Dwarf Fortress Bug Tracker - Dwarf Fortress
View Issue Details
0009487Dwarf FortressDwarf Mode -- Interface, Animalspublic2016-01-17 06:572020-03-05 17:15
ReturningUser 
 
lowminoralways
newopen 
Windows 64 bitWindows 7Service Pack 1
0.42.04 
 
0009487: Pastured animals try to path to meeting areas, unless the pasture itself is defined as one.
I built a bit of a haphazard mostly above ground fort around the biggest size of pasture I could get, when I noticed all of my pastured animals were crowding around the exit to it, getting emotionally distressed about the unnecessary crowding, and fighting each other. Some of the baby pastured animals actually managed to get out into the dining room, and some were around the wagon, despite being pastured already.

That's when it hit me, they were trying to get to the meeting areas defined around the dining hall and the wagon. Some had better luck ignoring their pastured setting than the rest though.

1. Start a game with a LOT of pasturable animals, with a breedable male and a few females if you really want to overflow things.

2. Define a large zone, and assign as a pasture, assign all of your pasturable animals there, away from the wagon. I chose as many female dogs as I could with 1 male, a mating pair of llamas, a mating pair of alpacas, and a mating pair of sheep.

3. Already you can see what is going wrong, as all the animals crowd around the edge closest to the default meeting zone as defined by the wagon, but refuse to cross the boundary and leave the pasture.

4. When you get a sufficiently large enough mass of pastured animals hugging the edge of the pasture in a cluster, you'll notice the occasional "escapee" making a run for the wagon's meeting area, only to get dragged back to the pasture by the dwarves when they have time.

5. Define a dining room away from both the wagon and the pasture.

6. Make it a meeting hall.

7. Watch your escapees that overflowed out of the pasture flock to the newly defined meeting hall.

8. Define the pasture as meeting hall IN ADDITION to it's regular pasture designation.

9. Note that after most escapees return on their own, and a straggler or two has to be dragged back, the pastured animals spread out over the entire pasture now, instead of crowding an edge. But now you have dwarves hanging out in the pasture with the livestock...

10. You can keep the foreigners out by defining it as a location (tavern, temple, or library) and restricting it to citizens only, but other than defining borrows that specifically exclude the pasture, and/or locked doors on the pasture, I don't see a way to keep your dwarves from hanging out in the fields once in awhile. At least you won't have hordes of puppies biting visiting diplomats though...
Was unsure how severe I should have tagged this, seeing as it is rather annoying if you don't know how to work around the problem, but since there is a work around, it's not as severe as it could be. Also, in that it involves a few things, such as the zone interface for animals, animal hauling, pets, and the various types of meeting areas that can be defined from so many things now, I had a hard time deciding which category this belonged in too. I guess when someone checks this out, the severity, priority and category can be updated. I can always reproduce it at least, just follow the steps.
No tags attached.
Issue History
2016-01-17 06:57ReturningUserNew Issue
2020-03-03 10:42FantasticDorfNote Added: 0040303
2020-03-05 17:15Shonai_DwellerNote Added: 0040315
2020-03-06 08:00HuntthetrollIssue Monitored: Huntthetroll

Notes
(0040303)
FantasticDorf   
2020-03-03 10:42   
In consideration of 0011395 , milling stray animals will summon dwarves when walking into meeting zones, and when put into pastures behave to remain still and 2 animals alone will often remain eye to eye or mostly stationary. Notably cats in 44.12 will by all means escape a pasture under all circumstances to follow a owner by pathing & crowding the door like it isnt there, but on 47.03 remain quietly.

The only applicable practical examples to overlap pastures & meeting zones in 47.03/47.04 are to encourage dwarves to queue up to meet their pets and recieve a thought for interacting with them, since nothing is gained with stray animals.
(0040315)
Shonai_Dweller   
2020-03-05 17:15   
Yeah, not seeing this. Have animals in a zone notably not trying to path towards my tavern. Should be closed.