Print

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

[GavJ]

Are you all running really long histories? Maybe I'm not experiencing this, cause I play at year 100 or so usually? If you do a 600 year fort, they probablhave huge extended families more often.

[Splint]

Are you all running really long histories? Maybe I'm not experiencing this, cause I play at year 100 or so usually? If you do a 600 year fort, they probably have huge extended families more often.

Same here, I tend to go for relatively short world gens (between 80 and 180 years, ensuring the founding generation of dwarves has died out in the latter case,) though I do it so I have megabeasts to kill/capture. As a result my dwarves have rather small families usually unless I go for up in the 140+ area during worldgen.

Although from what I've seen I do have to agree a thought that is causing so much trouble (by even overriding what were once the lifesavers of artifact making and having a child,) and not in an entertaining way, even for veteran players, is something that needs some serious tweaking because that kinda makes playing past the last one before the new emotion system very unappealing for some, at least for fort mode.

But that's just an opinion on the very last bit, and won't stop me personally because my dwarves usually don't have massive families.

[Chevaleresse]

The main issue is that there's nothing you can do to stop the eventual descent into insanity. Everything else is preventable. Choked on a miasma? Put your butcher outside, or just ensure the food gets hauled properly. Relative died? Get a better military. Lack of tables? Build more. And so on. Missing relative? Pray to Armok that Dumat Shootwad, cousin of 30% of your population, gets off his lazy ass and comes to your fortress.

[neblime]

you guys are probably right about the length of world being the problem, but the world I mentioned was only 210 years old, so I suspect once you get to a certain point where every dwarf has 10 million nephews to be sad about it doesn't really get much worse.
Actually maybe it depends on how the civilization is doing?  If you're in a golden age (not necessarily in name) where your civ is growing a lot I suppose dwarves might end up with larger families of people who aren't dead?
In any case I'm glad that tantrums/insanity works different now.  I've lost about 30 dwarves to fist fights so far but only 5 to proper insanity (1 berserk and 4 melancholy)

[Larix]

Worldgen length is a way to tune it, but the crucial thing seems to be civilisation size. Tiny/dead/dying civs give dwarfs with no outside relatives (fort of 45 with no missing relatives - no troubles whatsoever), thriving civs give dwarfs with 100+ outside relatives which seem to mean 20-40% of adult immigrants arrive primed for insanity (first tantrum erupting in a semi-loyalty cascade and four dead at the end of first year, and thngs will only get worse from there).

Going by the colour, missing _one_ relative is about as severe as meeting despised vermin, and the missing relatives thought is re-generated something like four times per day. It's completely over the top, and unfortunately, it hasn't been changed for the new release. Healthy-civ forts remain close to unplayable, in a very un-fun way.

On the flipside, it's a great way to get fell moods.

Tantrums appear to have gotten broken during the last update cycle - a tantrumming dwarf who stands on a building will freeze in space and keep attacking passers-by, long after the tantrum's over. Nearby dwarfs who decide to defend the pummeling victim will pile on top of the tantrummer, and they often appear to lose loyalty, so that a tantrum in the meeting hall tends to average three to five deaths, only rarely including the actual tantrum-thrower.

[Splint]

Nearby dwarfs who decide to defend the pummeling victim will pile on top of the tantrummer, and they often appear to lose loyalty, so that a tantrum in the meeting hall tends to average three to five deaths, only rarely including the actual tantrum-thrower.

In fairness some of that may be due to dwarves picking that as a good excuse to start a brawl for no reason other than they can, as some dwarves have a propensity to get into fights for no reason according to newer personality traits (Anything pertaining to brawling, starting fights, or whatever.) So some of that may actually be personality at play and pulping turning what the brawlers see as some fun into an unintended bloodbath.

[Dirst]

From the DF Announcements thread

Incidentally, the sadness from missing relatives is 100% goblin snatcher victims.  I'm going to moderate the amounts for next time, but the wording doesn't reflect the actual horrific circumstances.

That actually makes sense... though it's odd how often the relatives of snatching victims end up at a fort.  Because snatching and immigration pull from the same pool of historical figures?

