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[treczoks]

Hi!

I had quite an infestation of badgers until I got all the cage traps up. Now I'm drowning in caged badgers, which would be more useful as badger meat, badger bones, badger fur, etc.

So I looked up Mass Pitting and tried it - without success.

As described in the Wiki, I built an upstairs room with all the holes and hatch covers, set it to be an animal stockpile for badgers and it filled nicely. I set up a pitting zone on in the room, so each walkable tile is next to a hatch cover.

I filled the lower room with some niceties to pre-mince the badgers.

Then I marked the cages for dump: The dwarves came, and simply stacked all the cages on top of the hatch covers. No badgers downstairs, they were still in the cages upstairs. Unforbidding the cages made my dwarves come and put them back in their place.

What am I doing wrong?

[Urist Imiknorris]

You need to create a pit/pond zone then assign the animals to it (instead of dumping the cages).

[treczoks]

You need to create a pit/pond zone then assign the animals to it (instead of dumping the cages).

Oh, thank you. I somehow missed this while reading the wiki. I should not play DF past bedtime... 

[wzam]

I've tried this a few times over the years with no joy. My badgers always run away--well, three out of four do. And they don't really run away. They ravage the civilians in my stockroom, cause they tend to be badger women and giant badgers.

Can one of you brilliant, attractive men find the flaw in my system?

1. Square 3x3 animal pile with a hole in the middle.
2. Hole goes down a level into the wildlife sanctuary. No ramps out or anything.
3. Hatch cover over the hole.
4. Make the hatch-covered center square into a pit.
5. Assign badgers in cages (all on adjacent squares) to the pit.
6. One badger falls in, and takes some time out to reflect on its life choices.
7. Three badgers run a(r)mok upstairs, spilling dwarf fluids.

Much obliged.

[nanomage]

I've tried this a few times over the years with no joy. My badgers always run away--well, three out of four do. And they don't really run away. They ravage the civilians in my stockroom, cause they tend to be badger women and giant badgers.

Can one of you brilliant, attractive men find the flaw in my system?

1. Square 3x3 animal pile with a hole in the middle.
2. Hole goes down a level into the wildlife sanctuary. No ramps out or anything.
3. Hatch cover over the hole.
4. Make the hatch-covered center square into a pit.
5. Assign badgers in cages (all on adjacent squares) to the pit.
6. One badger falls in, and takes some time out to reflect on its life choices.
7. Three badgers run a(r)mok upstairs, spilling dwarf fluids.

Much obliged.

try ordering the badgers pitted one by one.

[i2amroy]

Unless you are dealing with enemy soldiers (not thieves mind you, just soldiers) or tamed animals, then mass pitting is really sort of a crapshoot, especially if you are pitting multiple creatures more then 1 at a time. I figure if you are only pitting 1 at a time then you probably have like an 80% chance of the creature going into the pit, with the chance decreasing the farther the dwarf has to haul the creature. If you are trying to throw in more then one creature at a time then the chance of something escaping increases exponentially. Really the only sure-fire way to throw creatures into a wanted area is to build the cages where you want them to go, connect them to a lever, and then pull the lever. You can also (for all but the largest of creatures) build a drawbridge and then build the cages around that. Then after releasing them all you have to do is retract the drawbridge, allowing you to throw more creatures into a pit that already has something in it and retrieve the cages after you have released the creatures.

[wzam]

Thanks, y'all. I'll try one-by-one and stop expecting it to work 100%. There are so many links to mass pitting in MagmaWiki, and that article makes it sound simple and dwarf-proof.

My faith in MagmaWiki is shaken.

[treczoks]

...and that article makes it sound simple and dwarf-proof.

If there is one thing I learned with DF, it is that there is no such thing as "dwarf-proof". Murphy was a dwarf.