Dwarf Fortress Bug Tracker - Dwarf Fortress
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0001305Dwarf FortressDwarf Mode -- Combatpublic2010-04-18 15:102012-03-12 11:04
derigo 
 
lowminoralways
newopen 
0.31.03 
 
0001305: dwarf babies carried by soldier mothers join in the fighting
This may only apply to wrestling, but every time I've looked at the combat log of the opponent of one of my soldiers who is carrying a child, the baby is trying to punch the baddie the whole time. He's not succeeding, or anything. But damn, dwarves are born ornery!

I don't know that this is necessarily a bug...it's certainly not an important one if it is. But it seems strange. I can't imagine a baby under any circumstances trying to harm an attacker. Babies cry, they don't fight back. Seriously, infants are such babies.

Have a soldier carrying an infant.
Have her go fight(possibly wrestle?) an alligator or something(in my case a forgotten beast)
Read the alligator's combat report.
I'm not sure if this applies to fighting in general or wrestling in particular because in every case where I observed this phenomenon, the fighting devolved into grapples pretty quickly. Mommy was fighting a forgotten beast and she got owned pretty hardcore.
Intentional/Expected?
Issue History
2010-04-18 15:10derigoNew Issue
2010-04-18 18:49Khym ChanurIssue Monitored: Khym Chanur
2010-12-03 10:58FootkerchiefTag Attached: Intentional/Expected?
2012-03-12 10:07EdrinNote Added: 0021414
2012-03-12 11:04KijiroNote Added: 0021422

Notes
(0021414)
Edrin   
2012-03-12 10:07   
I laughed a lot when I read this fight message:
"The Dwarven baby punches the Kea in the upper body with his right hand, bruising the muscle and shattering the the left true ribs!"
His mother was using a crossbow and was out of ammo, so it's not related to the wrestle of the mother, even if it must happen more often when wrestling, as the enemy is then closer to the mother, which means more in range of the baby's arms.
And now, she doesn't seem concerned about her baby's toe being broken by the kea, and won't take it to the hospital (already reported bug)
(0021422)
Kijiro   
2012-03-12 11:04   
I think making the father able to carry the child while mother is unavailible might be a possible work around for this and similar bugs.

I know of one similar bug where, if the other has a baby while jailed, the baby will just crawl off somewhere and the mother will spam "Cannot retrieve child: no access" or some similar error.

Dwarf fathers don't care about their babies. :(