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[Anathema]

... (some still go out there! Can't figure out why. Out of 100 there's 5ish on the surface at any given time doing Armok-knows-what), ... The forbidding+orders thing does work about 95% of the time, but I'd rather not lose 5% of my dwarves every ambush...

Do you have any meeting halls/zones? Do dwarves start parties at your fort?

If I disable all of my meeting zones, meeting halls, and statue gardens, some of my dwarves will wander outside or into random locations underground.

Yeah, a couple meeting halls actually, one of them also designated as a statue garden. Some of them just prefer the great outdoors, it seems - I've seen them take a beer keg, march out the fort and halfway across the map with it, and sit down to take a drink. I think I read somewhere that dwarves on break/no job are fond of hanging out in places where they once got kills? That could be part of the problem - my former hunters are often among the "like to hang around outside" crowd. Doesn't explain them all, though..

[Urist Da Vinci]

Yeah, a couple meeting halls actually, one of them also designated as a statue garden. Some of them just prefer the great outdoors, it seems - I've seen them take a beer keg, march out the fort and halfway across the map with it, and sit down to take a drink. I think I read somewhere that dwarves on break/no job are fond of hanging out in places where they once got kills? That could be part of the problem - my former hunters are often among the "like to hang around outside" crowd. Doesn't explain them all, though..

I've seen similar behaviour with my military. When they go off duty, they seem to prefer to walk back to the location that they were last ordered to move to (when using kill/move orders). I countered this by ordering them back inside before canceling their orders.

If your guys aren't military, then something else is going on.

[Anathema]

Yeah, a couple meeting halls actually, one of them also designated as a statue garden. Some of them just prefer the great outdoors, it seems - I've seen them take a beer keg, march out the fort and halfway across the map with it, and sit down to take a drink. I think I read somewhere that dwarves on break/no job are fond of hanging out in places where they once got kills? That could be part of the problem - my former hunters are often among the "like to hang around outside" crowd. Doesn't explain them all, though..

I've seen similar behaviour with my military. When they go off duty, they seem to prefer to walk back to the location that they were last ordered to move to (when using kill/move orders). I countered this by ordering them back inside before canceling their orders.

If your guys aren't military, then something else is going on.

That's probably part of it. My hunters all got converted to marksmen when the former became too risky, I'll activate them briefly and try the inside stationing trick. Still, there are non-military dwarves doing it, too.. maybe recruiting them temporarily, stationing indoors, then deactivating them will also set that as their preferred "place to hang out on break." Well, anyway. I guess it's not practical to specifically eliminate every reason a dwarf might decide to head outside, I'm learning to rely completely on the brute force burrow/alert method.

[Flaede]

Yeah, a couple meeting halls actually, one of them also designated as a statue garden. Some of them just prefer the great outdoors, it seems - I've seen them take a beer keg, march out the fort and halfway across the map with it, and sit down to take a drink. I think I read somewhere that dwarves on break/no job are fond of hanging out in places where they once got kills? That could be part of the problem - my former hunters are often among the "like to hang around outside" crowd. Doesn't explain them all, though..

I've seen similar behaviour with my military. When they go off duty, they seem to prefer to walk back to the location that they were last ordered to move to (when using kill/move orders). I countered this by ordering them back inside before canceling their orders.

If your guys aren't military, then something else is going on.

That's probably part of it. My hunters all got converted to marksmen when the former became too risky, I'll activate them briefly and try the inside stationing trick. Still, there are non-military dwarves doing it, too.. maybe recruiting them temporarily, stationing indoors, then deactivating them will also set that as their preferred "place to hang out on break." Well, anyway. I guess it's not practical to specifically eliminate every reason a dwarf might decide to head outside, I'm learning to rely completely on the brute force burrow/alert method.

Warning - idlers will still wander outside sometimes with the burrow alert method. They just wont take jobs out there.

[Girlinhat]

Any dwarf with the Hunting skill enabled will sleep outside and drink water, so that may be an issue as well.  Disable hunting to prevent them loitering outside.

[thegoatgod_pan]

I think it has to with hardcoding--I've seen many a random dwarf drinking in some godforsaken corner of a mineshaft only to note the "dislikes crowds" and "prefers solitude" stats.  Maybe the topside wanderers have a "risk taker" and "does the first thing that comes to mind" tags?

[Girlinhat]

Huh, I've never noticed this... but that does add a lot of flare to the game.  Setting aside subtle bits of booze stockpiles and the odd single chair+table as a dining room in some closet, might appease them more.  If only there were a more convenient way of viewing things like "dislikes crowds".

