Bolt throwers don't fire at forgotten beasts?

[PhrostDragon]

Is this normal? If it is, WHY? If it isn't, what the hell is going on and why won't my guys fire at a monster, but they'll happily fire at practice targets? :(

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/824882222560837652/1525958848236617788/image.png?ex=6a55476c&is=6a53f5ec&hm=df14765797b62aa9b31798e1e630dc4ff1f3b1a5bde9021b6424a53ed364f750&

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/824882222560837652/1525958584519884970/image.png?ex=6a55472d&is=6a53f5ad&hm=154ce39f293d50ba13e57a2443895e04feed615452069bd70d001c9c516f6917&

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/824882222560837652/1525958585165549568/image.png?ex=6a55472d&is=6a53f5ad&hm=a886937708c03a2f698bac89c293b28cab372893df26536e9cf540e2292090ca&

[AlP]

If the forgotten beast is made of fire, or breathing fire, the heat and smoke are blocking pathfinding to it. You need to do something like air-dropping axedwarves at their location.

[PhrostDragon]

It hadn't done any attacks, yet. It was just zigzagging through my trap hall and they simply ignored it. With or without fortifications in front of them, they could fire at the practice targets and refuse to fire at the beast.

I even got them to take shots at it by telling them to fire at the practice targets and incidentally hit the beast, but not before it lit them on fire. If they would just shoot like they ought to, it would be a non-issue and I'm sorta irritated.

[pooper_gaming]

Originally posted by PhrostDragon:

It hadn't done any attacks, yet. It was just zigzagging through my trap hall and they simply ignored it. With or without fortifications in front of them, they could fire at the practice targets and refuse to fire at the beast.

I even got them to take shots at it by telling them to fire at the practice targets and incidentally hit the beast, but not before it lit them on fire. If they would just shoot like they ought to, it would be a non-issue and I'm sorta irritated.

like he said if it was made of fire(sounds like it was) it was just ignored by pathfinding because there was (likely) smoke

[PhrostDragon]

Sorry, to be clear, it was just a giant pig that shot fireballs. Itself was not fire.

[Sotergarm]

If the previous assumptions were wrong, was the Forgotten Beast perhaps prone? I know there's been issues with siege weapons firing on crawling enemies before.

[PhrostDragon]

Not prone, just running around killing other beasts. Apparently my ballistas refuse to fire at it, either.

IS THIS NORMAL? Can anyone tell me if their siege weapons will normally fire at giant beasts? Can I please get a baseline for what normal behavior is? They're set to fire at enemies and just do nothing as it runs by and its driving me crazy.

Like I said before, they can and will hit the target if I set them to practice fire while the beast is in the way, but they can't reliably injure it enough to kill it in time if they aren't directly aiming at it.

[AlP]

To fire at an enemy, your marksdwarves must have a valid path to it. If pathfinding is broken by something, they cannot shoot at it. They see smoke or heat as a solid wall between them and the target.

[PhrostDragon]

There is no smoke, they have a clear shot. I keep saying this, there is no fire or smoke, there are no obstructions, the beast is anywhere between 8 and 30 tiles away and they are set to fire at will, but won't.

[Swonsonn]

Haven't done extensive testing, but in my experience (since siege update at least) siege engines does not validate FB as enemies and straight up ignore them (neither catapults, ballistas and bolt throwers will target them). This issue does not occure with goblins, elves and clowns though.

[PhrostDragon]

Originally posted by Swonsonn:

Haven't done extensive testing, but in my experience (since siege update at least) siege engines does not validate FB as enemies and straight up ignore them (neither catapults, ballistas and bolt throwers will target them). This issue does not occure with goblins, elves and clowns though.

Thanks for the relevant reply.. I've been looking around in the files to try and find siege equipment to try and maybe edit the tags to fire at beasts. I refuse to accept that dwarves sitting on siege equipment would not fire at a giant creature charging at them.

Unfortunately, I can't find them anywhere and don't know what I'm doing. :( If I could figure out how and where to edit them to fire at beasts, I was legitimately considering creating a mod for everyone. lol

[Sotergarm]

Could you have them shoot down a corridor as 'training' or would they run away at the sight of the FB?

[PhrostDragon]

They can and will hit the creature, but with pretty terrible hit rate. The bolt throwers hit many ten percent of the stream they were firing and still injured the hell out of the beast, but failed to kill it. I've sorta figured I could do the same with the ballista launchers, but on the whole, I really much rather just edit the siege weapons to fire at beasts entirely.

For the record, I need this thing dead ASAP and don't have time to scramble a military squad 'cause I have a strange mood that needs silk. The series of events needs to be beast dies > dwarves immediately go down and grab silk to save my strange mooder from going crazy.

[HueSatLight]

Bolt throwers are siege weapons, if they're hitting 10%, then I don't understand why you're saying siege weapons aren't firing at beasts at all. Are your siege operators not skilled enough?

regardless, I don't think the beast has to die in order for you to collect silk before the mood timer runs out.

unless the silk is the first item they requested, you can reset their insanity timer by forbidding one of the other gathered mats. When they go find a replacement, their mood timer is set back to the start, and you've got another 40 days to get the silk. And you can keep doing it.
Enough time to find another cavern, and collect silk there. Build some chambers on your cavern level and wait for spiders to spawn and make webbing there. Build some containment halls to lure and keep the FB in. Or even drop some natural wall into a cavern around some silk.
If silk is the first item, the containment halls will be the fastest. Ramps are overpowered for containing building destroyers.

     D              D
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Wait until both doors are up before you channel through the last wall into the cavern, so your miner can go back through the door (have more mining jobs queued up). Then watch the FB until it is between both doors and forbid them both.

If you make two of these, not too close to each other, you can send your silk collector out the one further from the FB. If the FB heads for them, get the dwarf back inside. A war dog and a shield are quickest way to bolster your silk collector.

Other silk tips: embark with enough silk for a few moods, forbid them so they're not used for hospital or tailoring accidentally.
One of your military dwarves should be a weaver, and they should be assigned to the only loom that ever issues "collect silk" tasks. That way they can wear at least leather armor and you don't have to worry quite so much about minor nuisances, like spider bites. If they train, they can even fight tougher stuff out in the cavern.
You can also assign your silk gatherer a war dog.

edit: thought of another way, if there's no room for containment halls. Release several war dogs into the cavern through one entrance, and lock the door. Have the silk collector at another locked door not nearby or in line of site, and near some visible webbing. Set a meeting zone near the FB, so the war dogs go to it and distract it. Once they engage, unlock the silk collector's door, collect the silk, and lock the door once they're inside.