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[Peacemaker636]

I'm sure we have all had unhappy dwarves slip through the cracks in our fortresses. Often times, dwarves get unhappy subtly and by the time you realize it, trouble is on the horizon.

I propose a pane in the stocks screen very similar to the medical or justice panes, with the expedition leader/mayor being the linked noble. These nobles already take complaints as is, so it would make sense to incorporate their job into the stocks screen. From this pane, you could see a breakdown of complaints, and possibly adjust alert settings which will notify you of problems as they crop up. This way you don't have to look at individual dwarves' thoughts to find out problems, and you don't have to wait until a dwarf is flashing or goes berserk before you know there is a problem.

[10ebbor10]

So a list with the happines of all dwarves, combined with a list of the most common bad thoughts. That might be quite interesting.

[Maklak]

At first I was going to just say 'lolz, use Dwarf therapists to find unhappy dwarves', but this suggestion is much more and it would be useful. For example, if there are five complaints about 'lack of chairs' and 'the same alcohol over and over' the player would know what to do. I'm in favour of adding such a screen.

[weenog]

I like it more than I thought I would.  It's not necessary, but it would damn sure be handy.

[Itsdavyjones]

I agree, while it still is possible using dwarf therapist, this would be nicer, because you can find out the problems, instead of trying to guess the problem.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I support this. I never use DT, so I check on dwarves periodically to make sure they're okay. I like doing this sometimes anyways, but if DF could tell you everything right away, that would be useful.

[King Mir]

This is much needed and hopefully Toady will add something like it durring the personality rewrite.

[Peacemaker636]

I'm glad to see that others think this is a good idea. Looking at a few other suggestion threads on the front page, I think this solution could address multiple problems.
The increased micromanagement required by the clothing rewrite has led to renewed interest in standing orders. I think this system could be tied to the manager's job-issuing screen to create this functionality in a flexible way. Types of complaints on the 'happiness' pane could be assigned any number of job orders (macros even! Just consider the possibilities...) to issue to the manager upon the complaint's generation. This would effectively provide emergency standing orders. I don't know much about coding but I think this should be easy, as it utilitizes existing code. It is only linking things together.
This could eventually be used as a tutorial of sorts to help new players. This would just require adding more detailed alerts (ie "Your dwarves are complaining of a lack of chairs. Chairs are created from a mason or carpentry workshop and are placed from the build menu").

Edited to avoid double-post

[dizzyelk]

I like it, I'd also like a counter on the main screen as to how many unhappy dwarves are in your fort. Kinda like the idler counter.

[Itsdavyjones]

I like it, I'd also like a counter on the main screen as to how many unhappy dwarves are in your fort. Kinda like the idler counter.

That is a great idea, now that would show the unhappy dwarfs, and for more detail, you go to the happyness page to see the complaints.

[King Mir]

I like it, I'd also like a counter on the main screen as to how many unhappy dwarves are in your fort. Kinda like the idler counter.

I wouldn't like that as much, because unlike idle dwarves, unhappiness isn't something you can solve instantly; dwarves don't get happy right after you fix there living condition. It would be better off prominently displayed in a menu like the z screen.

[aka010101]

I propose we use this to grant some use to an otherwise fairly useless noble, the expedition leader /mayor. How it would work is this. There'd be a screen, as proposed above, similar to the justice and medical screens, where the OVERALL level of fortress happiness is shown (determined by what the average is across the population) If a particular unhappy thought occurs frequently, the causes of those thoughts will be shown on the screen, along with possibly a rough percentage of how many dwarves are having that unhappy thought. As the population grows, this should get a little less pinpoint accurate, but still a good way to estimate the overall happiness level of your fortress.

[Phlum]

I agree, we should add another noble (therapist) to the dwarves' Bureaucracy. His entire job is to talk to other dwarfs and record the overall happiness and complaints of your fortress. Perhaps he could also list the items in high demand.

[aka010101]

Again, all of this, citizen's demands and overall happiness of the population, is really the mayor's job.

And, in all honesty, this probably won't be taken care of any time soon, as toady's mentioned he wants to overhaul personality traits and emotions and the like, which would get rid of the current happy/unhappy thoughts system. So while i think all of this is a good idea, it's probably going to have to wait.

[King Mir]

When Toady's overhauling happiness is the perfect time to add a way to monitor it.