Print

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

[hulbral]

I just started playing DF again (last time was with .40) and I've been really excited about burrows. I always wanted to manage where my dwarves are at, and especially haulers. Seeing them run to the other side of the world get a log for the stockpile when a log is right nearby drives me mad.

Anyway, in the current DF, I keep trying to define burrows in order to make haulers keep some focus. But I always end up being spammed with "UristMcIdiot cancels store Item in stockpile: Item inaccessible." Yes, the burrows work, he wont fetch that log from infinite far away, but he will try, over and over and over. The fail dwarf will often stand entirely still while generating a bunch of messages about canceling until he finally, at random, attempts a job fetching an item that is actually in the burrow.

What surprises me is that I see no mention of problems such as these on the wiki. I get this problem in every fort I make for anyone in a burrow with hauling enabled. Am I doing something wrong?

To summarize my problem: In a simple test where I cut down a large forest, then define a stockpile and a burrow that encompasses the stockpile and some, but not all, of the logs, the units hauling wood keep trying, in vain, to haul wood from outside the burrow.

[UristMcDwarf]

I just wanna say, this reminds me of this time on Pandemic 2, this boat had set out just as all the ports closed, and it couldn't get to and ports so it just kept going around in circles, trying to get to a port.

[MagmaMcFry]

I know how the messages are generated: The wood stockpile picks a random reachable unstocked log for storage and sets a job to pick up the log and stockpile it. When a reachable dwarf with the required labor (Wood Hauling) has No Job, the job fires up, assigns itself to the dwarf, and shouts at you because the dwarf can't Go Fetch.

Simple solution: Don't use burrows, use forbidding.

I once had a fort that relied heavily on glassmaking. I had 13 glass furnaces with Collect Sand/R and my dwarves would always take a bag and throw themselves onto a single tile, the upper leftmost tile of the Sand Collection zone, thereby greatly raising their collection time. So I made about 25 disjoint burrows over the sand collection and had to live with the messages.

[AngleWyrm]

I got this same kind of spam when I set up a loom in the caverns. It was every other message "Urist cancels gather web:Unable to find path." Apparently it was trying to pick an inaccessible web. After several months of spam, I finally disassembled the loom because I got sick of looking at it.

[hulbral]

Here is a quote where one guy reports using burrows with dedicated haulers, and a guy responding that he has the same problem as me.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My favourite bit is the specialisation - each burrow-dorf has his own assigned bed and the more lively burrows have dedicated haulers who live solely to facilitate things within the burrow. As an example, my food burrow is currently feeding 30 dwarves and has one farmer, one butcher/tanner/brewer/chef and one food hauler who takes all the products up to the food stockpile for the cross-burrow haulers to distribute. Thanks for the suggestions everyone!

Huh... I tried this a few months ago, and got stuck on various bugs around burrows & hauling...

for example, my brewer did not have food hauling enabled, but he would get stuck repeatedly picking up his completed barrel of booze, and then dropping it, cancelling due to there being no available dropoff.

I know how the messages are generated: The wood stockpile picks a random reachable unstocked log for storage and sets a job to pick up the log and stockpile it. When a reachable dwarf with the required labor (Wood Hauling) has No Job, the job fires up, assigns itself to the dwarf, and shouts at you because the dwarf can't Go Fetch.

Well that is just plain WRONG. And completely unworkable. It basically means no dwarves can have hauling enabled while being assigned to a burrow.

For added bonus points: I just got some immigrants. I turned off hauling for all of them (in fact I turned off all of their professions) and assigned them to a waiting burrow. These guys ALSO try to haul the freaking wood. Without wood hauling enabled. It may be that they got stuck on trying to haul wood before I turned the labor off, or something, but in any case - burrows basically break the game.

And how on earth did that one guy report using burrows just fine like in the spoilered quote?

[hulbral]

Ok, I have been poking around the bug tracker. Apparently, this bug has been reported over and over and over since April. It completely breaks burrows, yet the bug has not been deemed important enough to fix for 8 months?

This is the kind of stuff that makes me shake my head and lose faith in dwarf fortress altogether.

[ext0l]

Instead of assigning burrows just forbid the items you don't want hauled.

[peregarrett]

I got this same kind of spam when I set up a loom in the caverns. It was every other message "Urist cancels gather web:Unable to find path." Apparently it was trying to pick an inaccessible web. After several months of spam, I finally disassembled the loom because I got sick of looking at it.

I think it could be caused by webs located at unrevealed parts of cavern. I was getting this spam even after forbidding all webs in cavern. And when I sent military there, they got me full picture and spam stopped.

[hulbral]

Instead of assigning burrows just forbid the items you don't want hauled.

This is the kind of response coming from someone that either has infinite patience, or just never makes a large castle.

