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Author Topic: Healthcare  (Read 902 times)

andracen

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Healthcare
« on: October 28, 2010, 04:12:30 pm »

As a new player to this game, I understand its complex, its not intuitive.  I get all this.  Healthcare though is its a tremendous pile of suck.  I have to jump through a hundred hoops to have any hope of getting a dwarf out of the hospital.  I've had diagnosticians never EVER do their job.  They just sat there with 'no job'.  I assigned multiple, I traded out CM dwarves, etc...  I keep looking up how to make soap and plaster etc... all I see are how its bugged.  I've never had a dwarf recover once he goes to the hospital.  Its as bad as a death sentence because I have two hospitals full of dwarves that are never getting better and everyone giving them water is draining all my wells.  Its insane.

Basically my comment.  This aspect is extremely not fun.  Am I missing something in the big picture of how this adds to the fun, am I being a wuss about it?  I'm seriously about to quit and just never look back solely due to the frustration of the hospital/healthcare injuries, etc...

I mean my dwarves won't even take a bolt out of them because its forbidden.  After battling dozens of goblins having to track down every injured dwarf and manually remove each bolt is well pretty dang close to actually treating 42 people with arrows stuck in them.

P.S.  Beds, tables, traction benches, cloth, buckets, splints, etc... they got tons of.
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Lord Vetinari

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Re: Healthcare
« Reply #1 on: October 28, 2010, 04:33:35 pm »

You didn't mention it, so, I'll try: you said that you have diagnosticians, but do you have a Chief Medical Dwarf? It's needed for the entire thing to work. You should choose your best diagnostician for that position. Also, it's a good idea to disable any other job (even other medichal jobs) in your CMD.

After all of that, half of the time your doctors won't work properly. Hospitals are among the functions added in .31, so they're new and really buggy. Keep in mind that DF currently is only at alpha stage, so gameplay elements (and bugs) are added, modified and removed often.
« Last Edit: October 28, 2010, 04:35:06 pm by Lord Vetinari »
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NecroRebel

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Re: Healthcare
« Reply #2 on: October 28, 2010, 04:36:03 pm »

Health care labors often don't happen quickly, and that's an obvious problem. I'd suggest that you turn off all other labors on your chief medical dwarf if you haven't already.

Soap making is fairly straightforward, as long as you don't try to do it with lye you made yourself. Buy a couple barrels of lye from a caravan and it becomes simple. Get a kitchen, slaughter an animal, render some tallow, make a soap maker's shop, and make soap with the tallow and the bought lye. It's only really troublesome if you're trying to use self-made lye, as that naturally gets stored in buckets and you need it in barrels.

Plaster isn't working; don't even bother. Just make and use splints.

To remove bolts from dwarves, it's far, far easier to use the z-stocks menu than to search out individual dwarves. Once the goblins are gone, go into the z-stocks, scroll down to Ammunition, scroll to any ammot types with an F next to them, and hit (f) and (d) to unforbid and set for dumping all ammo of that type, or hit TAB, scroll down to the bottom, and just unforbid-dump all the 1-ammo forbidden stacks (forbidden ones are always at the very bottom). You'll need a working bookkeeper to use this method, but once you learn to use the z-stocks menu, you'll never, ever look back.

Part of the problem is also likely that you're not keeping your dwarves safe very well. You shouldn't have too many reasons for your dwarves to go outside, so why are dozens of dwarves getting hit every time an ambush/siege comes along? Make use of burrows to prevent dwarves from going into danger zones, look into defensive strategies to mitigate the ability of marksgoblins to shoot your people, deploy traps, equip and train your soldiers better, and just in general make your fort safer so you don't need so much healthcare.

Healthcare is still fairly new, and hasn't been polished very well. Still, it is usable and not terribly frustrating if you know what you're doing, and not just with the healthcare system itself. You may need to learn about extra tips and tricks that seem completely unrelated to the problems you're having.
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andracen

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Re: Healthcare
« Reply #3 on: October 28, 2010, 04:59:12 pm »

I'll admit, I've been having a great deal of 'fun' wiping out my sieges.  But since they can destroy buildings from what I've heard I've not been hiding.  They'd also be able to slaughter the trade caravans that show up, and they always siege me around the time migrants arrive or a caravan is arriving.  I can win a fight with relatively few outright loses but now I've got a dozen useless dwarves because they lost a pinky toe and won't go do anything until the Dr sees them.

I've set the Chief Medical Dwarf, changed it a few times, etc... nothing works.  To top it all off my best diagnostician managed to break his spine somehow.

Thanks for the z stocks menu, I have a great bookkeeper so I can use that. 
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Chocolatemilkgod

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Re: Healthcare
« Reply #4 on: October 28, 2010, 05:23:21 pm »

I generally don't need these too much since I use mainly traps. However when I do, you need splints and traction benches. And of course your CMD. I'm truthfully still learning it.
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NecroRebel

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Re: Healthcare
« Reply #5 on: October 28, 2010, 05:23:52 pm »

I'll admit, I've been having a great deal of 'fun' wiping out my sieges.  But since they can destroy buildings from what I've heard I've not been hiding.  They'd also be able to slaughter the trade caravans that show up, and they always siege me around the time migrants arrive or a caravan is arriving.  I can win a fight with relatively few outright loses but now I've got a dozen useless dwarves because they lost a pinky toe and won't go do anything until the Dr sees them.
Trolls can destroy doors, but nothing can destroy a raised drawbridge, particularly if it's over a moat. Also, if it's the caravans you're having trouble protecting, you should probably 1. limit the number of places they can enter the map (use the (D)epot accessible tool off the main menu to check where they can show; they will show only where green reaches the map edge if it does anywhere), and then 2. make a certain, well-guarded route for them to go on.

