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[Malicus]

In this fort, my marksdwarves seem to have a very short range when firing on enemies to the west of them from atop the fortified roof.  After asking about it elsewhere on the forum and receiving no answer (presumably because nobody else had any idea about it), I decided to investigate it myself.  I made a copy of my save, abandoned on the copy, then went to my fortress in adventurer mode.  It took quite a while to get there due to each step in my fortress's area taking...  quite a while, but I eventually got there.  From atop the fortified roof, I could see the problem, which should be evident in these screenshots:

The adventurer looking out from the top of the fortifications
The view of the ground level from there
The view of the ground level, from the ground level of the stairs

It seems that the 48x48 embark tile to the west of my fort's entrance and one z-level above ground level was never fully loaded, and my marksdwarves had only a tile of open space past the fortifications to shoot or look through.  I loaded the pre-adventurer save (which itself was already a copy of the original anyway) and had a short staircase constructed (and then removed) to the west of my entrance on that z-level.  This time when the gobiln ambush came, my marksdwarves had no problems firing on them.

I'm not sure when the optimal time to do so would be, but unloaded 48x48 embark tiles that block a marksdwarf's sight probably SHOULD be loaded at some point, so mysterious things like this don't happen.

[Salabasama]

That's pretty weird, but I know people've had odd unknown tiles before.  Also, I've noticed as an adventurer who could fly that many areas don't have Z-levels above the ground if there is no feature such as a mountain in the area.  Though, that doesn't normally happen in a fortress area.  I have, however, seen these blocks of nothingness come very close to goblin towers before, at the edge of regions.   It looks quite the same as this.

[Olith McHuman]

Aw, you beat me. Now I don't get to shamelessly show off my 80x80x8 water tank with a 48x48 square at the top that refuses to fill.
I'm using plain 40d, so it is indeed a 40d problem.
Also, I guess this would explain the odd view from the top of a goblin tower in adventurer mode; the tower takes up almost all of a 48x48 tile, and the surrounding tiles are not loaded.

[smjjames]

Hrm, I wonder if this happens in all forts, although its not always easy to test.