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[murlocdummy]

Well, of course they're on active.  The problem is that they're not obeying the setting.  I suppose that's what I get for using untrained, undisciplined soldiers for the military.

I'm also having trouble storing my cages.  I'm finding that my carpenters are becoming cluttered with cages, and I don't know why no one is shipping them to the common storage area.

Also, my guys appear to dislike using the meeting hall as a place to eat, and instead, eat and drink directly from the food stockroom.  It's kind of annoying that practically nobody is using the dining tables.


It seems that I have to have them train for a certain number of consecutive months before they decide to obey orders.  At least 2 consecutive months of training, and they'll begin training.

[proxn_punkd]

(q) over the dining tables and you'll find the option to make them a (r)oom. Choose a table near the middle, and follow the instructions to make it large or small enough to cover all of them, and your dwarves will eat in the dining room.

Cages are stored in the Animals stockpile, whether or not there are animals inside them.

[geail]

Do the checklist to see if they should be training:
Are they in the military?  Is the squad set to train in the schedule (default is generally yes)?  Is the squad set to active (s-(squad letter)-a)?  Is there a barracks designated from a bed/armor stand/weapon rack/chest?  Is said barracks set to have the squad train there?

I've noticed most of my dwarves drink automatically from the well a lot of the time.  You want to make sure your cistern is at least 2 deep to avoid muddy water.  Use i to indicate either a hospital (where my wells are usually located) or a drinking zone.  That should help with the well issue

[murlocdummy]

I don't think that making a second dining room in the meeting hall's going to make the dwarves stop eating in the stockroom.  Is it that the dining room isn't assigned to a noble, or am I going to have to assign each individual table to each dwarf?

Personally, I just think that the dwarves prefer the stockroom over the elaborately decorated meeting hall.

[geail]

Are you sure they are both eating and drinking in the stockroom.  Dwarves always drink exactly where they find there booze.  That is why it is smart to keep booze stockpiles littered around your fort.  Even without having a dining room assigned (to avoid my dwarves making friends), my dwarves still tend to eat in my dining room.

[ansontan2000]

I thought the well is an auto drink area...
If not, go I (zones), select an area the same way as you would designation somewhere, and set as water source.

[murlocdummy]

I'm pretty sure they're eating in the stockroom.  Hungry dwarves are standing around prepared meal containers.  Not that all of them are eating in the stockrooms, though.  Occasionally, one or two dwarves will take food to a table and eat, but the vast majority of the dwarves are hanging around the food stockroom.

Another problem I've been having is that I can't see the genders of any animals.  I thought it was my graphics pack, but I've tried all of the ones in the LazyNewbPack, and I still can't see the genders of any animals.

[Loud Whispers]

I'm pretty sure they're eating in the stockroom.  Hungry dwarves are standing around prepared meal containers.  Not that all of them are eating in the stockrooms, though.  Occasionally, one or two dwarves will take food to a table and eat, but the vast majority of the dwarves are hanging around the food stockroom.

Another problem I've been having is that I can't see the genders of any animals.  I thought it was my graphics pack, but I've tried all of the ones in the LazyNewbPack, and I still can't see the genders of any animals.

Have you tried the [v] command or checking the description?

[murlocdummy]

I assume description is a new command that I'm not aware of.  Of course, I've tried as many commands as I could think of, but the gender of all of the animals never show up in any menu.  Is it simply that gender information was removed in the latest Dwarf Fortress update?

The only time I've ever seen gender of animals was while watching a YouTube tutorial on how to play the game.  Other than that, I've never seen it anywhere.

So far, while playing the game, I've just come to terms with the fact that animal genders are all hidden, and I'll never be able to determine what they are definitively.  The only time in the game when I could ever determine that there was a difference between male and female animals was at the very beginning, when I saw that there were duplicate entries for each animal in the embark items listing.

Right now, though, I'm trying to figure out how to collect rainwater.  I tried digging open a dried up water pocket to try and increase the amount of water collected in it, but whenever it rains, no water accumulates at all, kind of like what happens around open ground.  A drop of water hits a square, but a little number 1 doesn't pop up.

[Loud Whispers]

I assume description is a new command that I'm not aware of.  Of course, I've tried as many commands as I could think of, but the gender of all of the animals never show up in any menu.  Is it simply that gender information was removed in the latest Dwarf Fortress update?

