zone

Tags: fort | productivity | animals | buildings

Command: zone

Manage activity zones, cages, and the animals therein.

Keybinding: AltShiftI -> "zone set" in dwarfmode/Zones

Usage

enable zone

Add helpful filters to the pen/pasture sidebar menu (e.g. show only caged grazers).

zone set

Set zone or cage under cursor as default for future assign or tocages commands.

zone assign [<zone id>] [<filter>]

Assign unit(s) to the zone with the given ID, or to the most recent pen or pit marked with the set command. If no filters are set, then a unit must be selected in the in-game ui.

zone unassign [<filter>]

Unassign selected creature from its zone.

zone nick <nickname> [<filter>]

Assign the given nickname to the selected animal or the animals matched by the given filter.

zone remnick [<filter>]

Remove nicknames from the selected animal or the animals matched by the given filter.

zone enumnick <nickname prefix> [<filter>]

Assign enumerated nicknames (e.g. “Hen 1”, “Hen 2”…).

zone tocages [<filter>]

Assign unit(s) to cages that have been built inside the pasture selected with the set command.

zone uinfo [<filter>]

Print info about unit(s). If no filters are set, then a unit must be selected in the in-game ui.

zone zinfo

Print info about the zone(s) and any buildings under the cursor.

Examples

Before any assign or tocages examples can be used, you must first move the cursor over a pen/pasture or pit zone and run zone set to select the zone.

zone assign all own ALPACA minage 3 maxage 10

Assign all of your alpacas who are between 3 and 10 years old to the selected pasture.

zone assign all own caged grazer nick ineedgrass

Assign all of your grazers who are sitting in cages on stockpiles (e.g. after buying them from merchants) to the selected pasture and give them the nickname ‘ineedgrass’.

zone assign all own not grazer not race CAT

Assign all of your animals who are not grazers (excluding cats) to the selected pasture. ” zone assign all own milkable not grazern”

zone assign all own female milkable not grazer

Assign all of your non-grazing milkable creatures to the selected pasture or cage.

zone assign all own race DWARF maxage 2

Throw all useless kids into a pit :) They’ll be fine I’m sure.

zone nick donttouchme

Nicknames all units in the current default zone or cage to ‘donttouchme’. This is especially useful for protecting a group of animals assigned to a pasture or cage from being “processed” by autobutcher.

zone tocages count 50 own tame male not grazer

Stuff up to 50 of your tame male animals who are not grazers into cages built on the current default zone.

Filters

all

Process all units.

count <n>

Process only up to n units.

unassigned

Not assigned to zone, chain or built cage.

minage <years>

Minimum age. Must be followed by a number.

maxage <years>

Maximum age. Must be followed by a number.

not

Negates the next filter keyword. All of the keywords documented below are negatable.

race

Must be followed by a race RAW ID (e.g. BIRD_TURKEY, ALPACA, etc).

caged

In a built cage.

own

From own civilization. You’ll usually want to include this filter.

war

Trained war creature.

hunting

Trained hunting creature.

tamed

Creature is tame.

trained

Creature is trained. Finds war/hunting creatures as well as creatures who have a training level greater than ‘domesticated’. If you want to specifically search for war/hunting creatures use war or hunting.

trainablewar

Creature can be trained for war (and is not already trained for war/hunt).

trainablehunt

Creature can be trained for hunting (and is not already trained for war/hunt).

male

Creature is male.

female

Creature is female.

egglayer

Race lays eggs. If you want units who actually lay eggs, also specify female.

grazer

Race is a grazer.

milkable

Race is milkable. If you want units who actually can be milked, also specify female.

merchant

Is a merchant / belongs to a merchant. Should only be used for pitting or slaughtering, not for stealing animals.

Usage with single units

One convenient way to use the zone tool is to bind the commands zone assign and zone set to hotkeys. Place the in-game cursor over a pen/pasture or pit and use the zone set hotkey to mark it. Then you can select units on the map (in ‘v’ or ‘k’ mode), in the unit list or from inside cages and use the zone assign hotkey to assign them to their new home. Allows pitting your own dwarves, by the way.

Matching with filters

All filters can be used together with the assign and tocages commands.

Note that it’s not possible to reassign units who are inside built cages or chained, though this likely won’t matter because if you have gone to the trouble of creating a zoo or chaining a creature, you probably wouldn’t want them reassigned anyways. Also, zone will avoid caging owned pets because the owner uncages them after a while which results in infinite hauling back and forth.

Most filters should include an own element (which implies tame) unless you want to use zone assign for pitting hostiles. The own filter ignores dwarves unless you explicitly specify race DWARF (so it’s safe to use assign all own to one big pasture if you want to have all your animals in the same place).

The egglayer and milkable filters should be used together with female unless you want the males of the race included. Merchants and their animals are ignored unless you specify merchant (pitting them should be no problem, but stealing and pasturing their animals is not a good idea since currently they are not properly added to your own stocks; slaughtering them should work).

Most filters can be negated (e.g. not grazer -> race is not a grazer).

Mass-renaming

Using the nick command, you can set the same nickname for multiple units. If used without assign, all, or count, it will rename all units in the current default target zone. Combined with assign, all, or count (and likely further optional filters) it will rename units matching the filter conditions.

Cage zones

The tocages command assigns units to a set of cages, for example a room next to your butcher shop(s). Units will be spread evenly among available cages to optimize hauling to and butchering from them. For this to work you need to build cages and then place one pen/pasture activity zone above them, covering all cages you want to use. Then use zone set (like with assign) and run zone tocages <filter>. tocages can be used together with nick or remnick to adjust nicknames while assigning to cages.