[Anathema]

Oh, figured out another part of it. At least, provided that military dwarves actually do have some strange urge to go on break at the last spot they were stationed out in the middle of the dangerous outdoors, I've discovered how that can lead helpless civilians out to the same place.

So, a dwarf decides that outside is a great place to have a drink for whatever reason - maybe he's a military dwarf who got stationed out there earlier, whatever. He gets a barrel of swamp whiskey out of the stocks, drags it outside, has a drink, and.. leaves the barrel sitting out there with 6 drinks left in it. Now the next dwarf, military or not, that goes on break and decides that some swamp whiskey would hit the spot will trek out there to hang out for a bit and have a drink. Or maybe some hauler will decide that the drink ought to be retrieved and stored in the food stocks, and of course it's not forbidden, because someone took a perfectly good barrel out of the perfectly safe stocks and had to drag it out into the danger zone. Actually saw this in action - damned messy dwarves leaving half-full barrels scattered about the battlefield.

[Girlinhat]

ACTUALLY!  I see this most often when giving direct orders to squads.  There's some freakish reason that when given an order, a dwarf will go and claim a barrel of booze, then realize "oh crap I need to be up top!" and then rush outside-with the booze, and once there drop it in place.  You can combat this by ordering your squads somewhere safe, like telling them to go to the stockpile itself, at which point they'll drop anything in hand in the safety of the fort, and THEN you tell them to station somewhere.

Alternatively, they may be filling their waterskins and forget to take the bag out before putting it around their neck.

[Hungry Elephant]

This exactly what happened to me yesterday.
Migrants come and get ambushed.

In a stupid attempt to save them, I lower the drawbridge to send my soldiers out. Of couse all the damned dorfes that NEVER went ouotside, go out en masse to retrieve he cloth of the deads (acting like a frigging pack of jackals) and getting raped by the goblin ambush as the result while I was busy trying to move my military back and down chasing gobbos...
And the main problems in the aftermath is not the bloody goblins (that everytime are pretty easy to dispatch) but the resulting tantrum spiral that get your legendary weaponsmith go nut or being punched in the head causing nasty case of head explosion.

Sometime this dorfes act really like a bunch of emo guys... Give me some manly dorfes that when a friend die just stand in the burial hall with a mug of beer giving him the last salute instead of go mad like some sissy elves in a mestrual crisis.

[zephyr_hound]

Try making flasks for your military. Maybe that will help. I usually end up making some flasks in my forts at some point because I want to go back and get one as an adventurer, and I always have to make lots of them because the military always claim the first lot that comes out of the forges. Then I see them carrying about 3 units of dwarven beer safely in the flasks, instead of dragging whole barrels into their barracks and leaving them there.

I don't have a problem with adult dwarves going outside myself, they tend to stay where I want them. I have an automatic thing I do with the military, after they've been stationed to kill someone I'll re-station them in the barracks before deactivating them so they don't go idle somewhere I don't want them to be, it's a habit of mine now. Children are what annoys me, they do go wandering off into places I don't want them to be (outside just as I'm closing the gates against that siege!?), and I can't control them because they're children. Children don't have a high life expectancy in my fort.

[Psieye]

Sometime this dorfes act really like a bunch of emo guys... Give me some manly dorfes that when a friend die just stand in the burial hall with a mug of beer giving him the last salute instead of go mad like some sissy elves in a mestrual crisis.

You seek the "doesn't really care about anything anymore" personality trait. Witnessing lots of death (butcher's shop jobs don't count) develops this.

[Girlinhat]

Build a floating cage (which is a bug abuse, sorta) or a pit made of hatches, so that you can instantly drop a lot of creatures a lot of Z very fast.  Get kittens (of course) into the pit, let them breed for a while, and then order your military to stand under the pit.  Open the hatches, rain of dying kittens, instant "doesn't really care about anything".

[Flaede]

Build a floating cage (which is a bug abuse, sorta) or a pit made of hatches, so that you can instantly drop a lot of creatures a lot of Z very fast.  Get kittens (of course) into the pit, let them breed for a while, and then order your military to stand under the pit.  Open the hatches, rain of dying kittens, instant "doesn't really care about anything".

Or just set up a meeting hall ringed with butcher shops. Rig an autobutchermat above it.

[Girlinhat]

Butchering doesn't cause this, or else my Legendary Butcher +5 would be my best citizen ever.