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[Carsius]

I had multiple facepalms streaming from the same incident over the last couple days; it all started with my first dragon showed up on the map.  He ran around torching a kitten who had wandered out into the forest, burning down most of the vegetation in that vicinity, until the kitten was no more and then he pathed towards my fortress and into a cage trap.

I've got a pretty reasonable walled river setup, and a mass-pit drowning chamber adjacent to the river had been my main source of goblin disposal.  Now that I had a dragon (who had just demonstrated his awesome firebreath to me) I decided to drain and deepen the drowning champer several z-levels, create a 3x3 block of fortifications (with the center block removed) and drop the dragon into the middle.  My thought was firebreath is more painful than drowning and also burns the refuse, so I no longer need to drain and refill my chamber to prevent a heinous buildup of trash+miasma.

Facepalm #1:  Dragonfire is really, really easy to block.  Only the weak fleshy vermin that wander into traps (and the occassional 'misplaced' kitten) ever die by fire in my pits.  Now I've got a dragon thoroughly protected that I don't know how to get rid of (short of having marksdwarves with the ability to shoot through fortifications from range.)

My new solution: carve fortifications into the area around the death pit, so my marksdwarves can practice shooting goblins and the dragon can burn up all the fallen wooden bolts.  Eventually they should get talented enough to shoot through fortifications from range.  Bonus points because the markswarves randomly get hit by dragonfire (which they also block and train up shield skill.)  Previously my marksdwarves were spending every other month on training (danger room) and off duty (for archery targets.)

Facepalm #2:  Markswarves carry alcohol.  When they go off duty, they turn into civillians, and drop their alcohol+food where they stand.  Even if that's next to a fortification receiving regular bouts of dragonfire.  With a little unfortunate timing, alcohol boils and explodes, thus killing the would-be Marksdwarves.

In further retrospect, I believe I can send my marksdwarves directly into the death room and just have them shoot the dragon from two square away; they should block the dragonfire long enough to take her out.  Alternatively, I should be able to drop a bunch of stones through the dragon's entry pit onto her head until there's nothing left but a big pile of dragon goo, then deconstruct the forts.  I am anticipating some Facepalm #3 as a result.

You can order your dwarves to not carry food and/or drinks on them through the supplies screen of the military menu. Should keep the rate of exploding dwarves down. From what I understand, it also speeds up the rate at which your squads mobilize, since that's one less thing for them to pick up.

[Ruhn]

I lol'd at the "torching the kitten" part 

[Larix]

Facepalm #2:  Markswarves carry alcohol.  When they go off duty, they turn into civillians, and drop their alcohol+food where they stand.  Even if that's next to a fortification receiving regular bouts of dragonfire.  With a little unfortunate timing, alcohol boils and explodes, thus killing the would-be Marksdwarves.

Alcohol doesn't explode. If it gets hot enough, it just evaporates and disperses.

Provisions are part of a militia member's uniform, so will only be dropped if the dwarf has to remove the uniform upon going off-duty. This will only happen if you specifically set the 'no uniform' option, or if the dwarfs in question have civilian jobs with their own uniform (miner, woodcutter, hunter).

[Tarqiup Inua]

It started in really innocent way. I decided to butcher the animals I bought from autumn caravan en masse to get the supply of bones for crafting so there was this pile of meat in the butchery, dwarves were hauling it to the food stockpile. Autumn caravan took off as the winter came. In the end, about a dozen dwarves died of dehydration.

It took a moment to realize what was going on when I got down to 23 drinks. The meat clogged all the empty pots and barrels so there was no way to make more alcohol. I set up three more craftsdwarf workshops to make as many containers as possible, assigned stoneworking and brewing labors to everyone, ordered my diggers to attempt to find the nearest cavern as soon as possible in hopes there would be a watersource. In the end, it worked out... now I have to hope tantrum spiral doesn't kick in.

[Iamblichos]

Facepalm moment of the day:

Digging a channel for water.  Yay, waterfall.

At the bottom, I dig a door for little Legendary Miner to pop out.  I then set the door to Forbidden.

Piffo zippo, connect up the blue stuff, everything runs, waterfall is misting, dwarves are happy, well is filled, life is good.

Until... I see a random message pop up about "Cancelled: dangerous terrain".  WTF?  Scrolling down to the basement, some 40 z levels below (not in the caverns yet) I see... water everywhere.  It's all over the stairs, it's flooding the hallways, etc.  Bugger.

I throw the switch to turn off the floodgate... and discover that Urist McHateYouGuys hadn't bothered to hook it up despite having at least 2 seasons to do so while I dug.  Double bugger.

