If a dwarf dies in the dining room, but theres no one there to see his corpse, does it cause unhappy thoughts? Not anymore it doesnt!
What the dwarves dont know wont hurt them, so now its just a matter of keeping them blissfully unaware of just how many of their brethren are biting it every day. Ive had a few ideas on how to deal with this, depending on exactly how the discovery mechanism works. I suspect it works off mechanism A, but B would be much more fun.
Plausible Mechanism:
A: When a dwarf/animal comes within X squares of a corpse, he instantly alerts everyone
The Practical - Set burrow restrictions and forbidden zones of size at least X by X around corpses. You dont want the little buggers to notice.
B. When a dwarf comes within X squares of a corpse he learns of it, and as he runs into others, they find out and become unhappy.
The Traditionalist - Separate the men and women, so no one ever discovers their spouse has died.
The Moonbounce - Cover your entire map in retracting bridges with walls 2 Zlevels up and set them on repeat. Live dwarves will just get stunned and bounce around, dead dwarves will count as items, and will be flung in a random direction bounded by a 3x3x3 cube, or until they hit an obstacle. So long as all the corpses moonbounce over the walls, no one will notice a thing! This solution is also ridiculously inefficient, and automates hauling by making it completely impossible for dwarves to carry items.
Finder's Keepers - Any time someone finds a corpse, make them immediately stop everything and bury it, and themselves with it-- dig a two tile under the corpse, floor over the corpse, build an upstairs on empty tile, floor over upstairs from below.
The Future - Alternately, any time someone finds a corpse they run to the corner of the map to atom smash themselves in your suicide booth.
The Legend - Build a dining room (jk)
C: Vampires (and other murderers?) dont report mias.
The MIB - An elite squadron of vampire miner masons bury your dirty secrets before the cattle becomes aware.
Anybody else got a way to dispose of the corpses without any dwarves noticing? I wouldnt want the migrants to stop coming to my death hole every year! Also, does anybody know the real mechanism of bad thoughts/corpse discovery?