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[gtaguy]

So here is the scenario:

I have a legendary dining room with a mist generator, plump helmate wine and plump helmate biscuits for every meal (for now), and enough dormitories nobody is sleeping on the floor.

How large is the bonus from having a good smoothed out (and possibly masterfully engraved) personal room? Could I neglect to give my dwarves rooms with my current setup? Should I give my highest ranking fortress members good bedrooms?

[ImagoDeo]

Dorms are a good substitute until you can do individual bedrooms. Start with bedrooms for nobles and those who need them; then go to personalized bedrooms for the entire fort to raise happiness. Make sure the rooms aren't as good as your nobles' quarters, or they'll get bad thoughts. I had an issue once with a bedroom that had a native platinum wall. Made a 2x2 bedroom of equivalent value to my count's 5x5 room.

Or you can go on with dorms. But individual bedrooms have other advantages, too, such as: locking dwarves in when they go berserk in their own rooms; locking other stuff out to keep some survivors in the event of a catastrophe; keeping your dwarves a tad happier; etc.

[nanomage]

I think the boost from having their own stuff and sleeping in own rooms is quite substantial. I can't really think of any significant downsides to having a personal bedroom for every dwarf.
The only thing that comes to mind is not having any witnesses in case of vampires, but careful screening of incoming migrants lets you single out the vamps with great accuracy anyway, so it is hardly a good reason.

[Larix]

In long-running forts, personal bedrooms are a liability, because dwarfs will inevitably hoard their old socks there. They'll never let them go, so stuff just keeps piling up, eating away at your FPS.

If your dining room/meeting hall is nice enough that all citizens are in the happy/ecstatic range, you should have enough happiness to weather the loss of a friend or two. Personal bedrooms would increase the buffer and loosen social ties a bit, because idle dwarfs would spend some of their leisure time hanging around in their bedrooms (admiring their furniture) instead of chatting it up in the meeting area.

I usually go with dormitories for most non-nobles, although giving families a family bedroom can be useful, too. Those generate a lot of "slept in a nice bedroom" happiness for parents and children alike, who thanks to their many relatives are in more danger of losing someone important. Children without an own bedroom will sleep in their parents' bedroom and gain the full room-related happiness. You can even place extra beds in such bedrooms: the happiness isn't linked to the "master bed", anyone who sleeps within the room's area gets the boost.

[ed boy]

The only thing that comes to mind is not having any witnesses in case of vampires, but careful screening of incoming migrants lets you single out the vamps with great accuracy anyway, so it is hardly a good reason.

It is possible to make vampire-proof bedrooms, and I have plans to do so in my current fort. They work like this:

Code: (top-down view of entry passage) [Select]

#=wall
P,p=pressure plate
H,h=Hatch over gap

#P#
#HP#
#Hh#
#p#
With the bedroom at the top of the picture and the hallway at the bottom. The hatch h is simply hooped up to pressure plate p, and the hatches H are hooked up to pressure plates P via a latch such that the top pressure plate activates the latch and the bottom pressure plate deactivates the latch.

When the dorf enters, all of the hatches allow passage and the dorf can entire fine, activating the latch as they do so. While the latch is activated, the bedroom can still be pathed into and out of, but an attempts to enter it from the outside will cause the passage to close off, so vampires attempting to snack on the sleeping dorf will be unable do.

The latch design that you want to use is not listed on the wiki, and is a such:

Code: (latch design) [Select]

║=track
R=north-pointing roller
r=south-pointing roller
P,p=pressure plate
S,s=gear assembly hooked up to power source
|=axle

Underlying track:

 ║
 ╚╗
 ╚╝

With mechanisms:
s
r
pRS
rR
sS
As a base state, s and S are set to OFF, meaning that the power is flowing and the rollers are running, with a minecart being shuttled between the bottom two tiles extremely fast.

When the latch is activated, an ON signal must be sent to s, deactivating the power and the roller. The cart then derails and immediately rerails on the left middle tile, activating the pressure plate, which must be hooked up to the output of the latch. The minecart then shuttles between the top left, middle left and middle right tiles, never letting the pressure place send an OFF signal.

When the latch is deactivated. an ON signal must be sent to the upper S, deactivating the roller on the middle left tile. This causes the cart to return to the bottom two tiles, leaving the pressure plate p to send an OFF signal as it is no longer being activated.

[nanomage]

won't you catch spouses and children this way?

[wierd]

In long-running forts, personal bedrooms are a liability, because dwarfs will inevitably hoard their old socks there. They'll never let them go, so stuff just keeps piling up, eating away at your FPS.

