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[Kexan]

Currently when a dwarf reaches rock bottom happiness they will throw a tantrum which will have consequences that lead to other dwarves throwing tantrums and sparking the infamous uncontrollable tantrum spirals. Quite often it happens in the middle of a battle as dwarves fall in battle leading to other dwarves taking a happiness hit and what should have been a few casualties instead turns into a complete wipeout of the fortress as dwarves inside the safety of their burrows start killing each other until everyone dies.

I would like to suggest that dwarves grow some maturity through the magic of coding to act on their unhappiness by deciding to migrate out at the next peaceful opportunity. This would still punish the player but it would stop the ridiculous senseless collapses of forts that come from the frustrating tantrum spiral mechanic.

[nwob]

Why not have both be a possibility?  Why not have it linked to the personality of the dwarf in question?

I think that gameplay should step in to help counteract the chain reaction of tantruming dwarves - things that the player can do (that don't involve locking each of their citizens in a separate cell until the tantrum storm has stopped).  When there are more systems in the game, you might have a priest or politician who can appeal for calm, or maybe you can impose martial law. Or maybe you can put on some kind of festival, or discount drinks at the tavern.  Maybe all of these should be possible.

[Kexan]

Sure. Perhaps have a very low percentage chance of a dwarf tantruming/berzerking instead of migrating out. Maybe something like 5%. I could maybe even tolerate 10%. As long as the majority of the dwarves sanely decide to leave instead of killing their fellow dwarves.

Edit: As for adding additional mechanics to control tantrum spirals, I think that's the wrong way to think about it. That would just be building more complicated systems on top of a broken system at the foundation.

[MonkeyHead]

Welcome to the Bay12 forums. This post is part of a well known right of passage around these parts - suggesting something already planned, and suggested multiple times before. Dont worry about it - just have a dig around before suggesting something, as the chances are very high that someone else will have had the same good idea as you.

[nwob]

I accept that as a potential viewpoint, but it seems to me like a spiral down into misery (albeit perhaps a slower one) is a genuinely compelling and dwarfy way for a fortress to collapse.

To me, the reason why this bit of the game is broken is because there aren't many interesting ways of dealing with it.  When there are other systems in place that can tangentially interact with the happiness system, there will hopefully be compelling ways of solving the problem of tantrum spirals - because simply having dwarves leave (while definitely something I think should be possible) doesn't seem all that interesting to me.

Also, what MonkeyHead said.

[Kexan]

I accept that as a potential viewpoint, but it seems to me like a spiral down into misery (albeit perhaps a slower one) is a genuinely compelling and dwarfy way for a fortress to collapse.

Dwarves are meant to be sturdy mentally tough creatures. The spiral mechanic makes them into caricatures of Lord of the Flies children. How did they ever manage to build a civilization when they start killing each other at the slightest misfortunes?

[Adrian]

I doubt tantrum spirals are an intended mechanic. I think they are a side effect of dwarves getting unhappy from losing family/friends.
That said, i think tantrum spirals could be used to punish people for turtling their fortress. Let dwarves get more likely to return to the mountainhomes when they grow unhappy and let them grow violent when they hit rock bottom.

Also, i'm getting tired of people telling new people that certain things are suggested a lot or planned. Because EVERYTHING is already planned.

[Manveru Taurënér]

...
Also, i'm getting tired of people telling new people that certain things are suggested a lot or planned. Because EVERYTHING is already planned.

