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[Dorftrottel]

I searched the arcs and existing threads thorougly for "jusice","tantrum" and "psychology" and failed to find a thread that contains the same idea. Please have mercy on me if i overlooked something.

As it is, dwarfs seem to dish out their anger randomly while tantrumming. If dwarf A is angry about dwarf B killing dwarf C, he might kill dwarf D which was just passing by.
Would it be possible to implement a system of directed tantrums, that make dwarfs go after the (alleged) cause?
In the same example, dwarf A would specificially go after dwarf B, gaining much more happiness for beating him than he would gain from a random anger outlet.
Dwarf-perceptible causes could than be all living beings, so that military dwarfes would have a chance to calm their anger by slaughtering their enemies before going after their squad or civilians.
It might also be fun to have them recognize indirect causes, strangling the doctor for the passing of a loved one in hospital, or blaming the sheriff for a friend starving in prison. (Or even blaming the mechanic for a drawbridge-accident)

The concept could be linked to the justice system, so that the friend or family of a crime victim would go for the (alleged/framed) culprit if they felt his trial was to slow or his sentence to light. Or the familiy of said culprit would storm the jail to free him if they felt that he wasn't guilty or his sentence was to harsh. This behaviour might trigger a PART_OF_ANGRY_MOB tag, that implies the BUILDING_DESTROYER tag, allowing them to breaking down prison/guard captains office door.

There could be probabilities involved in all stages of this, allowing the misperception of the cause and the variation of the satisfaction of self-justice, so that punishing the "right one" might not quench the thirst for blood of the raging victim, still allowing classic tantrum spirals.

Again, sorry if this came up numerous times and i somehow failed to find it.

[Revanchist]

I'm not sure if this has been suggested before, but it would go a long way to give creatures "individuality". It sounds difficult though.

[10ebbor10]

This'll most likely be part of the personality arc. (Which is currently defined as everything that is needed to give dwarves more personality).

It could be nice if this ties in with the existing personality system, with grudges having more basis in reality and such.

[weenog]

I think mob mentality behavior might be a bit too much, but I like the idea of a dwarf having a basic understanding of who or what upset them.  This might work well with an idea I've considered from time to time: insanity should not be permanent and an automatic death sentence (though it could still be, depending on how long they're insane and how successful they are in their crazy dwarf activities). Tantrums should be replaced with an appropriate flavor of temporary insanity.

Consider the dwarf mother who is already in a pretty bad mood, who loses her infant in an ambush. It would be cool if she went berserk and was a danger to herself and others until she calmed down, but it would be better if made priority targets of the offending goblins before she turned on her neighbors.  A devoted engraver who loses several masterpieces in a row to careless mining decides there's no point going on when no-one cares about his life's work, and becomes melancholy. Wouldn't it be great if he went out of his way to commit suicide right in front of the responsible miner(s), traumatizing them in a final "this is your fault" gesture?

[kerlc]

Urist McEngraver cancles Eat, Setting self ablaze!
Urist McEngraver sets self on fire and runs around screaming: "it's all Urist McMiner's fault!"
Urist McMiner is traumatized!
Urist McEngraver has perished in the flames.


That does sound like a lot of fun. Especially if it took place in the booze stockpile.

[weenog]

Urist McEngraver cancles Eat, Setting self ablaze!
Urist McEngraver sets self on fire and runs around screaming: "it's all Urist McMiner's fault!"
Urist McMiner is traumatized!
Urist McEngraver has perished in the flames.


That does sound like a lot of fun. Especially if it took place in the booze stockpile.

I was thinking more along the lines of throwing himself into a water-filled moat or magma channel the miners are currently digging, so they suffer a witnessed death recently thought, but I like how you described it better.

[kerlc]

Urist McEngraver cancles Eat, Setting self ablaze!
Urist McEngraver sets self on fire and runs around screaming: "it's all Urist McMiner's fault!"
Urist McMiner is traumatized!
Urist McEngraver has perished in the flames.


That does sound like a lot of fun. Especially if it took place in the booze stockpile.

I was thinking more along the lines of throwing himself into a water-filled moat or magma channel the miners are currently digging, so they suffer a witnessed death recently thought, but I like how you described it better.

Self-ignition is more dramatic and thus, more efficient.

[weenog]

I think tantrum spirals could evolve into something much more interesting if dwarves kept track of who upset them, and tantrums were replaced with temporary insanity.  You might get something that looks a lot like a lynch mob or a coherent riot, without having to code for it, if a lot of dwarves were angered by the same thing.  The loss of a popular noble, hero, or the matriarch or patriarch of a large clan might create a fortress-wide period of mourning, which would be awesome (also pretty dangerous if your fortress has plenty of convenient places to commit suicide).  I'm sure there are other possibilities more imaginative folks than me could describe.

[Dorftrottel]

To me, this idea begins to call for a neural network or markov model of relationships:

For every dwarf A assign relationship scores from 1.0 (loved) to -1.0 (mortal enemy) for every dwarf B(B|B != A).
Initiate with 0 for all relationships at the beginning, but assign rand(0.8-1.0) for close family (parent,children,spouse) and rand(0.5-0. for more distant family or friends.
If two dwarves (A and B) interact with each other, generate a agreement score between -1 and 1, based on base probability given by the nature of the interaction(say -0.1-0.1 random social interaction,-0.3-0.3 for serious interactions like fighting,yelling,consoling, making out, and -0.7-0.7 for extreme emotional matters like witnessing murder or cheese desecration,life-saving or mating) for number than multiplied by factors like nobility (class differences and how they are handled),labor,social skills and personality traits.
This agreement score would then added to the relationship score for the two dwarfes...and recursivly to all their friends and family,weighted by their relationship-scores and social skills like conversationalist,persuader and liar to simulate the spread of gossip and prejudice.
A statistical modellers wet dream! But i'm afraid that even with a very shallow recursion depth, this would eat up a lot of computing power. But social fluid mechanics might generate really epic in-game stories...and maybe render the game unplayable.

[weenog]

A statistical modellers wet dream! But i'm afraid that even with a very shallow recursion depth, this would eat up a lot of computing power.

Setting your computer on fire is just the dorfs' way of sharing the gift of magma.