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[Borge]

At the moment the mood hit a Dwarf takes upon losing a single friend is severe. The problem with this is that everyone is friends with almost everyone else if they've been in the vicinity for any amount of time. This would be like a Legendary craftsdwarf instantly tantruming because one of his 1000 masterworks was lost. What should be changed is that the mood hit a dwarf has from losing a friend is divided amongst remaining friends, down to a certain minimum cap on mood loss. So if a dwarf loses his one and only friend, he will be very upset, but if he loses just a friend while retaining 100 others he will be far less upset. Despite doing absolutely everything right 1-2 deaths can cause a tantrum spiral that cannot be stopped.

[GavJ]

I would amend this to say "Divided amongst total number of friends OR ___ fixed amount, whichever is greater."

Where ___ = some amount of mood hit equivalent to roughly what a dwarf with 5 friends to divide amongst would receive.

Because a support network of 573 people is not generally much more effective than a network of 5 good friends. In fact if anything research shows it to be WORSE, because those relationships are more shallow, but don't need to get into that here. I just want to ensure that under no circumstances, a dwarf treats a dead friend as if it were a dropped penny.

[Deboche]

Everything that hits a dwarf should be weighed against the good things in his life, taking into account his personality, how resilient he is emotionally. Those things should act like a cushion and make the bad thought much weaker. How many friends' deaths would realistically throw someone into emotional shock? Maybe 5 at once? As for relatives, maybe one if it's a child or a really close family member.

Also, why do dwarves all respond kinda the same way? If the loss wasn't caused by other dwarves, why should they want to start fist fights? If it was a natural accident, why go complain to the noble? Why don't they sometimes just mope for a few months while not working, not get out of their rooms, get sick and go to the hospital, like what happens with normal people?

I've also been having way more tantrums in the new versions, it's pretty annoying because you end up with just a few dwarves after it's all over and have to wait for the next migrant wave while you make coffins.

[Dirst]

Everything that hits a dwarf should be weighed against the good things in his life, taking into account his personality, how resilient he is emotionally.

That is already in the game.  It's just that everything is additive, so one big thing wipes out a lot of small things.  Combat hardness decreases the unhappiness of "trauma" events, which includes the loss of a friend.

Your concern is with the formula used to calculate happiness rather than the factors that go into it.  Maybe someone could suggest a better formula.

My two cents would be to use a constant-elasticity-of-substitution utility function with some additional mathiness to make sure it can handle negative numbers (for example, the "square root" of a negative number would be sign{x}*sqrt{abs{x}}).  My example would make it even harder for a lot of little things to outweigh one big shock, but it would be balanced by nerfing the magnitude of the shocks or how long they last.

As for the silliness of tantrums, they and insanity are placeholders for more nuanced (bad) behavior during the next major AI re-write.

[Deboche]

As for the silliness of tantrums, they and insanity are placeholders for more nuanced (bad) behavior during the next major AI re-write.

Thank Armok for that

[Dyret]

If it was a natural accident, why go complain to the noble?

That's so authentic it's not even funny... screaming at people helps, apparently. How braining your other best friend with a pick is supposed to help however is more elusive. I mean, I suppose it could happen with the right (or wrong) traits, but right now it seems to be the norm.

[SixOfSpades]

Everything that hits a dwarf should be weighed against the good things in his life, taking into account his personality, how resilient he is emotionally.

That is already in the game.  It's just that everything is additive, so one big thing wipes out a lot of small things.  Combat hardness decreases the unhappiness of "trauma" events, which includes the loss of a friend.

Except that in most forts (I assume), only a small minority of the population is actually in the militia, so most of your citizens have little to no exposure to death and therefore cannot become accustomed to it. Which I agree with, by and large, naturally those who have racked up a ton of kills would be jaded to the idea of death, but some folks who have never even seen a dead body would be largely immune to grief, as well. When a dwarf dies, the game should go through his friends/family members and calculate each one's loss, not only as compared with how many other friends/family they have, but also with that dwarf's personality traits, and the manner in which the deceased met his end. Judging by the large number of new personality traits added in DF2014, and the large percentage of them that seem applicable to a dwarf's reaction to the death of a friend, I can only assume that Toady is already on the road to implementing this whole structure.

Indeed, there should be plenty of circumstances where the death of a friend / family member should actually cause positive reactions, at least for some folks. If any people should understand the concept of "a good death", it's dwarves.

[GavJ]

Except that in most forts (I assume), only a small minority of the population is actually in the militia, so most of your citizens have little to no exposure to death and therefore cannot become accustomed to it.

That's what puppy fountains are for. Breed puppies and rig up a mechanism that occasionally drops excess ones 20 stories into your dining room.

[SixOfSpades]

Except that a lot of real-life people can treat death, even that of a friend, with little more than a shrug and an extra shot of whiskey, without the need for a single puppy-fountain. (True, there are a lot of violent movies out there, but I wouldn't be so quick to infer causation.) Some people are just more emotionally closed-off than others, and that fact should be apparent in one's dwarves.