Looking down the channel, I see the problem, six levels down... someone had apparently fallen in the waterfall, gotten to the bottom, OPENED THE FORBIDDEN DOOR and then DIED in it.  It's a world of blue rushing death.

As I attempt a frantic last-minute effort to punch through into the caverns to give myself some drainage, I see a jet of pure blue death shoot up from the well in the hospital, washing away the small party sticking around admiring the bucket or whatever the hell they do there.

Abandon game? (y).

[jcochran]

I throw the switch to turn off the floodgate... and discover that Urist McHateYouGuys hadn't bothered to hook it up despite having at least 2 seasons to do so while I dug.  Double bugger.

Floodgate? Or perhaps drawbridge? After all, the default state for a floodgate is closed. Silly thing stays closed unless it's successfully linked to a lever or pressure plate and said lever or pressure plate is triggered.

[Larix]

I throw the switch to turn off the floodgate... and discover that Urist McHateYouGuys hadn't bothered to hook it up despite having at least 2 seasons to do so while I dug.  Double bugger.

It could be that the building's open/closed state and lever state didn't match, or that you pulled the lever too quickly in succession, not accounting for the 100-step delay from lever pull to building reaction. Was the "link lever to building" still shown in the lever's query dialogue? If it's no longer shown, the job _usually_ has been performed (there are exceptions) and the error was in wrong operation of the lever.

If your mechanic really failed to link up a floodgate in two seasons, that's a serious organisation mishap. Either you managed to swamp all your (or your only?!) mechanic/s with so much other (less vital!) work that they never found the time to do their actual job, or the floodgate wasn't reachable for linking, e.g. because of locked doors somewhere in the way. I've done a fair bit of mechanics tinkering, so it's become second nature for me to carefully check that levers and buildings are properly linked up and functional before trusting my fort's life on them.

[Iamblichos]

Oh yes, this was a total fail on the player side; I didn't verify that critical steps had been done by my angry midgets beloved dwarves.  I think I probably also overused the lever.  New fort is going better and I did some serious reading on the Wiki about fluid dwarfnamics so it shouldn't happen again.

[Aslandus]

I've done a fair bit of mechanics tinkering, so it's become second nature for me to carefully check that levers and buildings are properly linked up and functional before trusting my fort's life on them.

After losing a fort or two because levers weren't hooked up promptly, I can verify that this is important...

[Virodhi]

Dear diary, today I was reminded of the value of checking the neighbors screen before embarking.

I was settling into a nice, calm region to finally figure out those blasted minecarts when... zombies, zombies everywhere.

Checking a copy of the world reveals that I've embarked in range of eight towers. Ouch.

[Aslandus]

Dear diary, today I was reminded of the value of checking the neighbors screen before embarking.

I was settling into a nice, calm region to finally figure out those blasted minecarts when... zombies, zombies everywhere.

Checking a copy of the world reveals that I've embarked in range of eight towers. Ouch.

Quick! build minecart tracks all around your base and put about 5 carts running constantly around your base filled with rocks to squash anything that tries to enter! (ps: exploding zombies = fun)

[Beast Tamer]

Embarked within range of eight necromancer towers? Would you mind posting the raws so I could use them?

[PDF urist master]

i had three craftsdwarf moods so far. rather than using the workshop on the surface, or the workshop 1z lvl away from the meeting hall, they all use my adamantine workshops, which are located in the 3rd cavern layer, 80z lvls from the surface.

WHY CAN'T DWARVES UNDERSTAND CONVENIENCE?

[klefenz]

So, i was trying to get one dwarf to the hospital to fix his broken hand, since he did not respond to burrow assignment (tried getting him out of the military, didnt work), i send his squad of 3 to a hole to get cave inned. Another dwarf got a blorken leg, but Urist McBrokenArm didnt get a scratch. First facepalm.

Then after Urist McBrokenLeg got healed i decided to try again, so i sent a miner to clear the caved-in block. I have to clarify, it was ONE block in the middle of a small 3*3 room. Nothing over it. This miner dug this tile of rock and it caved-in. Again. WTF? She was taken to the hospital, however her baby girl was abandoned there. Maybe i should try take her to goblin hospital, im pretty sure they have better medical attention for kids.

[Larix]

Babies cannot take any jobs, which prevents them from taking the "Rest" job, which means they can't be treated in the hospital. You can only hope the mother gets treated quickly enough to get back to baby and pick it up before it dehydrates, because thanks to another annoying bug, babies easily fall victim to thirst/starvation in the middle of the meeting hall, because give water/food jobs aren't generated reliably for them. A wounded infant will instantly go to rest and get treated once it reaches its first birthday and upgrades to "child".