My migrants tend to come in "calm and leisurely" waves of 30+ at a time, and usually right when I've finally *just* managed to set up decent shelter and reliable food sources for my original 7.
I'm lucky if I get 2 years before I've got hordes of them. And that's while taking every opportunity to reduce the produced and exported wealth of my Fortress (which really doesn't add a whole lot to the game experience...)
I can handle maybe 3-5 of such waves, but I don't especially want to. I'm looking hard into modding options, but this appears to be an area which is very difficult, if not impossible, to mod. And I've definitely gotten migrants *during* seiges. Which is a lot of fun for the goblins, but just exacerbates the managerial/logistical problem for me. And right now, the game's controls are just not sufficient to deal with serious managerial/logistical problems.
So, I can either let them in, making my Fortress extremely vulnerable, or I can starve them/let the goblins kill them, ultimately making another, just as difficult to deal with, problem, in the form of ghosts.
Another point: I love the ghost idea, and I'm ok with the consequences, to a point, but I really don't think I like the idea of ghosts springing up from migrants. I feel that ghosts should happen only after atleast a few years in the Fortress. I mean, doesn't it make sense that ghosts be tied only to places where they feel at home, or have some kind of sentimental attachment to?
If they have a kid or a spouse alive in the Fortress, or they made an artifact, or something similar, sure, but not because they randomly wandered into a goblin seige.
I *love* DF. I bought this computer and had it spec'ed out, with Dwarf Fortress specifically in mind, and the game runs great, except for the migrants.
The horrible horrible migrants.
If anyone can help me to find a real, tested, solution to this problem, through current modding options, that doesn't reduce the game's pure goodness in the process, I am all for that. I just haven't been able to figure it out on my own.