[Dirst]

Except that a lot of real-life people can treat death, even that of a friend, with little more than a shrug and an extra shot of whiskey, without the need for a single puppy-fountain. (True, there are a lot of violent movies out there, but I wouldn't be so quick to infer causation.) Some people are just more emotionally closed-off than others, and that fact should be apparent in one's dwarves.

What town is it that you live in that doesn't have a puppy fountain?

Damned schools just coddle kids today...

On a more serious note, I think all of those personality facets will eventually have an impact on how much (un)happiness a Dwarf gets from various things.

[Teldin]

Also, why do dwarves all respond kinda the same way? If the loss wasn't caused by other dwarves, why should they want to start fist fights? If it was a natural accident, why go complain to the noble? Why don't they sometimes just mope for a few months while not working, not get out of their rooms, get sick and go to the hospital, like what happens with normal people?

You're talking about DF, a game that could never be made by anyone but the inscrutable Toady. As much as Toady is amazing in various ways, it's pretty obvious he has little idea how actual people behave. Look at the hilarious behavior shown in the past few versions now that we've got things like morale and aspirations and decide for yourself. Stuff that couldn't possibly be anything but intentional, such as an entire fortress of dwarves fleeing from a dead badger, which would have easily been discovered on testing yet stayed in for 10 revisions.

[yobbo]

You're talking about DF, a game that could never be made by anyone but the inscrutable Toady. As much as Toady is amazing in various ways, it's pretty obvious he has little idea how actual people behave. Look at the hilarious behavior shown in the past few versions now that we've got things like morale and aspirations and decide for yourself. Stuff that couldn't possibly be anything but intentional, such as an entire fortress of dwarves fleeing from a dead badger, which would have easily been discovered on testing yet stayed in for 10 revisions.

Because he's coding mechanics not behaviours.

"Dwarves are afraid of dead things" + "dwarves run away from things they're afraid of" = "dwarves run away from dead badgers".

It's not like he coded in "badger death makes entire fort run away". It's a natural consequence of the first step of creating realistic behaviours.

If he worried about getting everything to behave realistically in every possible situation at every step of development, this game would not exist.


To keep this on track, IMO the problem with tantrums right now is that punching explodes heads into gore. Without the ridiculous headshots, tantrums would probably be manageable.

[Sutremaine]

As much as Toady is amazing in various ways, it's pretty obvious he has little idea how actual people behave. Look at the hilarious behavior shown in the past few versions now that we've got things like morale and aspirations and decide for yourself. Stuff that couldn't possibly be anything but intentional, such as an entire fortress of dwarves fleeing from a dead badger, which would have easily been discovered on testing yet stayed in for 10 revisions.

Dwarves have always behaved in strange ways. They run towards goblin ambushes when the entrance is right next to them and away from the goblins. They wall themselves into workshop areas and expire without complaint. They ignore any baby that they didn't personally give birth to. If permitted to stockpile an item they will do so even if there's a squad of siegers standing right over it. If there's a dangerous creature between them and a job destination they will retake that job no matter how many times they get interrupted. If there's a lever to be pulled, it will be pulled even if it's a well-used suicide lever whose effects are visible to the whole of the fortress.

Are all these things intentional, and a reflection of Toady's ideas of how actual people behave?

[Timeless Bob]

As anyone who has attempted to keep a 200+ dwarf fortress running for any length of time, it becomes scarily apparent that the Mountainhomes must risk cataclysmic depopulation every season or so from some tantruming or berzerk dwarf going on a rampage and setting up a deadly tantrum spiral.  So how does any dwarven civ last more than a few years in world gen if they're set up to self-annihilate so often?

Tantruming dwarves should become a dwarf who is increasing their military skills in a non-lethal manner by slugging someone else, but instead creating bad thoughts or a grudge with whomever they attack.  The emphasis here is "non-lethal", however.  A mother who hears her uncle was killed by a goblin doesn't immediately throttle her bouncy baby boy then proceed to go on a lethal rampage because her baby is dead - that's just stupid from a biological survival standpoint alone.  No, instead, she yells, screams, kicks the walls, (or maybe she goes to the craft-shop and commissions a job to carve a memorial to her uncle? Why should the overseer have to decide that for her? maybe the Overseer just has veto power over the uncle getting a memorial?) Anyway, her antics keep nearby dwarves from sleeping well which might form some grudges, but eventually life goes on and here's the kicker: Nobody else gets slaughtered just because one dwarf decides they're upset about something.

What I'd like to know is why the greatest threat to dwarves isn't an invasion by evil goblins, but the resulting tantrum spirals that happen after one is repulsed.  SO MANY TIMES I've had 1-2 dwarves lost to invaders and 30-50 dwarves (sometimes even 100+) lost due to someone mad about those 1-2 dwarves dying.  It's crazy, and idiotic for dwarves to want to live together if by doing so, they have a greater chance of dying due to random bad moods.

[Chevaleresse]

I think that a good step would be making dwarves aware of what they were carrying in their hands when they decided to do things. This would solve myriad issues, including dwarven parenting and the fortress guard murdering jaywalkers because you accidentally gave them an artifact lead crossbow.