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[guale]

Is there a reliable way to keep animals out of certain areas? I don't want my entire herd of cattle pacing around my dining room (seems like it should be unsanitary) but I don't want to have to chain all of them as there are around 50 right now and I can't cage them because I want them to reproduce rapidly. Right now I have them in a walled off area with a 2x2 section of doors, all set to not pet passable but they all gather around the doors and as soon as the butcher comes in to get one they all run,

[MrLobster]

My pits are, abstractly, like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

###########
#.........#
#.#######.#
..RR+...#.#
#####...#.#
#.......#.#
#.......+.#
###########

# = Wall
. = Floor
+ = Pet-impassable door
R = Restricted travel zone


The idea is, animals ignore the zone and sit there humping the closed door that's the most direct path out, but dwarves will go around the back to grab animals.

How well does it work?  Well... jury's still out :-/

[guale]

Sounds brilliant and I was trying to work out a system similar, I'll test it out now.

[Firnagzen]

One of the best (and by far the funniest) variation is suspending all your cattle in a big breeding pod 12 z-levels up. The pod is floored by 3 drawbridges, allowing you to drop a third of them at a time.

[Derakon]

I tend to recommend that you use floodgates or bridges in addition to doors to control access to your animal pens. The goal is to disconnect the animal pens from the rest of the map, pathing-wise, except when you want to retrieve animals. This will prevent your animals from repeatedly trying to path to your meeting areas, which should save on FPS.

All you'd need to do to MrLobster's design above is put a floodgate or drawbridge at the entrance to the external corridor.

[guale]

I guess I should add that I am playing the fallout mod and construction materials are somewhat extremely scarce right now since I am limiting myself to all above-ground and all walls made out of wood and scrap. Mr. Lobster's design seems to work at first but as soon as my butcher goes for one the rest mob that door so when he comes back for another one they all get out. FPS isn't an issue, it's just that when they roam free everything looks less pretty.

[MrLobster]

I had it work fine in one fortress but the next didn't work so well. I thought it was because I'd messed with z-levels. It might also be from young'uns following parents?

[guale]

It very well could be since they have been rather busy for around four years before I finally got enough defences set up properly to worry about butchery. It seems like I may be forced to at least cage the calves.

[Albedo]

Animals seem to follow 2 rules:

1: follow their owner

2: take the shortest path.

The solution is to use Restricted paths (d, o, r) to encourage dwarfs to take a slightly longer way around, while leaving a shorter path with a pet-proofed door.  The animals will malinger around the door while the dwarfs shuffle around the "longer" way.

[slink]

Animals seem to follow 2 rules:

1: follow their owner

2: take the shortest path.

The solution is to use Restricted paths (d, o, r) to encourage dwarfs to take a slightly longer way around, while leaving a shorter path with a pet-proofed door.  The animals will malinger around the door while the dwarfs shuffle around the "longer" way.

That's the method already under discussion. 

[Albedo]

Ah - missed that.

Problems arise from 2 sources - young following parents and pets following owners, and pets being "curious" and exploring (mainly cats).

The solution to the first is to have the "detour" as quick as possible, so the straight-line to the target is through the door asap.  (If the animal is right on the heels of the owner/parent, no luck.)

No solution to the latter, unfortunately.  Curiosity and the cat and all that. 

[Dorf3000]

untested thought warning..

Put the butchers shop/tanner shop in a small airlock that joins directly to the pen.  The butcher(s) are the only ones allowed to pull the lever that opens the pen door. Assign animals to be butchered, then have the lever pulled and let the guy do his work.  Once you've got enough, pull the lever again to close the pen door/open the outer door.
There would be a problem with animals hanging around inside the airlock when you want to close it, maybe there needs to be a petproof door on the other side of the pen so they will hang out there.  Or maybe a 1x1 meeting zone inside the pen would also work, and dwarves wouldn't hang out there due to the airlock.

[MrLobster]

Firnagzen's example sounds really good, especially if they don't suck up CPU pathing while they are in the pen.

Another possibility is something like this:

Code: [Select]

Top level:
   #.#########
   #.........# 
   #R#######.#
   #R#     #.#
####+#######.##
#>+bbbbbbb+L._#
###############

Bottom level:
###############
#<............#
###############

# = wall
. = floor
+ = pet-proof door
b = retracting bridge back down into pit
L = lever to open bridges
R = Restricted travel designation
_ = Channel for Pit zone

Normally the bridge is open, so hopefully the animals won't try to path out. When you want to get an animal you pull the lever to restore the bridge. The butcher grabs one and (one hopes) all the animals will end up trapped in the airlock on the bridge.  Once the butcher is out, the lever is pulled again, the animals drop back into the pit and stop pathing.

[Duuvian]

One of the best (and by far the funniest) variation is suspending all your cattle in a big breeding pod 12 z-levels up. The pod is floored by 3 drawbridges, allowing you to drop a third of them at a time.

I HIGHLY recommend this. Unfortunately this didn't occur to me and now I have a pit filled with an unspeakable number of animals of various species that shouldn't be able to co-exist because I wanted to keep my rare elf animals safe from the invaders who shot my fort's first tame giant eagle. Now I have a pit filled with 300+ forsaken animals that I'm afraid to breach because I'm already hovering around 15-20 FPS with no designations. I'd divert magma or better water into the pit if it didn't mean losing the animals I was protecting in the first place, and more importantly that my FPS goes into the 4 or 5 range when extra fluid dynamics are introduced on top of the underground river waterfall and the fifty UGR creatures eternally trying to swim up it. Maybe I should start a bucket brigade, now that is an amusing image.

(Also, temp and weather are off, and my dwarves are capped at 25 and I'm forcing them to make babies to receive the duke and hopefully the king if my computer can hold together. Just got to 55 and got the dungeon master at 13 years in and still waiting for the first of the future haulers to reach working age finally)