Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Pheo]

So, I have been messing with war dogs in my latest fort. Trained some up and assigned them to my military dwarves. The problem im having is that the war dogs never stay by the dwarf very long. They seem to wander around my fortress, mostly to a meeting area, and then return to the military dwarf.

The military dwarves are stationed and on duty. Each assigned a dog or two.

Why do they do this? It's just annoying to have a pack of war dogs not stationed with their owner and cluttering up my hallways.

[dakenho]

I have seen this quiet a bit in the way one type of creature will interact with a different type of creature, for instance a hunter goes out to chase a deer in the sw corner.  The hunter runs out to near that location gets a question mark and retargets the deer now in the east corner.   The same thing will happen with your war dogs.  Your military dwarf will go hang out in the meeting hall and your dog will path to the same spot.  Unfortunately if your military dwarf suddenly decides he needs to be on duty he runs out and his dog keeps routing to the meeting area, the dog gets and hangs around for a bit than re-paths to your military dwarf.  I just started a new fort and got scared as my dwarfs were harassed by ant men and trogs.  The dogs were too far behind and some would not engage even the closest critter.
The same problem exists with hunting dogs and seems to be true for any interaction between two critters that are different types Ie dwarf;wolf.

War dogs never seemed to useful in battle by them self’s they are squishy and will fly 10 squares when hit by a goby mace lord,  they are best suited to wrestler who can exhausted an enemy and the dog can chew on them to death.

[The Architect]

The system that has been described (dogs choosing a point near their master and not checking his/her location until they reacy it) is to save pathing calculations and make dogs less of a huge drain on framerate. If they constantly checked their owners' locations then they would be a huge processor drain.

[dakenho]

right,  one could do a rally point theory though and check more frequently than once

[MrFake]

It's a common problem affecting even the dwarfs.  A sort of fix (besides grilling the dogs and boiling the dwarfs) is to eliminate all your meeting areas.  They're good for collecting dwarfs in an emergency, but otherwise, they just create unnecessary strain on traffic and DAMNED BABIES!  Only the useless dwarfs are likely to wander into danger anyway, and well ... serves them right.

Unless you happen to like weddings.  I mean, they are kinda bitchin'.  Good places to meet bearded, wrestler chicks.