If your dining room/meeting hall is nice enough that all citizens are in the happy/ecstatic range, you should have enough happiness to weather the loss of a friend or two. Personal bedrooms would increase the buffer and loosen social ties a bit, because idle dwarfs would spend some of their leisure time hanging around in their bedrooms (admiring their furniture) instead of chatting it up in the meeting area.

I usually go with dormitories for most non-nobles, although giving families a family bedroom can be useful, too. Those generate a lot of "slept in a nice bedroom" happiness for parents and children alike, who thanks to their many relatives are in more danger of losing someone important. Children without an own bedroom will sleep in their parents' bedroom and gain the full room-related happiness. You can even place extra beds in such bedrooms: the happiness isn't linked to the "master bed", anyone who sleeps within the room's area gets the boost.

There is a quick and easy solution to this problem.
Place a refuse pile designation, which does not accept anything but worn clothing over each bedroom.

After doing that, any xClothingx items will rot away into nothingness, instead of being hoarded infinitely.

[ed boy]

won't you catch spouses and children this way?

You can assign them their own bedrooms so that won't become a problem.

[Larix]

In long-running forts, personal bedrooms are a liability, because dwarfs will inevitably hoard their old socks there. They'll never let them go, so stuff just keeps piling up, eating away at your FPS.

There is a quick and easy solution to this problem.
Place a refuse pile designation, which does not accept anything but worn clothing over each bedroom.

After doing that, any xClothingx items will rot away into nothingness, instead of being hoarded infinitely.

I already do that to some degree, but don't like it  - it blocks bedroom squares that could be used for furniture. It will also not get rid of clothes dumped on top of furniture or crammed into cabinets (but cabinets don't belong in bedrooms for this very reason anyway).

The settings of the refuse pile are largely irrelevant, btw; it can be set to accept fantasy materials like turtle hair, as long as any kind of "refuse" is set, clothes will rot away on it. I generally paint such refuse piles with an "only accept from links" setting, so nothing gets hauled there, clothes only enter the piles by getting dropped in the process of dwarfs acquiring fresh clothes.

    won't you catch spouses and children this way?

You can assign them their own bedrooms so that won't become a problem.

Bed- and dining rooms assigned to a married dwarf are automatically co-assigned to their spouses, afaik. In addition, children will follow their mother around until they grow up; that's not a matter of having an own bedroom, the "parental leash" means if the mother takes a nap, all kids will follow her into the bedroom and stand around in the place like dunces. Pressure-plate activated hatch covers regularly lead to mothers accidentally dumping their kids down a level, and while this _usually_ just stuns the kid, sometimes you get unlucky and the child lands face first.

[Sutremaine]

You can combine dorms and rooms by cramming a bunch of beds into a room and setting them all as bedrooms. The dwarves will be happy to have their own default-sized rooms, and won't care that every other tile in their room is occupied by a claimed bed.

[PaleBlueHammer]

Functionally I'd say go with small bedrooms or plain old dorms.  However, I prefer to make bedroom design a big and elaborate part of the fort.

Each dwarf gets his own 3x3 bedroom with bed, door, cabinet (although I may quit doing this due to xClothingx storage issues), and smoothed stone walls and floors.  Overkill no doubt but that's one of my own personal measures of success.  Nobles get engravings and higher value materials on their armor stands, etc, as well as more space.

Instead of cabinets, what might I plop down as furniture I wonder.  Statues?  Table and chair?

[ImagoDeo]

You can combine dorms and rooms by cramming a bunch of beds into a room and setting them all as bedrooms. The dwarves will be happy to have their own default-sized rooms, and won't care that every other tile in their room is occupied by a claimed bed.

I seem to recall reading on the Wiki that room overlapping reduces quality. So technically they do care.

[fractalman]

Yes, they care, but the penalty caps at a 75% penalty.  so if you stick 20 beds down in an 12x12 room, you get the happiness from a 6x6 bedroom for each dwarf: a massive saving on space and time mining at the following cost:

Opening up bedrooms for dwarfs becomes the #1 most boring activity in the entire fortress.

[Sutremaine]

if you stick 20 beds down in an 12x12 room

144 beds.

When I say cram a bunch of beds into a room, I mean cram those suckers in.

[wierd]

if you stick 20 beds down in an 12x12 room

144 beds.

When I say cram a bunch of beds into a room, I mean cram those suckers in.

That's only 12x12.

If you are going for density, aim for the full 200; do a 14x14 square area, and get 196 beds in.
That's basically a whole fortress population.