Infinite Hospital-to-Gaol Loop

[grenn logging thing comsonaphus]

My poor, most miserable dwarf, Iden "Heavyweight" onulinod, recently lashed out physically and thus swiftly found himself the target of the dwarven justice system. By which I mean, he was beaten within an inch of his life by the captain of the guard. That's fine. Nothing unexpected there. Unfortunately, shortly after he was dragged away to the hospital for treatment, the captain came once again to arrest him. However, the dungeon is pretty much at the opposite end of the fort as the hospital, and he drags Iden pretty slowly. So before they can even make it there, some good Samaritan notices the bloody and beaten Iden, and snatches him up to drag right back to the hospital all over again.

I'm sure it's clear where this goes. He's infinitely dragged in and out of the hospital, with no time to receive medical care or serve his sentence. Tried pausing the dungeon zone, and assigning the guard captain to train in the hopes of keeping him busy: no luck with either. I'm not sure how to break this loop short of completely removing the captain of the guard position, which I'm concerned might mess up the ongoing cases, and also I would prefer not to have to keep doing that every time if it happens again.

Thoughts?

[amade]

Can't you lock the access to the prison? If not, at this point it's better to let him go to prison. Block your hospital or temporarily erase the zone if you need to (but leave some on wall tiles or somewhere inaccessible). If he's badly injured, he might die in jail.

Getting a beating and jail time meant that you convicted him of multiple crimes. Unless the point is to get him killed via justice, it's better to convict your citizens one case at a time; wait for the one case to be properly disposed before moving on to the next conviction.

You don't have to convict your citizens immediately, so you have some leeway. Though if you let the cases go cold (after a year I think?), any victims involved in the case might feel aggrieved by it.

[HueSatLight]

what happens if you add a chain next to a hospital bed, and add an overlapping dungeon zone to the hospital room? Then pause/repaint all other hospital beds/jail chains until he's chained.

[amade]

Originally posted by HueSatLight:

what happens if you add a chain next to a hospital bed, and add an overlapping dungeon zone to the hospital room? Then pause/repaint all other hospital beds/jail chains until he's chained.

IIRC once they've chosen which restraint/cage they want to use but are blocked from accessing it, they'll just spam cancellation until they can bring the prisoner to it. I vaguely recall trying this when my fortress guard decided to cage instead of chain a prisoner, which is why I suggested blocking access to the prison.

[Dagmar]

Then that should actually work out since the prison restraint can be within the hospital zone if they overlap. There's no real rule that says prisons have to be entirely contiguous.

[olElLI]

Yeah or place a hospital zone over the restraint, pause the real hospital, add a bed; a chest with thread and cloth and soap and such in or outside the room, to get him fixed up. But likely less hassle if you can get him chained in the hospital as suggested.

This is some yin/yang stuff though. Over-zealousness is in itself a crime lol.

[amade]

Originally posted by olElLI:

Yeah or place a hospital zone over the restraint, pause the real hospital, add a bed; a chest with thread and cloth and soap and such in or outside the room, to get him fixed up. But likely less hassle if you can get him chained in the hospital as suggested.

This is some yin/yang stuff though. Over-zealousness is in itself a crime lol.

You can't make them change target restraint/cage once it's already selected.

Also, if they're being put in a cage, you can't treat them. And I'm doubtful about getting treatment while chained, but it's worth doing some !!SCIENCE!! on it.

[grenn logging thing comsonaphus]

Thanks for all the responses! What I ended up doing was just disabling the hospital and letting Iden serve his sentence. Doing it the other way around didn't seem to work, and I got worried that if I did completely block off the dungeon, they would decide to beat him again. No idea if there's any truth to that, but another clobbering certainly would have killed him, so I didn't risk it.

Luckily, Iden survived gaol. Lesson learned about convicting dwarves for multiple crimes at once. I guess I just assumed if I convicted a bunch at once, the game would I guess somehow add them all up and administer one big punishment, instead of each one separately. Dunno why I thought it would be that simple in this game of all games.

[amade]

Originally posted by grenn logging thing comsonaphus:

Luckily, Iden survived gaol. Lesson learned about convicting dwarves for multiple crimes at once. I guess I just assumed if I convicted a bunch at once, the game would I guess somehow add them all up and administer one big punishment, instead of each one separately. Dunno why I thought it would be that simple in this game of all games.

Actually, it does do that. If you convict them of multiple crimes and the punishment happens to be of the same type, it adds up. Prison sentences or beatings would go on longer. But there's no way to know in advance which it's going to be for each conviction, so you'd end up with what you got; a beating and a prison sentence. And they always administer the beatings first.

If you space the convictions apart that would give your dorf some time to recover if it turned out to be a beating. But if the conviction turns into a prison sentence, you can immediately convict them of another crime after your guards put him into a cage (but not in chains!). If it turns out to be another prison sentence, the length is simply extended. If it's a beating and the prisoner is caged, they'll wait for the prison sentence to end before beating the convict. If chained, they'll probably beat them up immediately and you have no way to administer medical attention.

[grenn logging thing comsonaphus]

That's a good tip amade, thanks! Although thinking about it, I did convict him of one more crime while he was chained, and the punishment said beating, but I don't think they actually beat him until after his sentence was over. Maybe something has changed in that regard, or maybe I or my dwarves just got confused. He's gotten a lot of beatings lately, they kind of blend together after a while.

[amade]

Originally posted by grenn logging thing comsonaphus:

I did convict him of one more crime while he was chained, and the punishment said beating, but I don't think they actually beat him until after his sentence was over.

Ah, good to know. I guess that makes sense, when thinking in terms of logic states. Can't administer the next punishment because they're still "administering" the current one.