Yeah, if you're going to do that at least dig up a quote or two to support it. That way it gives a more solid base to continue further discussion of the details which very well may not be fully planned (or just for fun if people want), rather than trying to kill off the discussion ^^

It also helps point people towards the lovely sources of planned features, hopefully blowing a few more minds with the awesomeness that is in store

On tantrums:

Threetoe:   Ok, so, the next question ... Zoor asks, 'On dwarven tantrums, how much of it is a placeholder to be revamped and how much of it is our vision?'
Toady:   The tantrums right now, it's pretty crazy how they sort of go out of control with one tragic loss of a pet or something sending the whole fortress into overdrive. I mean dwarves are supposed to be somewhat volatile and somewhat amplified imperfect people, but maybe not quite that much. It gets pretty silly, because it doesn't let you experience the lows of the game without just losing your whole fortress, so I think that there should be more of a roller-coaster ride and less of a kind of degenerate spiral down to nothing when just a few bad things happen. Especially because it encourages you not to have dwarves have friends? I mean, having friends should generally help people get through hard times rather than causing the friends of someone who died to all go off and beat people up and stuff. It's just silly.
Threetoe:   So yeah, just tone it down a little bit maybe.
Toady:   Yeah.

On emigration:

ThreeToe:   So the next one is TKGP. 'Have you ever considered the possibilities of emigration? Some dwarves would be more attached to your fort than others, but it stands to reason if a new migrant ventures into your fortress expecting legendary dining rooms and lovely waterfalls, only to discover a cloud of miasma the size of a small mountain, he might want to set off again to look elsewhere.' So this is where we ... I think we've discussed this before about the hill dwarves, a kind of settlement that it outside of your mountain, to where dwarves will come and go more easily than just having migrants show up all the time.
Toady:   With that also, I guess the other element is the fortress starting scenarios so that if you've got a group of dwarves that is on a secret expedition to found a little site to then send out little scout parties to check where the goblins are, or something like that, and that's, kind of, the whole mission of your little fort then maybe you'll only receive reinforcements every, you know, so often, and it would just be a few soldiers, or something, or whatever's related to your mission. We're all for doing different scenarios and things like that. I mean, the only thing to watch out for with emigration, I guess, is if the game is going to, kind of, haphazardly pull one of your really skilled or important dwarves away from you, it's got to not feel so capricious that you rage quit and chuck your computer on the ground, or something. That would be annoying.
ThreeToe:   Yeah, especially since a vampire could have eaten one of them, instead.
Toady:   Yeah. Maybe it doesn't matter then, yeah maybe when we're on the subject of death and horror and just leaving your fort, but, I mean, the leaving thing, that would just be ...
ThreeToe:   Yeah, leaving does seem kind of cheap.
Toady:   Yeah, we'll see how that ... but we're definitely going to have some things happen, and even more so when you have the hill dwarves there was the whole thing of actually assigning some of your dwarves to leave, and bringing in new people from the hills and kind of switching people out, and not just necessarily assigning them to leave as a form of exile, but to do useful things, like arming the dwarves, or, like, they could go out with weapons, and arm and teach the dwarves, and then send out, you know, 30 or 40 guys. One of the main points of hill dwarves was the army stuff, so you could send out a guy to raise the hill dwarves, and then have an army of 400 dwarves marching somewhere. So, there's going to be some interesting, kind of, emigration.
ThreeToe:   Yeah, so, sort of, more of a flow, a back and forth flow of dwarves.

On insanity:

I do wonder, can a dwarf that has gone crazy be brought back?

You can't fix them right now, though I think there's a req/bloat to make the states of mind more fluid.  For the time being, you just have to be mindful of the warning signs and try to keep everybody happy if you don't want them to be lost.

Bloat89, EXTREME MOOD MODIFICATION, (Future): Reduce the finality of going berserk, at least initially, can also swap between the other final moods like depression and insanity.

[shadowclasper]

Why not have it so that migrants arrive with the dwarven trade caravan? Same for those that leave?
No dwarf would just, you know, go out across the wilds of our insanely dangerous DF worlds because they were simply pissed off.

The would wait for a safe caravan.

That way, dwarves who reach a certain level of unhappiness will stick around until the caravan arrives. But if it keeps getting worse and worse, they'll just tantrum.

[Kexan]

Awesome. Thanks for the information, Manveru. So Toady does acknowledge the spirals are a problem but he doesn't seem to make the connection to emigration as a solution to the problem. He seems focused on emigration as a completely separate feature. Shame.

