Military and Miasma

[Cascadian Caveman]

Interesting problem, and I sincerely doubt I'll be the only one to have it.

One squad of military dwarves on a 3-on/3-off training cycle, so they regularly get into and out of "uniform". Part of this uniform involves food, as far as I recall from Classic. This begins to be a problem, as whenever these particular dwarves go back into their off-duty uniform, they're no longer worried about carrying food with them, and immediately stockpile it in their bedrooms.

The food then spoils and spews miasma all over the high-traffic hallways. Not good for dwarven states of mind.

At least, this is my current theory, and it certainly was a thing that occurred back in Classic, though in that version, there was an option inside the squad settings that stopped them from carrying food around with them. This no longer appears to be the case, unless I missed something.

Ultimately my goal is just preventing miasma by any means necessary. The food is not forbidden, yet still is left to rot, likely because it's technically inside a bedroom tile (declaring it the property of whoever's bedroom that is). I guess I could place a single food tile in the bedrooms, though if anybody knows if specific furniture prevents item rotting, that's also another option.

Unknown at this time if having dwarves on a permanent training schedule will solve the problem, but I suspect it will if I'm correct on what the cause is. I guess if there's a way to permit civilians to carry food, that would also work great, as then nobody would bother discarding anything.

[Ghiron]

This is a known issue before. The solution was to change their rations to not carry any food at all. Obviously you would change this if you send them on missions.

[Cascadian Caveman]

Originally posted by Ghiron:

This is a known issue before. The solution was to change their rations to not carry any food at all. Obviously you would change this if you send them on missions.

Question is, where can I change that in the Steam version?

[Schwifty 5]

don't craft/Forbid backpacks. I didn't have miasma in barracks until I made backpacks.

[Cascadian Caveman]

Originally posted by TSwift:

don't craft/Forbid backpacks. I didn't have miasma in barracks until I made backpacks.

How does this affect missions? Can dwarves safely/effectively deploy without food?

[HarneyDragon]

This still needs a solution.

[Cascadian Caveman]

I imagine it would be drastically improved if meals weren't labelled as Owned as soon as somebody picks them up, preventing them from being blacklisted from going back in storage/consumed. This may cause serious issues, however, with attempts at eating (would it be possible for another dwarf to swipe somebody's food before they're done eating it if this were the case?)

Alternatively, but probably less feasible, is a means by which to un-own items that are dropped from the inventory, hopefully including clothes. This currently isn't possible in vanilla either.

Third option is to never instruct dwarves to unequip backpacks/food to begin with, but this will have issues involving uniforms and how dwarves go back to an off-duty status, and would possibly be horribly unfriendly to fortresses that share equipment across squads.

As far as I know, all three of these ideas involve the hardcoded portions of the game, not anything the average user has access to.

[Testikles]

For the time being you can also avoid miasma by having the room with the backpacks having a connection to the outside (an air vent of any shape or form). The miasma-"gas" will evaporate through this vent and won't spread everywhere. You might need to experiment with vents and set-ups, especially far underground though.

Or, from the wiki:

"Alternately, excavate the roof of your refuse pile/butcher's shop/fishery so that it is open to the surface, then build a floor over it. The tiles underneath will forever count as "Light Above Ground" and therefore will not generate miasma. (For style points use a transparent roof.) See tile attributes for more information."

This seems to work just as well in the Steam version so far.

[Cascadian Caveman]

Originally posted by Rindenberg:

Or, from the wiki:

"Alternately, excavate the roof of your refuse pile/butcher's shop/fishery so that it is open to the surface, then build a floor over it. The tiles underneath will forever count as "Light Above Ground" and therefore will not generate miasma. (For style points use a transparent roof.) See tile attributes for more information."

This is a solution for large rooms you can place on the surface or near-surface level, but it isn't very viable when it comes to things like bedrooms, of which i need at least a couple hundred, and which i don't want to sprawl out an insane distance in the horizontal axis for pathing efficiency's sake. Not to mention it'd be aesthetically displeasing, though that's a personal issue first and foremost.

