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[Gizogin]

Parties eat your workforce, preventing your dwarves from making meaningful contributions to society.  The happiness boost isn't worth the time you'll lose, especially when high-quality furniture and the occasional waterfall do the same thing, but better.  Plus, it'll all be for naught when the friendships they've made turn every misfortune into a full-fledged tantrum spiral.  The only real benefit is the boost to social skills.

Unfortunately, it can be almost impossible to totally prevent parties, unless you religiously dedicate yourself to micromanagement.

[Drawde]

I usually start out by designating a meeting hall.  Then, when my fort's been going for a while and is pretty much set up, I put a statue in the middle of it and make that a meeting area.

The parties rarely affect me at that point because there's not much left to do, and there's so much food and cloth that the workers not making any is a good thing.

[Larix]

I like building multi-generation forts, and there all parties will be organised and attended by children (because they're somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of the population). Everyone who grows up has survived ten years of solid partying and doesn't need any more.

[Thundercraft]

Unfortunately, it can be almost impossible to totally prevent parties, unless you religiously dedicate yourself to micromanagement.

Though it does require testing, I believe I have a method to stop parties. Check out my post in the DFHack thread and Warmist's reply.

To summarize:

The siren.lua script in the DFHack utility will stop parties in progress (as well as wake sleeping units and cancel all breaks), but it gives negative thoughts.

Examining the code, I found the part which stops parties and simplified it:

Code: [Select]

-- Stop parties
for _,v in ipairs(df.global.ui.parties) do
    v.timer = 0
end

This does not add a negative thought. It merely shortens the duration of all parties to "0", so they end immediately. As I said, it needs testing. But I believe this should work as a separate lua script in DFHack. (Let's call it 'partycancel.lua'.)

As for the problem of "religiously dedicating oneself to micromanagement", I may have a solution to that as well. It seems zwei is considering adding to SoundSense the ability to call an external DFHack lua script via "dfhack-run". If this is added, it would be a simple matter to call said 'partycancel.lua' script after SoundSense recognizes a party logPattern such as:

"They have organized a wedding reception at (.+)\."
"The (.+) has organized a party at (.+)\."

Specifically, it might soon be possible to tell SoundSense to call "dfhack-run partycancel.lua" every time it detects that a party has started. This would involve using notepad to change a few lines in the social.xml file (or replacing it with a modded version) in the "social" folder inside the soundpack.zip file for SoundSense. Normally, that file tells SoundSense to play a sound to announce parties.

[Akura]

Parties are Fun!

They are indeed. Of course, you can always cancel the party by turning off the meeting area.

I like building multi-generation forts, and there all parties will be organised and attended by children (because they're somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of the population). Everyone who grows up has survived ten years of solid partying and doesn't need any more.

Surprisingly, much like college, depending on the college.

[backflip]

Stopping parties completely is easy: don't designate any meeting area on any object.  Use the zone menu and define an area, even just one tile, and they'll gather but never party.

[BoredVirulence]

The dwarves that attend my parties tend to mostly be nobles and peasants. My warriors are training, my legendary professionals are busy, and my farmers are farming, cooking, and brewing.

So, IF I have a tantrum spiral, its going to be peasants and children who die. My professionals might be a little sad that an aquaintence died, but will otherwise be fine. And lets be honest, I only need peasants for hauling, and nobles are disposable. I'll just have a lot of extra food, an undaunted military, and a slightly upset armorsmith who will have to deal with a little clutter for a while.

Conclusion, 80% loss of population might affect 10% of productivity. The only real loss is extras for conscription, medical experiments, and other fun. Besides, I haven't had a tantrum spiral, that I didn't purposely cause, in a very long time.

And in the wisdom of loudwispers, doors. If an important dwarf were to tantrum, I'll just lock him in a room. Only my dining hall or barracks would be a truely dangerous place.

[Meph]

Stopping a party that is already happening is even easier. Just check which furniture piece they are partying at (party at statue for example) and designate it to be deconstructed. Party ends. Then cancel deconstructing.

[Thundercraft]

Good to know. But that would require a bit of diligence and micromanagement.
So the method backflip mentions sounds preferable.

[hiroshi42]

Stopping parties completely is easy: don't designate any meeting area on any object.  Use the zone menu and define an area, even just one tile, and they'll gather but never party.

Heh.  When I first started playing I remember people talking about the horrors of parties but could never figure out why I never had one, even with a 200 idle dwarf population.  For the longest time I didn't even know that you could designate a meatinghall via buildings.


Oh and I view parties as an added level of difficulty and an incentive to try and keep everyone relatively safe.  Sure it can be fun to off the mayor or baron every time they mandate 3 large gems followed by 2 large gems followed by 3 large gems followed by...you get the point.  And yes it would be fun to drop them ~ 60 stories into the main zoo sending their severed limbs flying in every direction, or dumping large gems on their heads until they-erm getting to the point.  Yes that would be really fun, but you have to take into account that they are friends with everybody and do you really hate them enough to start another damned tantrum spiral? 

[Thundercraft]

Oh and I view parties as an added level of difficulty and an incentive to try and keep everyone relatively safe.

That incentive was probably the general idea behind thoughts and tantrums in the first place. And I can appreciate such an incentive. However, it seems just a tad overblown or sensitive, don't you think? Toady himself admitted tantrums should probably be toned down a bit in the February DF Talk. Right now it doesn't take much in terms of unpleasant thoughts or deaths to trigger a chain reaction to assured self-destruction.

Some people can really appreciate extremely difficult game challenges and lots of !fun!, while some might be able to appreciate it better in moderation. There are different ways of enjoying Dwarf Fortress, as reading the forums clearly indicate. I've even read where someone modded their game to completely prevent tantrums and claim that, as a result, it was so much more enjoyable.

[Deus Morti]

Segregation is the answer to friendship in DF.

Calling it Apartheid seems uncouth. It is, rather, a policy of good neighbourliness.

[Asra]

It's part of the DF experience! Also tantrum spirals are bad, but the more friends they lose without snapping makes them more and more resistant to bad moods, until they are completely desensitized to anything, ever. I think that's worth the risks, sometimes.