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[Squeegy]

Trying out the Steam version now. A siege just showed up. The squad menu doesn't have civilian alerts & burrows anymore. How do I order everyone who's not in the militia to get into my shelter burrow?

Please don't tell me that I have to manually select all 100+ dwarves and assign them to the burrow. I don't think I can play if that functionality was removed entirely, it would make attacks on your fort too tedious.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Urgh. Was just looking for this myself.
Just because noobs can't understand the military screen doesn't mean it didn't include vitally important functions for regular players.

Hopefully it shows up somewhere else...

[Squeegy]

I've yet to find any replacement or hear about one from other players, unfortunately. I think it's gone. Definitely not feature parity with the old military screen, which I honestly found perfectly intuitive when I came back from a decade-long break.

[Bumber]

Please don't tell me that I have to manually select all 100+ dwarves and assign them to the burrow. I don't think I can play if that functionality was removed entirely, it would make attacks on your fort too tedious.

The tutorial hint implies that's exactly what you have to do.

You can toggle the burrow on/off, but you're forced to manage who's a civilian, and have to do it for each new migrant or baby. (Which is why I never used ordinary burrows for stuff in the first place.)

[Squeegy]

I hope that's changed ASAP. It's a big downgrade in quality of life.

[LuuBluum]

I tossed up a suggestion not to reintroduce the original civilian alert functionality, but to at least provide a "select all" or maybe "select all civilians" for burrows, so you can reproduce the effect without needing to constantly click through the whole list of citizens to update the burrow assignments every time a migrant wave shows up.

[Squeegy]

Why? I should be able to select a burrow and flick a switch to confine all non-military dwarves to that burrow regardless of how many have come and gone in the meantime. Why is that so controversial post-UI update?

[LuuBluum]

I figured that it'd just require less... well, doing, on Toady's part. I'll throw in just reintroducing civilian alerts as well, though I think a checkbox to select all would also be very useful on its own.

[Salmeuk]

nothing controversial, just a calm and collected response to the update as it stands!

+1 to changes that support easy siege responses by the civilian population of your fortress.

[LuuBluum]

So, I've been thinking on this a little bit. What puts a dwarf in a position where they can be mauled to death during a siege or other circumstance where you'd break out the alert? Dwarves generally congregate around meeting areas, so if they're ever in danger, it's because they're out putting themselves in danger.

Which is to say, how much of the need for civilian alerts is met by simply going through and disabling the work details that would put dwarves in danger in the first place? It takes two clicks to disable fishing fort-wide. Hunting, too. You can restrict outdoor hauling by turning off gathering wood from outside. Claiming dead/ammunition/etc. now has a third setting, "forbid during sieges."

I wonder, whether breaking out all of those tools now, whether it's possible to replicate the effect of a civilian alert burrow (which is to say, get everyone inside so they don't get killed horribly) without using burrows at all. I've not experimented enough to know for sure.

[Salmeuk]

none of that applies to aboveground fortresses AFAIK

[LuuBluum]

Well, the claim/forbid/forbid during siege certainly does, as does just turning off work details like fishing. The only thing that doesn't apply is the "outside" bit, but the implication of that would be that wood hauling (the hauling I imagine is the one likely to put a dwarf in harm's way) would cease entirely. This mostly just has implications as to wood stockpiles transferring to other wood stockpiles. For the most part, though, all of that should apply to an aboveground fortress as well.

[Squeegy]

Also, that's objectively inferior to pressing two buttons like I used to do, and prone to user error (you forgot woodcutting, for instance, and plant gathering) and unlike burrows, turning off those jobs won't stop dwarves from wandering outside to put a sock in the stockpile or whatever. And that would really suck if that dwarf happened to be my legendary cook or miner or armorsmith or whatever. And if I can't quickly corral all my civilian dwarves into my safe area, I can't raise my bridges without leaving people out to die.

It's not difficult. This is a feature I would THINK everyone used. I noticed its absence immediately and straight up stopped playing until I could figure out where it went. It's incredibly useful, and simple, and easy, it's just a button that says "don't go outside until I say so." It should be a no brainer to bring back.

[LuuBluum]

Well, it looks like there was already one patch that fixed the crashes, and "With that stabilized, we'll be able to start properly addressing the reports and feedback we've collected for a bulkier patch next." Hopefully that includes reintroducing civilian alerts burrows or an equivalent system that doesn't require nearly as much effort.

[Squeegy]

I hope so! Manual burrow assignment is at least something you can work around (unlike marksdwarves not working) but man, I was crestfallen.