[Testikles]

Originally posted by Cascadian Caveman:

Originally posted by Rindenberg:

Or, from the wiki:

"Alternately, excavate the roof of your refuse pile/butcher's shop/fishery so that it is open to the surface, then build a floor over it. The tiles underneath will forever count as "Light Above Ground" and therefore will not generate miasma. (For style points use a transparent roof.) See tile attributes for more information."

This is a solution for large rooms you can place on the surface or near-surface level, but it isn't very viable when it comes to things like bedrooms, of which i need at least a couple hundred, and which i don't want to sprawl out an insane distance in the horizontal axis for pathing efficiency's sake. Not to mention it'd be aesthetically displeasing, though that's a personal issue first and foremost.

Yeah, I know, it's also not how a solution here should look like. I mean, you could assign them custom bedrooms closer to the surface and try air venting, but of course that is only a rather cumbersome work-around.

[Cascadian Caveman]

Originally posted by Rindenberg:

Yeah, I know, it's also not how a solution here should look like. I mean, you could assign them custom bedrooms closer to the surface and try air venting, but of course that is only a rather cumbersome work-around.

This begs the question of whether or not cast-obsidian structures on the surface are considered inside or outside, as they've already been exposed to sunlight. There's already weird stone layering issues with casting obsidian - sandwiched between two Z-levels of cast obsidian will be the natural floor of that part of the map, including things like sand. It's possible the game doesn't properly update outside/light/above aground conditions *backwards* into inside/dark/subterranean tiles as well. If this were the case, it may be possible to manufacture a bedroom area from natural stone for lag reduction/aesthetic purposes that can still be fairly below ground (if you channel the entire region deep underground, more or less strip mining) and yet be considered outdoors, causing miasma to automatically ventilate into nothingness.

[Testikles]

Originally posted by Cascadian Caveman:

Originally posted by Rindenberg:

Yeah, I know, it's also not how a solution here should look like. I mean, you could assign them custom bedrooms closer to the surface and try air venting, but of course that is only a rather cumbersome work-around.

This begs the question of whether or not cast-obsidian structures on the surface are considered inside or outside, as they've already been exposed to sunlight. There's already weird stone layering issues with casting obsidian - sandwiched between two Z-levels of cast obsidian will be the natural floor of that part of the map, including things like sand. It's possible the game doesn't properly update outside/light/above aground conditions *backwards* into inside/dark/subterranean tiles as well. If this were the case, it may be possible to manufacture a bedroom area from natural stone for lag reduction/aesthetic purposes that can still be fairly below ground (if you channel the entire region deep underground, more or less strip mining) and yet be considered outdoors, causing miasma to automatically ventilate into nothingness.

As far as I understand the wiki an inside-tile cannot be transformed back once it becomes an outside tiles, no matter how long you put it underground again. So your plan might work, however, there might be oversights, exceptions or edge-cases we don't know about. Sounds like a fun idea for some testing though :- D

[Cascadian Caveman]

Recent science has confirmed that tiles cannot retrograde to inside/dark/subterranean tiles once rendered outside. I have a fortress going right now that I cast out of obsidian, about 12 Z-levels deep from the surface, and due to a unique feature of how the game handles floor layers, there's soil for the first 3 Z-levels.

These soil levels grow grass, and can farm surface crops like raspberries and turnips, which grow year-round in vanilla (though in my opinion, any half-competent modder should have already converted the subterranean crops to grow anytime of year). The question, then, is what are the exact conditions of my fortress? What combination of inside/outside, dark/light, and subterranean/above-ground are these tiles? If we knew exactly what token or condition allows the plants to grow like this, we could narrow it down. Supposedly, inside/outside accurately changes based on whether a tile has a ceiling or not, but that's only one of three variables and assuming it updates correctly. Extra questions include - will it dissipate miasma automatically, and will weather somehow manage to permeate the ceiling? More science is needed, but input would help at this stage too.