[GavJ]

I still don't think I'd care that much if my great-uncle-in-law was baby snatched 30 years ago or whatever.

Also, this implies that they were in emotional shambles back in the mountainhomes too? How did they survive there? Why were they not in jail for throwing hissy fits before, etc.? This sort of makes it the equivalent of a migrant showing up with a missing limb and promptly. I.e. seems like a straight up bug, even more so than before, that this really happens much at all. Either they've gotten over it, or they haven't and would be locked up not sent out on expeditions.

[Dirst]

I still don't think I'd care that much if my great-uncle-in-law was baby snatched 30 years ago or whatever.

Also, this implies that they were in emotional shambles back in the mountainhomes too? How did they survive there? Why were they not in jail for throwing hissy fits before, etc.? This sort of makes it the equivalent of a migrant showing up with a missing limb and promptly. I.e. seems like a straight up bug, even more so than before, that this really happens much at all. Either they've gotten over it, or they haven't and would be locked up not sent out on expeditions.

I agree, I don't think that a person that out-of-it over something in their distant past could manage to migrate just to fall to pieces in your dining room.  Just a reminder that the living world outside your fort isn't as detailed as what you see on your own screen.

[Tomsod]

As a temporal workaround, I vaguely remember something about dwarves not being able to go insane while caged. So one just needs to quarantine every important migrant for a year or so until they're over it (don't forget to feed them though), and it'll be alright. Hard, but manageable instead of random.

And if a dorf misses them in such logic-defying fashion, it would make more sense for him to just...leave and go back, instead of grabbing a chair and caving in someone's skull, or jumping off a cliff.

Also, very much this. The ability for dwarves to go back to mountainhomes, either as a new flavour of "insanity" or per Overlord's orders, would be very useful in quite a few cases. I always feel kinda sorry drawbridging all those cheesemakers.

[Cptn Kaladin Anrizlokum]

As a temporal workaround, I vaguely remember something about dwarves not being able to go insane while caged. So one just needs to quarantine every important migrant for a year or so until they're over it (don't forget to feed them though), and it'll be alright. Hard, but manageable instead of random.

But the thoughts never go away, they get worse over time...

[GavJ]

Also, very much this. The ability for dwarves to go back to mountainhomes, either as a new flavour of "insanity"

Lol, leaving my fort is one of the sanest things a dwarf can do.

[Putnam]

Until then, quick n' dirty DFHack script to fix:

Code: [Select]

for k,v in ipairs(df.global.world.units.active) do
    for _,emotion in ipairs(v.status.current_soul.personality.emotions) do
        if emotion.thought==df.unit_thought_type.LoveSeparated then emotion.type=-1
    end
end

This will make them "not feel anything" about missing loved ones.

[MDFification]

Speaking as a staff member at a summer camp, some people do get legitimately depressed (I've seen a suicide attempt and someone literally write in their own tears, it gets intense) from being in temporary physical separation and frequent written contact with loved one. Even people who are old enough to be considered adults. So I'm not suggesting it needs a nerf.

The thing is, IRL there are coping strategies that can be adopted that reduce the severity of these cases most of the time. One of these that I've found particularly effective is getting the person in question to start planning their immediate future. Seriously, it works wonders.

So here it what I propose:

-Missing Family thoughts decrease in severity over time depending on the individual (idk what it'd be linked to, probably something relating to how attatched they get to things)
-Migrants (unless refugees?) get positive "Starting a new life" thought that decreases in effectiveness over time, representing the optimism of migrating.
-Refugees could get a negative thought instead of Starting New Life for realism purposes

[Larix]

Since according to Toady these thoughts are actually caused by _goblin-abducted_ relations, comparisons with real-life homesickness don't quite fit the bill. Since currently it causes a near-inevitable, painfully slow descent into madness, the issue definitely deserves tweaking.

In actuality, the dwarfs aren't sad about their goblinised brethren - they're jealous of the better life they live. And it makes perfect sense that the thought gets worse the longer they live under a player's thumb