v0.31 Talk:Activity zone

Animal pit, keep them from going away

I have a pit in which I like to keep all my animals for butchering. There is a door which is tightly closed. However when my butcher goes in to take an animal all the animals escape. What can I do to fix this? I placed it above ground because I read somewhere that animals prefer this. It still doesn't help :(

For now, not much. Best solution is to stick them in a cage near your butcher (and possibly also your farmer's workshops so your animals can be easily milked). Assigning the animals to the cage is not much different from sticking them in a cage, except that you only need to do it once because they cannot escape from the cage like they would a pit. Of course, this may also prevent them from breeding unless they get time out of the cage (for example, if you milk them). Pregnant animals will give birth in a cage, but they will not get pregnant again while in the cage. Niveras 22:43, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

If you need to pit some for breeding, placing the pit zone furthest away from the door makes it less likely they'll reach it to attempt escape. If you have some caged for milking and have milkable breeds in the pit, you can also forbid the door so your milker won't get the bright idea to let them all loose. Uzu Bash 04:44, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. Originally I planned to make a large outdoor area just for the animals, but it seems it's just impossible to do. I hope this function gets added soon because all these puppies/cow/horses running around is just a big mess. Guess dumping them all in a lava pool is the best solution

Put them on a bunch of ropes if you want them to breed, or you want the 'field full of animals' look.

Flow-stylee activity zones?

Does anyone know what this comment in the 0.31.02 changelog at [1] means:

• fixed crash from doing a large flow-style activity zone

What is a flow-style activity zone? --Altaree 14:12, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

When you are at the activity zone definition/selection state (right after hitting the Zones key from the main menu), you will see a key listed as "rectangle" (default "e") on the menu. Pressing that key toggles between three zone creation states: "rectangle" (the default, you set one corner of a rectangle and then the other), "flow" (you select a location and the area is "filled" with the activity zone, just like defining a room, and can be expanded and contracted the same way), and "floor flow" (not sure what the difference between it and "flow" is, anyone else done any testing?). I'm guessing zones don't become a simple property of the map squares where you defined the zone, like stock(p)iles and (d)esignations do. Instead the way you defined the zone is saved, and the area it occupies is re-calculated with every frame, after the zone menu is closed and play resumes. So a "flow-style" activity zone would be one that was originally defined using the "flow" method, and a large one could cause a performance hit at least, simply because its borders need to be recalculated from the definition every frame, which can get pretty complicated for some convoluted fortress designs. --66.190.120.90 15:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure the flow area selected does not change shape even if walls originally inhibiting the flow are removed. This is based on observation with making rooms and expanding them. Should be easy to confirm.--99.67.238.66 04:44, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Flow will include but not pass through walls, floor flow will not include walls. I've had this crash several times, glad it's fixed. Mason ^(T-C) 11:52, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Zone-canceling crash

It seems that whenever I cancel a zone while I am still placing it, the game crashes. It's pretty easily avoidable(finish building it, then delete it), but still annoying. Is this happening to anyone else?--Pvt. Miller 21:51, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I can confirm this, happens to me every time. It's a bummer.

Failure to dump items

I have a dozen clothing items on the ground marked for dumping that aren't being dumped. They're not on top of a stockpile, "gather refuse from outside" is turned ON, the items are not forbidden, I have a garbage dump zone AND refuse pile, and dwarves have refuse hauling enabled. I have many idlers. Stone from within my fortress gets dumped, but these clothing items do not. What gives? --208.81.12.34 14:12, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like the items are owned. Owned items cannot be dumped. Only the owning dwarf can move them. View the item, and see if it lists an owner. If so, the only way to get them moved is to give the dwarf their own room (bedroom is good), and place a cabinet into that room. The dwarf will eventually grab up their discarded clothes and place them into the cabinet. --Darkstar 17:11, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I have a similar problem, though the item in question is a random stone, and I have double-checked it is not owned.

Dwarves will also frequently drop food while carrying it somewhere to eat, and it can never be moved again if this happens. Apparently something in the ownership tags gets screwed up, so the food ends up owned by a null "nobody" dwarf that prevents removal of the food by any dwarf, including the one that dropped the food. My trade depot is currently full of miasma due to these unmovable dropped meals. Turning off all jobs except "refuse hauling" only leaves the dwarves that own the food standing around with "No Job." --Tatterdemalian 03:10, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

You probably have some construction designed (and maybe suspended) using that stone, so the stone is reserved for that construction and can't be moved anywhere else. This happened to me a lot when I had a wall around my fortress designed, but suspended: all the materials indicated for building the wall were unavailable for anything else, including dumping. --188.82.156.156 20:54, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

It seems hauling is slightly bugged; items which cannot be hauled to their appropriate location can prevent other items from being hauled (there appears to be a hauling queue with a certain number of available slots; if the top of the queue is full of inaccessible items, dumping will come to a grinding halt, and possibly other hauling jobs as well). If you run into a persistent problem in which dwarves aren't dumping goods, more than likely you have items needing to be hauled which cannot be accessed by any living dwarf (common if you, like me, leave migrants outside the fortress proper to starve to death). Forbidding inaccessible items -may- resolve the issue, but if not, undesignate all dump orders for inaccessible items, and undesignate all inaccessible stockpiles. If you use burrows, you may want to temporarily disable them until your dwarves sort their hauling problems out.

Did I build a floor on top of the dump?

I think I built a floor on top of an outdoors dump zone. Everyone was restricted to burrows.
Zillion cancel-dump-dropoff-inaccessible messages. Miners refused to dig! Removing floor and letting dorfs outdoors... solved. --TomiTapio 18:29, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

(dwarf) cancels fill pond: cannot find path

I keep getting this message, along with a very, very confused dwarf. He seems fine after I cancel a few times, but then either he tries again or someone else does. It isn't much of a problem(yet), but constant spamming is really annoying. I am on Reclaim.

Verify:

I can verify everything that needs verified, except for powder showing up where 1 item of powder is 150 units. This is because at the current point powder does not go into a hospital stockpile and as such this cannot be measured. It can be assumed that it follows the same rules as soap, but at this point it's all conjecture. --Eurytus 12:26, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I removed the verify tag for soap unit quantity. I have only one bar of soap in my fortress and the hospital lists it as 150/750. --Cali 11:30, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Fishing in a well

The Zones page states that fishing must be done over open water, not through grates or a well. However, the Well page states "Dwarfs can (and will) fish from a well if that labor is designated. This does not harm the well." --RadGH 09:35, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Clay Collection Areas

I guess I might just be being stupid, but I can't seem to get the clay collection area to work. The wiki says sandy clay is a type of clay, so I tried placing the zone on sandy clay walls and sandy clay floors. It still said Clay(0). Can someone tell me how to do this properly, or if this is a bug, or if sandy clay isnt a type of clay after all? --Sirgren 22:14, 23 February 2011 (UTC) Nevermind, it was a map made before the update.