Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[thegoatgod_pan]

Tantrum spirals are a psychology test for the player. Sure it is horrifying to watch a beloved dwarf get chopped into pieces by a maddened miner in the middle of the dining room. Sure it is tempting to abandon when you realize that your fort of 150 is now a fort of 34, 27 of whom are wondering around melancholy or blabbering and are basically dead dwarves walking.

However..if you wait it out, let it burn out like a campfire fed no fuel, you will find yourself with a devastated empty, but controlled fort.

Three to seven traumatized, scarred survivors will still be going productively about their tasks: cleaning up the severed limbs in the well, planting the one farm plot that didn't get torn up during a tantrum etc.  You will recognize these dwarves, you will know their skills intimately. You might even know their family and remember how so-and-so Urist the 11 year old child's mother beat the chief medical dwarf to death with a wine barrel. Or maybe his father *was* the chief medical dwarf. In any case a year into your spiral the child will come of age, and probably get drafted into the army since his only skills are dabbling farmer and novice fighter (from getting beaten during the tantrum spiral). Then migrants will come, and industry will start again, and the dead will get buried, and the ghosts will kill at least a migrant or two, and your fort will run again.

Years from the spiral engravings will show key dwarves dying in horrible ways and your 11 year old traumatized survivor will be the unflappable and utterly unfeeling backbone of your military.


Never abandon.

[weenog]

Tantrum spirals are a psychology test for the player. Sure it is horrifying to watch a beloved dwarf get chopped into pieces by a maddened miner in the middle of the dining room. Sure it is tempting to abandon when you realize that your fort of 150 is now a fort of 34, 27 of whom are wondering around melancholy or blabbering and are basically dead dwarves walking.

However..if you wait it out, let it burn out like a campfire fed no fuel, you will find yourself with a devastated empty, but controlled fort.

Three to seven traumatized, scarred survivors will still be going productively about their tasks: cleaning up the severed limbs in the well, planting the one farm plot that didn't get torn up during a tantrum etc.  You will recognize these dwarves, you will know their skills intimately. You might even know their family and remember how so-and-so Urist the 11 year old child's mother beat the chief medical dwarf to death with a wine barrel. Or maybe his father *was* the chief medical dwarf. In any case a year into your spiral the child will come of age, and probably get drafted into the army since his only skills are dabbling farmer and novice fighter (from getting beaten during the tantrum spiral). Then migrants will come, and industry will start again, and the dead will get buried, and the ghosts will kill at least a migrant or two, and your fort will run again.

Years from the spiral engravings will show key dwarves dying in horrible ways and your 11 year old traumatized survivor will be the unflappable and utterly unfeeling backbone of your military.


Never abandon.

I'll abandon sometimes if I become utterly bored, but I don't abandon for disasters, and you do a good job explaining why.

[Talvieno]

I was indeed pondering this.  I imagine you dig a 3x2 channel that goes from Ocean A to Ocean B.

The minetracks would be much harder, at least on the surface.

There is also the matter of how exactly regions combine.  If I settle adjacent regions C snd D, do they overlap (probly not), sit 'nut-to-butt (perfectly adjacent), or is there some kind of buffer, list land or freeman's land?  I'd imagine in a perfect grid its perfect adjacency, but I've not seen proof to that yet.

Still, my mind can see it, and it excites me.

It's perfectly adjacent. Toady said so himself as he sized up the DF world, quoting how many tiles there were from one side to the other.

it's very possible to make water go from one side of the world to the other, but it would take frequent travel in adventure mode for the purpose of letting water flow about. It could be done right now, actually, come to think of it. There isn't anything keeping it from being done... But you'd have to do it partially underground, and carve fortifications at the edge of the map.

[Vodrilus]

I was indeed pondering this.  I imagine you dig a 3x2 channel that goes from Ocean A to Ocean B.

The minetracks would be much harder, at least on the surface.

There is also the matter of how exactly regions combine.  If I settle adjacent regions C snd D, do they overlap (probly not), sit 'nut-to-butt (perfectly adjacent), or is there some kind of buffer, list land or freeman's land?  I'd imagine in a perfect grid its perfect adjacency, but I've not seen proof to that yet.