And it doesn't work at all if I want to have two burrows independently working with stuff that i.e needs bags. Without burrows, haulers will go all the way to burrow A, move a bag a couple of tiles, then all the way back to burrow B, move a bag a couple of tiles, etc. Oh, and anyone here dislike low FPS? Blame units hauling stuff everywhere. With local hauling, I'd bet you could quadruple your FPS in a large castle.

Burrows was supposed to fix all this, which is why I came to give DF a second chance at all -_-

[abadidea]

Ok, I have been poking around the bug tracker. Apparently, this bug has been reported over and over and over since April. It completely breaks burrows, yet the bug has not been deemed important enough to fix for 8 months?

This is the kind of stuff that makes me shake my head and lose faith in dwarf fortress altogether.

Yeah, because I'm so sure you could release a better game for free.

It would be cool if there was an official vote on which minor bugs bug people the most, though.

[hulbral]

Yeah, because I'm so sure you could release a better game for free.

Please abstain from ever bringing up the 'free' argument. It is never relevant.

[Itnetlolor]

Applying a bit of common sense into the burrow matter (dedicated hauling), use dedicated areas (like tree farms) and mark those with the same burrows, assign the dedicated task to the dedicated dwarves, and wa-la, your dwarves shouldn't be as thick-headed. Otherwise, just dump the supply that needs dedicated hauling into the dedicated area, and then reclaim the item in question, and let the dedicated parties handle it from there.

Secondary solution. Have a general-purpose stockpile in a melting pot of assigned burrows which everyone can collect what has gone stray that wandering dwarves drop off that's outside all the dedicated burrow zones. Like a "Lost & Found" stockpile.

At least, that's my workaround. I do similar with a sort of immigration office; I assign brand new dwarves (migrants) into there until I have a plan for them and I have a good idea of their stats and such, then they're unassigned from that burrow and either assigned to a new one, or are general-purpose dwarves.

Sub-classing can also work. You can have dedicated outer-rim haulers collect from the wilds the wood/stone supply (huge burrow covering a safe enough area that yields plenty of work), and then have the inner-core dwarves haul from the outer's stockpile into the inner stockpile (where the crafters and such reside). Then again, relay dwarves (general-purpose dwarves assigned to wings of a fort hauling just about anything from their wing) can do the stray gathering or speed up the outer to inner hauling since the bridging of the gaps is in their department/jurisdiction (similar rules to the outers, but between inner and outer only; inner is just a small area covering outer stockpile, and inner's significant area of work; which may include construction.).

EDIT:
When I have the time, I might make a graphic of what I mean.

EDIT EDIT:
I forgot to mention that this system may require using the 'T'ake from Stockpile command a bit to get it working how you want it to. But when you get the system down, and cancel the 'T'aking when no longer needed at the right times, then things should run smoothly.

[brucemo]

I ignore this whole problem.  With regard to haulers, haulers haul the stuff and the less I think about that, the better.  If I think I have too many, I put them into their army and activate their squad.  If I get short on haulers, I deactivate their squad.

Sure, it would be nice if sensible stuff worked and/or wasn't god-awful annoying, but that is true of a huge number of things in DF, and this is by far not the most annoying one.  Wait until you have a weaponsmith working one forge and an armorsmith working another, and you tell the manager that you want ten axes and ten breastplates, and it queues five axes at each, followed by five breastplates at each.  Throw a blacksmith into that mix and you'll be building barrels at all three forges, before you start on the axes.

Or forgotten beast ichor, combined with lack of shoes, my god.  Wait until you get a foot rot pandemic because your dwarves have worn out their shoes and refuse to get more from among the hundred or so pairs you've made and put in the stockpile.

Burrows could be better for economic stuff, but they do work well for some stuff.  Sometimes you want people to go someplace dammit, and burrows will force that.  They work very well for forcing miners or engravers to work in a specific place now, before working on the thousand other tiles that you've designated.

But this game has always required a high annoyance tolerance.  If you are terminally bothered by the hauling thing, you're doomed.  The game will probably never change fully enough for you, so you're going to have to quit playing, change yourself, or apply alcohol.

Don't mean to be condescending; I've had to reach the same conclusion for myself.

[Itnetlolor]

That is actually a good idea with the mining/woodcutting and construction offices. You can even force an evacuation route without having to assign them into military. Just mark down R1, R2, R3 and so on, and just use those for like groups of 25 dwarves at a time or something. Can also work for genocidal purposes, or gender-separating a fortress as well. Can also work for developing a fort from different angles and meeting up in the center or something.

[MagmaMcFry]

Instead of assigning burrows just forbid the items you don't want hauled.

This is the kind of response coming from someone that either has infinite patience, or just never makes a large castle.

Use the d-b-f menu for mass forbidding. Then post in the facepalm thread.