Why not have it so that migrants arrive with the dwarven trade caravan? Same for those that leave?
No dwarf would just, you know, go out across the wilds of our insanely dangerous DF worlds because they were simply pissed off.

The would wait for a safe caravan.

That way, dwarves who reach a certain level of unhappiness will stick around until the caravan arrives. But if it keeps getting worse and worse, they'll just tantrum.

I agree with you. That's kind of what I was getting at with suggesting dwarves leave at the next peaceful opportunity. It would prevent situations like someone dying in the middle of battle with goblins and their spouse running off into the battlezone and dying. That would just create a slightly different kind of spiral with the same result of everyone dying.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Well, it's hard to say which systems might benefit others like that at this point really, since most of it is either in a placeholdery state or still just ideas. From the looks of it we're getting a rather major revamp of the dwarven psyche this next release, which may very well fix some parts of the problem. When emigration eventually becomes a thing I'm sure it'll be integrated wherever is appropriate ^^

[Kexan]

Looking forward to it then. We'll just have to raise the issue again when the time comes if the two systems come disconnected.

[Nicolo]

I'd like to see emigration out of the fortress based on family/religious ties and led by a particularly persuasive dwarf. Leaderless dwarves stick with their families and brood until they go berserk in true dwarf fashion.

[MDFification]

Following the next release, a lot of new things will become possible. A new migrant system would be a good one.

How about this: If migrants can leave (the map and surrounding tiles are secure) they will if they get too unhappy. This means that tantrum spirals only happen to players who turtle or are settling extremely harsh maps.
You could also implement a system to punish players for not developing wealth, making there a point to continous development. Migrants seek out a new fort, based on that fort's annual growth and their level of talent. Therefore, a secure, growing fort will receive higher-skilled migrants from other forts. However, if your wealth growth rate drops, less migrants with fewer talents will arrive.

Don't expect to see this in the next version, but with real-time army movement mechanics introduced I can't imagine real time caravan movement and real time migration movement isn't far behind.

[shadowclasper]

I don't think removing the tantrum spiral entirely is a good idea. It should be a serious threat no matter what type of map you're on.

The basic idea is that there's a threshold level of unhappiness. When you reach this threshold, the dwarf in question is ready to get the fuck out of dodge, and will do so at the next available caravan. Some things can tie them down (given dwarven morals). If a dwarf is married or has children who are happy and not ready to leave, the dwarf will stay. If the dwarf is in a position of authority, the sheriff, the mayor, etc, they'll not leave. (breaking oaths and treason are punishable by death to dwarves, it's a serious no-no, so a dwarf in a position of authority will stick there even if he's miserable). As long as the above two conditions aren't met, a dwarf will leave with the next caravan. It should be noted that dwarves will only NOT leave if they have a happy SPOUSE. They'll leave if they have happy adult children (who will stay) or happy parents (who will stay) or babies/nonadult children (who will leave with the pair of unhappy parents, or the single parent).

Now, if they aren't made happy soon enough, they'll eventually reach the next level of unhappiness, which is tantruming. If they continue to spiral down into unhappiness, they'll eventually go mad.

How does that sound to everyone? That way tantrum spirals -are- possible, but they are far more unlikely, and more realistic as well.

So, to recap.
1) Has the dwarf reached the first level of true unhappiness? (if yes: go to 2, if no: go to 7)
2) Is the dwarf a child (if yes: go to 7, if no: go to 3)
3) Is the dwarf married to a still living, and still happy, spouse? (if yes: go to 4, if no: go to 7)
4) Is the dwarf in a position of authority? eg: giving mandates and demands? (if yes: go to 7, if no: go to 5)
5) Is there a dwarven caravan present and about to leave? (if yes: go to 6, if no: go to 7)
6) The dwarf in question leaves, bringing any nonadult children and any unhappy spouses with them.
7) The dwarf stays.