Still, my mind can see it, and it excites me.

It's perfectly adjacent. Toady said so himself as he sized up the DF world, quoting how many tiles there were from one side to the other.

it's very possible to make water go from one side of the world to the other, but it would take frequent travel in adventure mode for the purpose of letting water flow about. It could be done right now, actually, come to think of it. There isn't anything keeping it from being done... But you'd have to do it partially underground, and carve fortifications at the edge of the map.

But does the water go to the next grid or just "fall off the edge" into bit hell?

[GoombaGeek]

Dwarves are always the cause of tantrum spirals. Having only one dwarf schould solve this problem 
(Maybe an interesting idea for a challenge: One-Dwarf-Challange. Everything have to be done with only one dwarf, all others must be killed as soon as possible.)

Another way to look at it is that with only one dwarf, every tantrum is a tantrum spiral, but they always stop after one tantrum-related death.

I guess
!
is better than
!!!!!

[terko]

Tantrum spirals are a psychology test for the player. Sure it is horrifying to watch a beloved dwarf get chopped into pieces by a maddened miner in the middle of the dining room. Sure it is tempting to abandon when you realize that your fort of 150 is now a fort of 34, 27 of whom are wondering around melancholy or blabbering and are basically dead dwarves walking.

However..if you wait it out, let it burn out like a campfire fed no fuel, you will find yourself with a devastated empty, but controlled fort.

Three to seven traumatized, scarred survivors will still be going productively about their tasks: cleaning up the severed limbs in the well, planting the one farm plot that didn't get torn up during a tantrum etc.  You will recognize these dwarves, you will know their skills intimately. You might even know their family and remember how so-and-so Urist the 11 year old child's mother beat the chief medical dwarf to death with a wine barrel. Or maybe his father *was* the chief medical dwarf. In any case a year into your spiral the child will come of age, and probably get drafted into the army since his only skills are dabbling farmer and novice fighter (from getting beaten during the tantrum spiral). Then migrants will come, and industry will start again, and the dead will get buried, and the ghosts will kill at least a migrant or two, and your fort will run again.

Years from the spiral engravings will show key dwarves dying in horrible ways and your 11 year old traumatized survivor will be the unflappable and utterly unfeeling backbone of your military.


Never abandon.

I would sig that, if it wasn't that big. Perfect, nonetheless.

[Urist Da Vinci]

No dining hall = no happy thoughts to have eaten in a legendary dining hall.

I'll give you a tip on tantrum damage control; isolate the affected individuals. I've placed 2400 doors so far in my Fort, a decision I have not regretted. Yet.

Dining room != Meeting hall.

Just designate a dining room from a table, but don't toggle it into a meeting hall.

[paldin]

"Tantrum spirals are a psychology test for the player.  Years from the spiral, engravings will show key dwarves dying in horrible ways, but your traumatized survivors will be the unflappable and utterly unfeeling backbone of your military."

I did this in college all the time.  After years of writing multi-page essays for English courses, I took an F/TV class that demanded I write as much information as possible, in as few words as possible.  In order for me to pass the first mid-term, I had to summarize the ENTIRE plot of a movie into one or two sentences which totaled less than 40 words (30 was best).  For example: Moister farmer from Tantooine must deliver secret documents to the Rebel base after rescuing a princess, dueling mystical warriors, and while being hunted by an evil empire that destroys planets.

[Drawde]

For meeting areas without parties, designate a meeting ZONE, just like making a pasture zone.

I only have parties when my fort's been going for a few years and I build a statue garden in my dining area.

[Seraphim342]

Another good way to prevent tantrum spirals is to systematically traumatize all your dwarves so they "don't really care about anything anymore."  There's a good thread about this on the front page atm. 

Best ways:  Either put all your dwarves in the "reserves" and have them each slaughter some prisoners (also gives a happy thought for taking joy in slaughter, AND if all your dwarves are reservists with armor and crossbows your fort can almost fend for itself), or create a system to automatically explode kittens or puppies in your dining room. 

[NightlinerSGS]

I've found an incredibly simple method to successfully prevent most tantrum spirals.
If you run the rest of the fort properly, this method can easily make your industries run smoothly while getting dozens of dwarves killed.

