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[denito]

A goblin siege decimated my fortress while the human liaison was there.  Since he was trying to meet with my broker at the time, I was able to draft the broker (the only survivor) and lead the liaison into the mines, where he would be safe.  Unfortunately the broker got stuck in the "conduct meeting" task and wouldn't do anything else, so I had to abandon anyhow.  I thought by saving my liaison from dying I was ensuring he'd be available for requesting goods after reclaim, but instead he just stands mute and idle by the lake, hanging out with the formerly sieging goblins who turned friendly on reclaim.

Anyhow when the human caravan showed up they did something really odd:  the wagons came to my depot, but whenever I tried to trade they kept saying, "sorry, but we're still unloading."  They never quite finished unloading, but after a long time they stopped UN-loading and just loaded everything back up and left unceremoniously.  It never announced that they would leave soon either, they just high-tailed it out like pissed off Elves.  (I'm quite certain it was humans and not elves, and anyway I never had the chance to trade anything.)

So three questions:  do you think my wandering idiot human liaison is confusing the human caravan?  Am I going to need to kill him?  Finally, assuming I don't kill him, what should I do with him?  (I.e. like build a swimming pool around him and fill it with 5/7 water until he becomes a legendary swimmer.  Maybe drop him in the lake after that, then drain the lake out from under him.  Or put him on a retracting bridge and throw him about just often enough to keep him wounded but not dying - too bad you can't build up toughness that way.)

[Asmodeous]

Anyhow when the human caravan showed up they did something really odd:  the wagons came to my depot, but whenever I tried to trade they kept saying, "sorry, but we're still unloading."  They never quite finished unloading, but after a long time they stopped UN-loading and just loaded everything back up and left unceremoniously.  It never announced that they would leave soon either, they just high-tailed it out like pissed off Elves.  (I'm quite certain it was humans and not elves, and anyway I never had the chance to trade anything.)

This happens if one of their wagons is overloaded. It moves about 1 square every hojillion ticks and never makes it to the depot, and the game has a static trigger for their departure day, and doesn't base it on when they finish unloading.

[denito]

I see.  Thanks.  The route to my depot is rather circuitous anyway.

The question now is, will my human liaison ever take requests now?

[silhouette]

Anyhow when the human caravan showed up they did something really odd:  the wagons came to my depot, but whenever I tried to trade they kept saying, "sorry, but we're still unloading."  They never quite finished unloading, but after a long time they stopped UN-loading and just loaded everything back up and left unceremoniously.  It never announced that they would leave soon either, they just high-tailed it out like pissed off Elves.  (I'm quite certain it was humans and not elves, and anyway I never had the chance to trade anything.)

This happens if one of their wagons is overloaded. It moves about 1 square every hojillion ticks and never makes it to the depot, and the game has a static trigger for their departure day, and doesn't base it on when they finish unloading.

OOOOH
THAT explains why all those other caravan were moving at lightspeed compared to the other one which took years to arrive.

[Doomshifter]

OOOOH
THAT explains why all those other caravan were moving at lightspeed compared to the other one which took years to arrive.

Yeah, there are issues with pre-balancing trade goods on caravans, so that they dump everything on the first one and then put the left overs on the others.

[denito]

OOOOH
THAT explains why all those other caravan were moving at lightspeed compared to the other one which took years to arrive.

Yeah, there are issues with pre-balancing trade goods on caravans, so that they dump everything on the first one and then put the left overs on the others.

Distributing items evenly among container is one of those things that seems simple when humans do it, but is surprisingly hard to program a computer to do well:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem

But you can use heuristics to approximate a good solution (which is all humans are doing anyhow).   Toady just needs a better heuristic here.