0008018: Pathing and combat issues with extremely hot creature - Dwarf Fortress Bug Tracker

ID	Project	Category	View Status	Date Submitted	Last Update

0008018	Dwarf Fortress	Pathfinding	public	2014-08-14 21:13	2014-08-16 13:13

Reporter	McHarbl	Assigned To
Priority	normal	Severity	minor	Reproducibility	random
Status	new	Resolution	open
Product Version	0.40.08

Summary	0008018: Pathing and combat issues with extremely hot creature
Description	After a huge quadruped composed of flame, with large mandibles and a gaunt appearance, got stuck in my fortress behind a door, my military became completely unable to target it. Ordering squads to kill it only makes them display "no reachable valid target". Telling squads to station near it similarly fails with "unreachable location". Digging more paths to the creature, around the door, did not help. If stationed some distance away but obviously in line of sight, squad members simply ignore the creature as well as they can as it breathes fire on them. It appears to be very hot as the walls around it become warm almost instantly; this is visible both by loo(k)ing at the walls and (d)esignating. I'd guess this extreme temperature is causing hard-to-recognize pathfinding and possibly other AI problems. If a dwarf is forced into melee range, fighting will start but even an elite military dwarf makes little attempt to attack, only dodging and blocking. They're clearly capable of surviving this for a long time as one axedwarf danced with the creature for at least 11 long screens of combat text before collapsing and being reduced to its metal components. Oddly enough, a cornered kitten had previously fought back and managed to injure the creature somewhat before combusting. The door in the creature's path eventually failed, probably because of the fire the creature was breathing on experimental subjects dropped near it. As it started moving again (through water that was being poured down the stairwell in frustration), the marksdwarves opened fire. The fortress's champion suddenly reacted to his orders, ran in and instantly decapitated the creature.
Steps To Reproduce	Order squads to attack idle creature made of flames in fortress mode.
Additional Information	With no DFHack for 0.40.08 I can't tell what the exact temperature surrounding the creature was, though the dwarves seemed to find it quite unsurvivable even when they successfully defended against the breath attack. Investigating with 0.34.11's arena, DFHack and creatures modified to resemble random-generated flame creatures suggests that over several simulation steps, the tile the creature is on eventually reaches a temperature of at least 10485 units. The nearby tiles warm up to 10277 units. Both temperatures are enough to instantly boil water; if the pathfinding considers survivable temperatures, this could explain why dwarves are completely unable to target the creature when it has been standing still for a while.
Tags	No tags attached.

smjjames 2014-08-14 21:38 reporter ~0029072	This sounds exactly like the problems that I have with FBs that are blobs composed of flame, right down to the squads (or even wardogs) just standing there not attacking, except that they usually just sit at the map edge.

Talvieno 2014-08-16 13:13 manager ~0029147	Can confirm this. I've seen this too.

Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2014-08-14 21:13	McHarbl	New Issue
2014-08-14 21:38	smjjames	Note Added: 0029072
2014-08-15 06:30	~~user6~~	Relationship added	related to 0006596
2014-08-15 15:32	~~user6~~	Relationship added	has duplicate 0008030
2014-08-16 13:13	Talvieno	Note Added: 0029147
2014-09-16 20:24	~~user6~~	Relationship added	has duplicate 0008292
2018-01-15 15:00	Loci	Relationship added	related to 0008903