Migrants are more difficult to protect, but usually losing them isn't very terrible since they have no friends and don't cause problems with other civs when they die.

Quote
I've set the Chief Medical Dwarf, changed it a few times, etc... nothing works.  To top it all off my best diagnostician managed to break his spine somehow.

Thanks for the z stocks menu, I have a great bookkeeper so I can use that.
Changing the Chief Medical Dwarf might be part of the problem. It takes quite a while to register diagnosis jobs, and it could be that when you switch that timer gets reset.

Also, it's not just having a bookkeeper, it's having a working bookkeeper. You have to assign them through the (n)obles screen, then change their accuracy (s)ettings and give them an office so that they'll actually work. Their skill matters little, really; dabblers will usually hit perfect accuracy within a season or two.
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celem

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Re: Healthcare
« Reply #6 on: October 28, 2010, 07:05:29 pm »

bear in mind that some dwarves will never recover...they will lie in the beds for years and years....though they will wake and move if a mood takes them, going back to unconciousness immediately after:)

Examples of this are total loss of a leg or foot since crutches dont work
Also nervous damage does not heal, neither does the brain, severe traume to either is curtains.

To rid yourself of said slackers (unless you feel like hoping for a free artifact) you want to wall him off or otherwise isolate him so he dies of thirst.....didnt say it was gonna be nice.
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rephikul

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Re: Healthcare
« Reply #7 on: October 28, 2010, 11:20:10 pm »

Also nervous damage does not heal, neither does the brain, severe traume to either is curtains.
You can change the raw for nerves to heal. Brain seems to cause death even when slightly bruised so it doesnt really matter if it heal at all :D
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schussel

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Re: Healthcare
« Reply #8 on: October 29, 2010, 01:49:43 am »

adding to the lye maker thing ... try to regularly empty buckets of liquids .. that means forbid any water in the stock screen and dump .. the buckets .. this will empty em out and make them useable for lye filling after you reclaimed them from the dump

i usually do so about 1nce per year and have no probs with lye and soapmaking ..

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danaris

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Re: Healthcare
« Reply #9 on: October 29, 2010, 10:27:40 am »

Also nervous damage does not heal, neither does the brain, severe traume to either is curtains.
You can change the raw for nerves to heal. Brain seems to cause death even when slightly bruised so it doesnt really matter if it heal at all :D

And oddly, it seems like it causes dwarves to die from suffocation...apparently when the brain isn't in perfect working order, the game decides that the lungs shouldn't be told to operate.
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forumist

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Re: Healthcare
« Reply #10 on: October 29, 2010, 12:50:49 pm »

Plaster isn't working; don't even bother. Just make and use splints.

Plaster maybe isn't working well, but it is working somehow. I've seen some dwarves with plaster casts.

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celem

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Re: Healthcare
« Reply #11 on: October 29, 2010, 01:27:15 pm »

plaster works fine...in theory, what is broken is the doctor filling a bucket of water for the cast, he'll head to a well and stand there scratching his headbutt.

If you provide him somehow with a bucket full of water (or he can find one) it works fine
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Tsarwash

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Re: Healthcare
« Reply #12 on: October 29, 2010, 01:41:43 pm »

For some reason, some dwarves don't work well as diagnosers. If they don't do it, choose another one. Plaster works fine for me usually. Sometimes it takes the doctor a long time to get any water though. Soap is not essential, but it does reduce infections. As somebody beofore said, Buy lye, don't produce it yourself. It's a lot easier and reduces bugs.

My hospital is working just fine. On the same level, I also have Carpenters, Wood Burners, Ashery, and Soap Maker. Along with a Kitchen, these produce most of what you need for a working hospital.

Buckets can be quite bugged. Buckets with stagnant water left around seem to be completely useless.
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Rexfelum

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Re: Healthcare
« Reply #13 on: October 29, 2010, 04:58:07 pm »

If I'm following correctly, the main complaint is this:

I've had diagnosticians never EVER do their job.  They just sat there with 'no job'.  I assigned multiple, I traded out CM dwarves, etc...  . . .  I've never had a dwarf recover once he goes to the hospital.  Its as bad as a death sentence because I have two hospitals full of dwarves that are never getting better and everyone giving them water is draining all my wells.

If that's the choke point, then you can deal with other problems later.  And if you want this job (or any stuck job) done, I recommend going for overkill: free up ALL your diagnosticians from other labors, and make sure ALL of them can reach the target.  If you have to, eliminate any diagnosticians who can no longer walk.  I worry sometimes that "diagnose" tasks are assigned to specific dwarves, and if that one is unavailable, then no one else gets it.  The spine injury you mentioned may singlehandedly be ruining this whole process.

Also, it's been my experience that the Chief Medical Dwarf does not do all diagnosis, or even the first diagnosis on a patient.  You need the position, but you can't trust it.

If you can just solve this somehow, I think your other concerns will be mere annoyances, not game-ruination machines.  After all:

I keep looking up how to make soap and plaster etc... all I see are how its bugged.

"All you see"?  This isn't true, since those same places have the workarounds.

I mean my dwarves won't even take a bolt out of them because its forbidden.  After battling dozens of goblins having to track down every injured dwarf and manually remove each bolt is well pretty dang close to actually treating 42 people with arrows stuck in them.

This isn't true either.  Since fired bolts are often forbidden by default, the game handles it.  I can't recall if medical dwarves will actually remove forbidden bolts, but I do know that medical care doesn't stop just because a dwarf is slightly "decorated."  Also, dwarves will walk around in full health with bolts still sticking out of them.

--Rexfelum
« Last Edit: October 29, 2010, 04:59:51 pm by Rexfelum »
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