a baby (he killed it afterwards). That's weird, maybe it's the combat lethality in effect ?

[Dirst]

War dogs sparring are simply war dogs being in the way of sparring dwarves, more specifically in the way of a charge attack made by a sparring dwarf.

But yeah i've seen a jabberer "lightly tapping the target" and inflicting no damage when attacking a baby (he killed it afterwards). That's weird, maybe it's the combat lethality in effect ?

It appears to be standard practice for wild animals (and apparently work animals not acting on orders) to start off with a light tap to initiate combat.  This would appear to eliminate any advantage from ambushing... has anyone noticed if ambusher predators act differently?

[VerdantSF]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For the wall problem, I think it might be because there is a diagonal space between the floor and the fortifications, if there is empty space below the fortifications. I always build my walls in two layers, so the fortifications rest on top of a wall, instead of jutting out. I've never had any archers climb over them when they've run out of ammo.

[Poldon]

I also suspected the combat lethality, actually. And okay, the sparring's probably not unusual either. It was just weird to discover both at once.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There is no diagonal space. It's a (actually more than) three-layer wall with fortifications only in the front of the middle layer. I'll go try to take a video of it now.

[Detros]

War dogs sparring are simply war dogs being in the way of sparring dwarves, more specifically in the way of a charge attack made by a sparring dwarf.

But yeah i've seen a jabberer "lightly tapping the target" and inflicting no damage when attacking a baby (he killed it afterwards). That's weird, maybe it's the combat lethality in effect ?

It appears to be standard practice for wild animals (and apparently work animals not acting on orders) to start off with a light tap to initiate combat.  This would appear to eliminate any advantage from ambushing... has anyone noticed if ambusher predators act differently?

Noted in report 8257, "Combat reports use "lightly tapping the target" for attacks that (unintentionally) cause no damage".

[StagnantSoul]

I had a motherless baby spar with the military one time. After that kid grew up, he was a military genius.

[kontako]

So this must be how the dogs train...