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[Blacky]

I've looked around, and found plenty of posts where people seems to be able to use the burrow system. And I can't. I must be doing something wrong (with the last DF version).

So, simple test: I embark, dig a room at -1, then create a burrow that encompass the wagons and a little around at 0, a bigger zone at -1 (including the east half of my dug room), and the whole map at -2 and -3. I assign my 7 dwarfs to that burrow. Notice I haven't created an alert or anything.

• I create a stockpile (any default type) in my room (at -1, I have only one room) outside the burrow (in the west portion of the room). Dwarfs do nothing.
• I create a wood stockpile going west to east, some of it outside the burrow, some of it inside. Dwarfs do noting.
• I create a wood stockpile at the east, i.e. only inside the burrow. Dwarf haul wood.
• I create a food stockpile at the east, inside the burrow. Dwarf do nothing!!
• I designate a tree to be chopped down. Dwarf do nothing. The moment I extend the burrow toward that tree, dwarf cut down tree.

If that's no clear, I can reproduce

And all of that with the default settings of a new embark, so hauling jobs activated, no military, and so on. And still all of that with no alert. I tried creating one, activating and/or deactivating the "restrict to burrow" option, doesn't do squat.

What am I doing wrong?

Right know I simply just want to understand the system and make it work to mimic the old "Dwarf don't go outside" function of 40d, but I had issues of this kind (my whole fortress properly in a burrow, and yet thousands of stockpile job cancellations); so I thought of a random bug or corrupted save or whatever and generated a new world, and a clean new embark as described above. And yup, either there's a major bug making the burrow system totally unusable, or I'm doing something very wrong.

[Sphalerite]

I create a stockpile (any default type) in my room (at -1, I have only one room) outside the burrow (in the west portion of the room). Dwarfs do nothing.

Working as designed.  Your dwarves won't put anything in the stockpile since the stockpile is outside the burrow.

I create a wood stockpile going west to east, some of it outside the burrow, some of it inside. Dwarfs do noting.

Apparently being partly inside and partly outside the burrow makes the entire stockpile unusable.  Annoying, but not unexpected.

I create a wood stockpile at the east, i.e. only inside the burrow. Dwarf haul wood.

Working as designed, then.

I create a food stockpile at the east, inside the burrow. Dwarf do nothing!!

This is more confusing.  Need more information to pin this one down, it might have been an issue unrelated to burrows.  Were the food items you had available inside or outside the burrow?  Had you forbidden food hauling? 

I designate a tree to be chopped down. Dwarf do nothing. The moment I extend the burrow toward that tree, dwarf cut down tree.

Working as designed.  Your dwarf won't take a job that's outside his burrow.

[TheyTarget]

Just assume, A dwarf will never leave the burrow zone, unless he's going to die otherwise. They only perform jobs in their burrows, and if you make an alert, they ignore their own burrow assignments, and go to the starter burrow. They also dont take supplies from one burrow to another. Example, if you have flux in burrow 1, a forge in burrow 2, and iron in no burrow. They wont take anything and steel production would be impossible. Hope that helps.

[Blacky]

Grmbl, I can't reproduce it exactly.

I took my first on scene save from above. So now, if I create a stockpile going from outside the burrow to inside it, the dwarfs will logically (!) put stuff in the portion of the stockpile that's inside the burrow and refuse to use the part outside the burrow ("drop off inaccessible). Everything else seems to work fine too. Strange.

Anyway, I'll do some more test; but right now what I don't understand is the "restrict to a burrow" alert parameter. Since civilians don't do squat outside their burrow, is this restrict function usable with civilian burrow?

Or to put it another way, I'm trying to defend/manage a classic designed fortress. So I need to switch between two modes: "go anywhere you like/need", and "stay inside my walls because you don't want to kiss the goblins/giant spiders too close". How can I manage that without manually creating a burrow for my whole fortress at each ambush, or adding/removing manually several dozens of dwarfs at each ambush?

[Sphalerite]

When you manually assign a dwarf to a burrow, that dwarf won't do any jobs that involve any buildings or objects outside that burrow.  The dwarf won't actually be physically restricted from leaving the burrow, but he will generally tend to stay in his burrow as there's nothing for him to do outside it.  This assignment takes effect immediately when you assign the dwarf to a burrow.

When you go to the military screen and activate the citizens stay in burrow alert, this overrides any individual assignments of dwarves to burrows, and instead causes all non-military dwarves to be assigned to the burrow you've selected on the military alert screen.

If all you want is to have an ability to force all your civilians inside when you are under attack, all you need to do is create a single burrow that encompasses all of your designates safe/indoor area.  You do not need to manually assign any dwarves to this burrow.  When goblins come by, go to your military alert screen and activate an alert assigning civilians to that burrow.  When the danger is past go to the military alert screen and deactivate the alert.

[Blacky]

Okayyyyyyy. Finally got it. I shouldn't assign my dworfs to the main burrow, the alert will do that for me when things go wrong.

Thanks a lot.

[Ephemeriis]

Grmbl, I can't reproduce it exactly.

I took my first on scene save from above. So now, if I create a stockpile going from outside the burrow to inside it, the dwarfs will logically (!) put stuff in the portion of the stockpile that's inside the burrow and refuse to use the part outside the burrow ("drop off inaccessible). Everything else seems to work fine too. Strange.

Anyway, I'll do some more test; but right now what I don't understand is the "restrict to a burrow" alert parameter. Since civilians don't do squat outside their burrow, is this restrict function usable with civilian burrow?

Or to put it another way, I'm trying to defend/manage a classic designed fortress. So I need to switch between two modes: "go anywhere you like/need", and "stay inside my walls because you don't want to kiss the goblins/giant spiders too close". How can I manage that without manually creating a burrow for my whole fortress at each ambush, or adding/removing manually several dozens of dwarfs at each ambush?

Create the burrow ahead of time.  Cover the entire "safe" area of the fortress.  Basically anything inside, if you're trying to replicate the old "dwarves stay inside" function.

Then you need to set up an alert in the military screen.  You should have an "Inactive" alert which basically does nothing.  There should be a little "civ" next to it.  This means that it is the active civilian alert level.  This means that, if you haven't modified your "Inactive" alert at all, they won't do anything special.

You want to create a new alert that restricts your dwarves to that safe area burrow you just created.

When you're under siege, you set that new safe zone alert as active.  It should get the little "civ" next to it.  Your dwarves will be restricted to that burrow.

If you assign dwarves to that burrow, they'll stay in it all the time.  This isn't what you want to do.  You want to leave the dwarves alone and rely on the alert system.

[ChickenLips]

[EDITED/DELETED: Hmm...  looks like I failed to isolate one other variable in what I was looking at.  I take it back until I test more.]