01/24/2012
Lots of drop the spear, come back, get the spear today. And drop the backpack, leave, come back, see if there are still objects contained inside. You can now place a dagger, say, out in the woods far from any site and find it later on. Your adventurers that get jumped out in the wilderness will also have findable remains/objects that you can go grab in your next game or embark upon with your dwarves.
If items you drop in adventure mode stay where they're dropped even if you're killed, does this mean that items which are dropped in fortress mode stay EXACTLY where they're dropped if/when they're dropped at all? Does this mean that items being strewn over every tile of the embark area is now GONE from the fortress mode game?
Please, say yes.
I can't stand to think that you've done all this wonderful work improving items, getting them to stay put properly in adventure mode; but every time you abandon a fort it's like a giant robo-maid hit your fortress entry dead-on and vacuum-cleaner'd up the whole contents onto the surface, caves, and everywhere.
I'm going to say the answer is a big ole no. I had the same thought too, but storing items in sites never seem to be a real issue, and your fort, is a site. The reason why item placement became Dev worthy, is because there /so/ many new items to keep track of that the old means to store this info were failing, and that apparently spilled into just remember where everything is, everywhere. Or there about.
The Fort Mode reclaiming item scatter, is totally on purposeful, and has probably nothing to do with remembering where they're placed. As Toady said on a DF Talk, the item scatter was meant to mimic site degradation. Animals, and the weather moving crap around. I recall, Toady stating that he wasn't to happy with what it does. But it's here to stay, for now.