The only time I've ever seen gender of animals was while watching a YouTube tutorial on how to play the game.  Other than that, I've never seen it anywhere.

Have you tried the [v] command? Or looking at them with the [k] command?

And no, it's not been removed ;]

[murlocdummy]

Okay, so I used v, k and k, v while selecting the animal of interest.

Neither opened up the "description" submenu for any of the animals I selected.

[Loud Whispers]

Okay, so I used v, k and k, v while selecting the animal of interest.

Neither opened up the "description" submenu for any of the animals I selected.

With the cursor over the animal you want to select with the [k] tool, press enter.

THERE'S YOUR SUB MENU.

Or, with v, look top right, it says the gender of the animal (in symbol for, you know, wierd squiggly q things? One with an arrow pointing down, the other top right? YUP. You guessed it, it's not chuck testa, it's their gender. Plus, with [v], you can press [z] to view the animal selected.

Have !!FUN!!, and stay insane!

[murlocdummy]

Squiggly q thing?  You mean the parentheses around the word (Tame)?  I expected there to be a male ♂ or female ♀ symbol rather than the parentheses telling me which gender the animal is.  In any case, I still can't figure out which animal is male or female.  The spacing as well as the parentheses around the word Tame are exactly the same for every animal.  I thought that there would be SOME sort of difference that I could detect, but I can't find any.  A Stray Blue Peahen (Tame) has the exact same symbols and spacing in its name as every other Stray Blue Blue Peahen (Tame).

I find it interesting, however, that some animals have actual names.  The descriptions of the animals are still a little hard to read, though, seeing as how all punctuation in the game is replaced with rectangular boxes.  I haven't a clue why the designer of the game decided to not use punctuation.

[thegoatgod_pan]

To get a working military there are two main strategies (plus an exploit)

One is to make a squad of around 10, and set them to train 7/10 EVERY month.  Military is military, if they get good their labors all switch off automatically, so they will just spend half a year drunk on your time when they should be getting better.

If your settings are 10/10 and you lack backbacks and flasks they will get unhappy over the long work but they shouldn't die in anycase.

The second is to do the exact same thing is above, only using squads of three with 2/10 set training all the time.
People claim this makes them train up quicker via sparring.  I believe it is true but something of an accident---dwarves will only spar with others of their approximate skill level, which means that it is easier for three dwarves to level out and start sparring than for 10 to do so.  However in my experience, three veterans and seven newbs in a squad will result in 2 veterans sparring and the third teaching all the newbs into veterans, while the newbs spar amongst themselves.

So small squads and large squads alike train, with the order set for approximately 60-70% of a given squad to be training year round be it one order of 7/10 for a big squad or 2/10 for several small squads.

All melee squads should be set to active/training and provided with a armorstand or weaponrack barracks, ideally by the fort entrance.  Equipment of all kinds is optional--they should start training immediately upon the switch to active/training

All archer squads to be set inactive and roundly ignored, while being provided with equipment (crossbow, quiver, backpack, flask, bolts), facilities (a shooting range or two) and ammo--this makes them most effective, ironically enough

the exploit I mentioned in the beginning is the danger room.  I used to build large, inefficient single spear ones taking up 3x3 and thought they were spoilery but realistic.  Then I built the streamlined, single space, 10 spear, armor stand-behind an internal door-monstorsity and saw legendaries in 10 rl seconds. That is broken. (to be fair, it ended up literally broken.  It killed someones beloved pet chicken, and he did not take it well.  Since all my soldiers were in that one space of the dangerroom, he took out three men before I even noticed. So exploity?--yes! fun, in the tantrum spiral sense?--also, yes

[Psieye]

I find it interesting, however, that some animals have actual names.  The descriptions of the animals are still a little hard to read, though, seeing as how all punctuation in the game is replaced with rectangular boxes.  I haven't a clue why the designer of the game decided to not use punctuation.

No, your Lazy Newb Pack (I assume that's what you're using) put graphics over the game (i.e. used a tileset) and doing so replaced punctuation with outdoor grass tiles. The original game is in ASCII, so everything is used as graphics somewhere - punctuation just happens to be the various grass tiles. It's a quirk of tilesets, I think I read somewhere that there's an option to fix this called truetype font but I don't use tilesets so I don't know personally.