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[Geb]

I once tweaked the dwarf raws so that they had a maximum age of 2. Every year, half the population of the fort died of old age.

After the annual new year riot, it was a lot of fun trying to tidy everything up in time to attract more migrants. The fort could only survive by making lots of crafts, offering lots of wealth, getting lots of new workers.

how far did you push this insanity?

The original thread is here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84769.0

Eventually the fort did fall, through starvation I think. When all your workers die before getting a chance to gain skills, everything goes very slowly, including making food. Having a load of useless babies who will never become adults doesn't help either.

[darkflagrance]

Dwarf Fortress expects your dwarves to die violently, or survive until the player quits the fort from boredom. Thus, death from old age is currently unbalanced. I know this from trying to maintain a fort of dwarves modded to live 10-12 years; near the end, basically every year triggered massive unrest and chaos, and it was all I could do to stop a tantrum spiral from happening.

[slink]

Well I suppose if my best friend died because he was 100 years old I wouldn't be as sad as I would have been if he died because he dodged a goat off a cliff. Or something.

If you were 99 years old, you might feel differently about it.   

[Mrhappyface]

Dying of old age is the pinnacle of dwarven achievement. You survived all the horrors and trials life threw at you and emerged victorious. Bonus points if megaprojects and !!SCIENCE!! were included.

[Hyndis]

I do think the degree of negative thoughts for the death of a friend is way too severe.

It can push a dwarf from happy to miserable. And then a miserable dwarf is prone to going berserk, causing more deaths, and everyone ends up going insane.

it just takes a single dwarf ending up dead from any reason, even from something heroic, or form old age. They still can cause a tantrum spiral by themselves.

[Kofthefens]

I definitely think that how a dwarf dies should affect the negative thoughts.

[Corai]

Was happy his friend lived their life.


Since dwarves die so often, it should be a auto-escastic in IMHO.

[Callista]

Naw. It's still a sad thought. It just shouldn't be as severe as an unnatural death.

[lucusLoC]

the severity of the thought could be personality dependent. . .  but yeah, death from old age should not be as bad as death by FB melting.

[Darkening Kaos]

A sliding scale perhaps......

Level 1 - "... is grieving for an Elderly friend"
Level 2 - "... is grieving for an Elderly parent"
Level 3 - "... recently lost a friend to tragedy"
Level 4 - "... recently lost a relative to tragedy"
Level 5 - "... recently lost a child to tragedy"

Then have a hard-coded value for each level, possibly multiplied by a factor representing the closeness of the relationship.

Edit: And then there is this option-
Level (minus) 5 - "Urist McNastyPrick has been ecstatic lately.  He witnessed a long term enemy cark it, (and not before time, too)"

[TheCoolSideofthePIllow]

I once tweaked the dwarf raws so that they had a maximum age of 2. Every year, half the population of the fort died of old age.

After the annual new year riot, it was a lot of fun trying to tidy everything up in time to attract more migrants. The fort could only survive by making lots of crafts, offering lots of wealth, getting lots of new workers.

"This years new years party is going to be a riot... LITERALLY!"

[Alastar]

Well I suppose if my best friend died because he was 100 years old I wouldn't be as sad as I would have been if he died because he dodged a goat off a cliff. Or something.

If you were 99 years old, you might feel differently about it.   

Are you sure? Most family/friends/acquaintances in their 80ies and 90ies seemed quite relaxed about death to natural courses.
Getting old and one day going to sleep and waking up dead is natural and predictable.
And while I was very sad to lose my grandmother (at the age of 97), I didn't get nearly upset enough to throw tantrums. I probably would if anyone I knew died typical DF deaths.

[Garath]

my grandmother at 95 is happily chatting about who died this year in the knowledge that she might be gone soon too, but she raised 7 kids, has a good number of grandkids, her youngest son just married (really, we thought he was gay), she witnessed one of her daughters recieve a knighthood from the queen, a son taking over the family farm... She's a bit like "my body is giving up, but it was a great life, let's get it over with"

[Jeoshua]

Yeah I think dying of old age should be a bittersweet event for all involved.  Some might decide to extend their lifes through any means possible (you know what that means), but most of the time the sense of a job well done and a life well lived would be stronger.

So while grandma dying of old age won't ever make you happy, necessarily, if she's cool with it it's not something that you would go homicidal over.

[Gamerlord]

she witnessed one of her daughters recieve a knighthood from the queen

Wait, what?