0008018: Pathing and combat issues with extremely hot creature

Dwarf Fortress Bug Tracker - Dwarf Fortress

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Project

Category

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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

Platform

OS Version

Product Version

0.40.08

Target Version

Fixed in Version

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.

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Relationships

related to	0006596	new		When the temperature increases high enough, adventurer movement is not possible except with Alt
has duplicate	0008030	resolved	Footkerchief	Dwarves cannot path to monsters made of fire or with a very high body heat as the air surrounding them is too hot
has duplicate	0008292	resolved	Footkerchief	Dwarves won't haul cage with magma man inside
related to	0008903	new		Soldiers pathing thru smoke to get stuff destroy FPS