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[shadowclasper]

Just fought off my second siege, did a quick search and didn't find this, so sorry if this is a repeat, but I realized how useful it would be to have a little order to give out that says "We're at WAR!"

guards and military wouldn't mope around doing stupid stuff while goblins are banging at the gates, Dwarves would stay -inside- the hold (that is, within range of buildings you built, so if you, for example, dug a series of tunnels to speed traders and migrants through your mountain home, they won't try and take cover in there), and you wouldn't have to worry about your dwarves doing the entrance-dance. Is this at all a reasonable idea yall think? >_>

[Jakkarra]

Its nice that you thought of this, Good sir, however, the gentleman known as Toadyone has already made clear that this feature will be present in the next version of this exquisite game.

In any case, welcome to Bay12!

[Grendus]

It will be implemented next version with burrows. It was hidden pretty well though, no biggie.

[Shurhaian]

The problem with search engines is that you need to know exactly what words to use. In cases like this, if you knew what the community called it, you wouldn't need to search, would you...?

At any rate, you are correct. This is a very desirable feature. So much so that, as has been mentioned above, it's already a dev priority.

Additional note: I'm not sure what Toady has planned for the fortress guard, but it would be nice if, when the alarm was sounded, the FG rushed toward entrances and meeting areas(and royal guards sought out nobles and stuck to them like glue).

[shadowclasper]

Burrows? Could one of you link it? I still can't seem to find it >_<;

[Christes]

Dev_Now is your friend

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_now.html

The ill-named burrows are larger sections of your fortress where dwarves live and work and to which you can restrict their movements. Dwarves can be assigned to multiple burrows, and you can paint them with your mouse in a few brush sizes or lay them out in multiple rectangles (a burrow need not be a rectangle). Any number of burrows can overlap and you can give them names and an ASCII symbol.

Dwarves will only use workshops, stockpiles, living areas, meeting halls, etc. in the burrows to which they are assigned. I've removed all of the "entrance dance" code so that they can survive the mental trauma of not being in their assigned locations, and they can cross locations that aren't in their burrow, but they'll maintain the restrictions in the general sense described above.

There are many, many ways in which this can be useful for controlling labor (you could even have your experienced miners mine veins of your choosing in this way -- it'd be a slightly clunky workaround, but it works). Just the basic burrow mechanic is powerful enough that it is pretty exploitable, so there will be several ways in which dwarves either move beyond their burrows or are affected adversely by heavy restrictions, but I'll leave those for you to find. These effects should all make sense and not be all that restrictive on play, especially if you are respectful to your critters (for instance, having your soap makers all stand in a 3x3 corner in the main hall until they starve to death shouldn't proceed as planned for very long).

A dwarf not specifically assigned to a burrow can work anywhere, but in the future there might be, say, a restricted burrow setting or something that'll exclude such dwarves. There are also items posted on dev about burrow hauling jobs and burrow production limits and all of whatever -- I haven't done any of that. Things like restricting manager orders to certain burrows etc. would all be great (and faster than doing it via particular workshops in general), but I don't want to get too far afield for this release (since I'm already far afield). In any case, the core work and mechanics are done.

Getting back to the immediate topic, alerts can now just restrict civilians to a set of burrows, with the further restriction that they should get to this set of burrows with priority. If a dwarf then doesn't feel comfortable working there because they were previous assigned to areas outside the alert area, they'll be idle as before, but it's a smaller problem than the one described in the beginning of the first paragraph, and it can be easily corrected if you plan on or are forced to stay in that alert state for a prolonged period. Giving individual dwarves different burrow assignments based on their alert state could be a future possibility (perhaps in conjunction with the work-gang class of ideas), but that's not in the cards for this release.

I believe the last paragraph is the relevant one.

[shadowclasper]

Sooooooo... it's basically that your dwarves have districts they like to stay in, and if you hit a certain button, then they'll go to a specific (and hopefully very well protected) burrow until you can get the defenses set up properly? (like pulling up that dang draw bridge without crushing anyone >_<) And keep Civies out of the ways of fights?

[Grendus]

Essentially. Now instead of having to do all your fighting in broad daylight so you can use the "dwarves stay inside" command to keep them out of the way you can now simply order them into burrows deeper in the mountain while ordering your soldiers into the forward halls for battle. Should make some other things easier as well, such as keeping dwarves out of dangerous areas where a simple restricted traffic zone won't suffice.

[Shurhaian]

It also has peacetime applications. By restricting the burrows in which dwarves work, you can trade some of the silly running around they currently do, for a more specific work pool. Say you have two craftsdwarves, and an order goes in to make bone bolts at Burrow A. The craftsdwarf at Burrow A is just finishing a drink; the one in burrow B, across the map, is idle. As it is now, Craftsdwarf B will run across the map to do it, even if Craftsdwarf A is long finished his drink, and idle, by the time B arrives. With burrows in place, Craftsdwarf B won't even look at Workshop A, and A will finish his drink, get to the workshop, and churn out all the bone bolts in less time than it would have taken B to even get there at all.

This makes it practical to have several sub-fortresses on your map that might only be connected overland; you can concentrate on digging out quarters and workshops and hunting for valuable resources, rather than carving out a lengthy tunnel between the two, and yet still not worry that dwarves will be constantly running back and forth. It only works at that ideal level if you make the burrows self-sufficient - but you could also have specific inter-burrow haulers, and assign war dogs to them, so that they don't get eaten by the groundhogs.

[shadowclasper]

OH! O_O I just realized that it would also make it so you didn't have to lock up an engineer with a ton of magma safe materials to churn out magma safe mechanisms with! you just set up the burrow!

[mizipzor]

This makes it practical to have several sub-fortresses on your map that might only be connected overland; you can concentrate on digging out quarters and workshops and hunting for valuable resources, rather than carving out a lengthy tunnel between the two, and yet still not worry that dwarves will be constantly running back and forth. It only works at that ideal level if you make the burrows self-sufficient - but you could also have specific inter-burrow haulers, and assign war dogs to them, so that they don't get eaten by the groundhogs.

While the obvious application for burrows is to have many sort of pre-defined workshop modules, I havent thought about having them that separated. Different fortresses/settlements on a bigger map sounds like a brutally awesome idea! 

[Footkerchief]

OH! O_O I just realized that it would also make it so you didn't have to lock up an engineer with a ton of magma safe materials to churn out magma safe mechanisms with! you just set up the burrow!

Correct.  It'll make stuff of that kind of much easier.