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[Droqen]

Why don't dwarves say anything while starving to death?

It would be nice to have some notification to tell me about a dwarf who's about to die from hunger or thirst.
I've already lost 3 or 4 dwarves this fortress

I can't imagine it would be too hard to do, and it would make me and my fortress a happier place. (... wait, I can't make me a happier place)


-- Lastly, my apologies if this has already been discussed somewhere --

[Teldin]

Is the big yellow exclamation mark they flash as when they're dying of hunger not enough of a hint? Or maybe you should check the stocks (hit z) and make sure there's some, you know, food for them to eat once in a while. 

[umiman]

I think he means that sometimes when you have a huge construction project, you might accidentally wall in a dwarf or during combat, a dwarf might dodge onto a perilous cliff with no exit or into a dried up pond, or you might have accidentally locked a door you shouldn't have locked.

It happens quite often, but there should be the option to set it on or off as many a time, the dehydration deaths are intentional.

edit: you actually do get an arbitrary warning for starving dwarves. "dwarf mcdwarf cancels task: hunting for small creature". For thirst, there isn't one.

[Droqen]

Teldin - sometimes I don't notice when I'm off working elsewhere for a while, and there's also the fact that I don't even know where these dwarves are when they starve since I can't find their now-dead bodies D:

So any kind of "Ilral Likotod is starving!" notification would be more than welcome. I think once I had an injured hunter lying out in the middle of nowhere, and he just starved out there ;-;

edit: or, since I realize there is sort of that notification for starving, "Ilral Likotod is dehydrated!" or "dying of thirst!"

another edit: And yes, umiman, definitely those situations too.

[Phoenyx]

"The Valkyrie is hungry."
"Don't Shoot Food!"

[Qmarx]

"The Valkyrie is hungry."
"Don't Shoot Food!"

Urist needs food badly.

[Jing]

insert more tokens.

Seriously though, this strikes me as something that more a problem when dwarves construct themselves into a coffin, or channel themselves into an isalnd.   If I may make a few suggestions to the op/anyone else having the problem:

1. Set hotkeys... if you have large construction projects going on in disparate parts of the map, hot key them.  Check back periodically to make sure dwarves are on task, and not trapped in a room (there are also some cases where a tree grows and blocks an opening - lay down some flooring after you cut it down)

2. Check idlers... It's a pain with no easy scrolling and a fortress of 130+, but you should probably have a rough idea of who is doing what and how many should be idle... check periodically that dwarves are on task and not idling about.  An idle miner when you know digging tasks remain is often an indication that a dwarf has channeled himself onto an island, etc.  Personally I keep all the dwarves working most of the time (particularly on easy-repeat tasks) so idling is a trigger of sorts for me to know when to change jobs, set new tasks, or check for dwarves who installed floodgates incorrectly =p

3. Set medics... look for dwarves that find helping others rewarding.  Make sure they dont also have tags for procrastination, minimal work, and "not easily moved to pity" / "Unmoved by the suffering of others" (it's all very contradictory, but babies drink booze from birth, so....).  Set health care (and animal care if you want) and cleaning to the only tasks active for the  dwarf/dwarves.  They'll idle normally (or else harvest crops and check their stash and so forth), but they'll regularly supply food and water to the injured and often rescue them as well.  I don't think it helps with trapped dwarves (Pretty sure canceled task msg is not generated), but it might help with your injured hunters.

Btw, make sure your hunters have quivers, backpacks, waterskins, and ammo.  Otherwise, they try to punch or club things to death, and it usually doesn't work out so well.

[ArchMageOmega]

Just a quick note: you can find the dead body by looking under corpses in the stocks menu.

[Lord Licorice]

I think he means that sometimes when you have a huge construction project, you might accidentally wall in a dwarf

There's a joke about a +Cask+ of Amontillado in here somewhere...

[byrnsey]

I was just thinking a notification system for when the amount of booze or edible food (currently all sorts of things count as "other" besides prepared meals)  dips below a certain percentage of the fort's population.

I.e. you have 200 Dwarfs and 400 booze (in 20 barrels with stacks of 20) you probably will already have thirsty dwarves in line waiting for a turn.  An announcement will help (in my experience, it's impossible to get brewers working at the same rate that booze is being drunk.  You need to stockpile until the barrels or plants run out, then check back in periodically)

Same goes for food, ESPECIALLY because it's possible to make 200+ stacks of prepared meals if you have large fauna.  400 meals for 200 dwarves sounds good, until you realize that it's two elephant roasts with 40 dwarves starving to death in line for.

This wouldn't help walled off dwarves but it would make the fort run smoother.

Also, I have to assume that a stranded dwarf will try occasionally to path to water or food.  There's already a message for when dwarves find themselves unable to find a path for a task.  Why not just include "eat" and "drink" in that?

"Urist McWhatever cancels eat; could not find path" would be a pretty dead giveaway, and the architecture is already there...

[weenog]

It takes dwarves quite a while to starve or die of thirst.  Why not just appoint a chief medical dwarf (you should have one anyway), occasionally bring up the Health screen, and quickly scroll it with PgUp/PgDn looking for abnormalities?  Anything other than nothing is probably worth taking a look at anyway.

[umiman]

=|

Holy necro Batman!

[maluraq]

Using 'Z' and hitting health periodically will tell you if anyone's hungry, thirsty, starving, etc.

Good reason to assign a chief medical dwarf early.

[IT 000]

=|

Holy necro Batman!

Necros are fine on the suggestion board if you have something new to add. Which byrnsey has.

I support your points completely byrnsey.

[byrnsey]

Well, yea, I do use the health screen at times, and never embark without a doctor.  I could micromanage, but that's not really what this game is about.  A fort with 200+ dwarves and livestock is going to take minutes to page through, every single time.    No time, no interest.   When I think about the time I lose in the units screen because I can't filter dwarves by profession...  You know what's really good about doing repetitive tasks often and reliably, though?

Sometimes dwarves get walled/channeled in.  That's not why this game is hard, and not why we like it.  Proper pathfinding would prevent this from ever happening.  Of course a flawless pathfinder algorithm would be a project as big as DF, but there's no reason not to have the game run a check once a month or so. <250 path checks to food and booze once or twice every hour or so of realtime.  We'd never even know it happened.

Likewise, a flag when booze/edibles hit a certain percentage of population to keep you aware of the little jobs when you're working your mega project would also be helpful.

These wouldn't tax the computer too much, shouldn't be too hard to code, and could be toggleable, for the "I like things the way they are!  Only a NOOB would complain about so and so!" crowd.

If you use DwarfTherapist (I can't, Mac user) I can't see how you could consider this a bad suggestion