The big evil source of all tantrum:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Meeting halls.

Having no meeting halls prevents tantrum spirals:
-If you have a meeting hall, dwarves will meet.
-When dwarves meet, they become friends.
-When half your population commits to !!science!! or other fun, the remaining half which were friends of them go out of control.

So, it is as simple as this:
-No meeting halls: No meeting.
-No meeting: Limited amount of relationships
-Weak relationships: Low amount of sadness when Urist McScience undergoes an unforeseen lethal event.
-Low amount of sadness: No tantrums

The downside is that you will have idle dwarves wandering outside and in tunnels, solvable by burrows or by physically locking them in with forbidden doors and the like. However: the further they spread out the better!

Combining this with something that makes the dwarves happy, like masterfully engraved personal bedrooms will allow them to take the emotional hit of losing a handful of Urist McSockgrabbers during an ambush without shedding a tear.

Last but not least, have a coffin ready for every dwarf. This limits the emotional impact of deaths substantially.
You will never have enough coffins. If you run out when needing them, it is over. 
Build a few hundred. You are gonna need them.



So:
No meeting -> no friends -> no sadness -> no tantrum.

A lonely dwarf is a happy dwarf.

In my fortresses it is the other way around. Meeting halls (combined with dining halls and a personal 3x3 room for everyone) are the things that prevent Tantrum spirals from happening. At all. I'm playing DF for a few years now and I NEVER EVER had a tantrum spiral. That said, three essential things I have in every fort are:

Meeting hall, often decorated with statues. When I train my smelters I usually process raw ore in masses, if there are valuables amongst them (like gold or silver) the meeting hall gets floored with it.
Dining hall, often with tables and seating for 90+ dwarfes. Simply entering the room causes a huge happiness rise because of all the furniture (90+ tables and seats, surplus statues and maybe gold floor plating)
Personal 3x3 room for everyone, simple, with a bed, coffer and cabin. Also reduces the amount of XXstuffXX lying around a lot.

And thats it. These three things make dwarfes so happy that they ignore half the fortess and all of their family dying.

That said, meeting halls can be huge tantrum spiral preventers if correctly utilised

[eharper256]

Indeed, same for me, a meeting hall, especially one with masterful engravings, an artifact or two, and a waterfall in, is a big tantrum spiral prevention machine.

What IS a good idea is making it a Meeting Hall Zone with (i) only. Do not assign a meeting hall via furniture. A hall that is only a zone will not have parties.

[slink]

Dwarves are always the cause of tantrum spirals. Having only one dwarf schould solve this problem 
(Maybe an interesting idea for a challenge: One-Dwarf-Challange. Everything have to be done with only one dwarf, all others must be killed as soon as possible.)

Another way to look at it is that with only one dwarf, every tantrum is a tantrum spiral, but they always stop after one tantrum-related death.

Maybe that's a tantrum point, rather than a spiral?

[bobboy555]

The way I build my forts is usually a system of medium rooms with 5-6 beds in each. This localises relationships, as idlers will go to their rooms is no meeting areas are assigned.
Helps to cut tantrum spirals off. It doesn't completely stop them, but it helps.

[Tsuchigumo550]

Hmmm...

Now we have to build this concept into a fort. Every dwarf, save a force of haulers, gets everything he or she needs to be productive enclosed in a small area they are restricted to. They live in isolated pods, with workshops, beds, furniture, and the occasional statue.

Then there's the working force, haulers, soldiers, and traders.
They can access the pods as long as they aren't locked down, and otherwise live in a small, not very social community.

Most haulers will become soldiers. Soldiers are the most social of all, living together, sharing a dormitory, training space, stockpile, and medical bay.

Each pod is connected by materials collection system, which allows for items a pod dwarf makes to be dropped into quantum storage for minecart collection, and a separate quantum stockpile for reverse: dropping items in. In this way the hauler/soldier class is mostly if not completely isolated from the pod workers.

This requires micromanagement but also relieves some tensions, as a cyclic system emerges where the only certain death situation is when your hauler caste dies completely. If you build the lockdown system correctly, the only problems you'll ever see with tantrums is within the soldier caste where it will either resolve itself or escalate beyond control.