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[Luriant]

Is the new system of emotions manageable? Or is the arrival of 44.11 necessary to play without a continuous depression?
I have read players who have blocked their libraries, leaving only taverns and temples as sole sources of positive emotions to combat depression.

[xordae]

It's impossible to keep everyone in good spirits right now.

In a 'near perfect' fortress with super high quality meals, rooms, locations, clothes etc. I'm still finding tantrums and insanity on the rise, one dwarf dropping after the other. Some dwarves seem to sit happily at high negative stress while for many others it's a slow descent where even yelling/crying at the mayer regularly doesn't do a damn thing. I suspect that only those who have not seen a dead body or any kind of violence since I upgraded to 44.10 to be immune.

Especially goblin military citizens are a problem, because they already have a tendency for bad moods and they get crazy good stats thanks to immortality.

I don't feel it's too cheaty to use DFHack's remove-stress until 44.11 rolls around, because right now it clearly is tuned way too hard in favour of traumatic experiences. And there's other bugfixes and improvements that I don't want to play without.

[StagnantSoul]

I mean we survived before with similar stress problems, that were far more instant.

[Splint]

I've had similar issues. Right now being rained on (which I think causes a fresh stressor even if it goes unmentioned every time they leave cover from the rain,) is sufficient to cause extreme depression and is presently tied with the mangled remains of invading soldiers and murdered coworkers for most stressful event. Fucking rain is on the same level as carved up corpses. Who the hell dwells on being rained on?

I have soldiers who have been fighting undead and cannibals for two in-game months who aren't the slightest bit stressed out (hell, one of them I think might be some sort of functional insane person since he has -24k stress and every other thing he does besides basic needs is kill people and fight zombies.) But rain, the bodies of people who were going to outright murder them, and a goblet shortage? Cue the obliviousness, assaults, and depression.

I don't feel it's too cheaty to use DFHack's remove-stress until 44.11 rolls around, because right now it clearly is tuned way too hard in favour of traumatic experiences. And there's other bugfixes and improvements that I don't want to play without.

I didn't even realize DFHack had such a function. You may have just alleviated my biggest headache of constant workplace assaults over rain and a dormitory.

[Robsoie]

In one of my first 44.10 fortress, a dwarf witnessed the death of a kobold, after a few years , i noticed in the description this memory was coming back regularly.
And the dwarf went into depression.

I left the fort to its own devices and started a new one.

in a migrant wave, this depressed dwarf joined, and quickly he became haggard and was stumbling around , still the kobold death memory was coming up in the description.

Finally , probably starved or dehydrated, the lethally depressed dwarf died.
And this of course shocked most of the fortress, and several years later, i see lots of dwarves reliving this memory and a few have become depressed.

So trying to fight the 44.10 emotion breakage is basically a losing battle, now if you're interested in seeing how long you can run your 44.10 fortress before everyone is fully depressed, it's good, but if it's a problem for you, better wait for the next version.

As in those 2 forts cases, they have temples, libraries , lots of masterwork statues and other supposedly "good thoughts" generators , but all in all either the "good thoughts" have smaller value for the dwarves stresses level in comparison to the bad ones, or the bad ones are just triggered more often.

I avoided taverns on purpose, a previous fort (in a different 44.10 world) had one, and the death from alcohol poisonning + many injuries made dwarves depressing faster.
And for once i played forts with max 80 pop, meaning i never had any gob invasions, so add on top of those depressions the thoughts of seeing gob die , and the dwarves can't take it anymore.

Of course modding some discipline in the dwarves raw may help , but still it's modding and not the stock game.

[CaptainArchmage]

There is a serious problem with dwarves getting depressed in this version, so it will be toned down for the next release. This is a shorter term release. Actually a lot of things are getting updated and we're apparently getting hill dwarf sites with that update, so you might want to hold until 0.44.11 or so.

[userpay]

Something else that might be considered is there's a command called misery for DFhack (not sure if it's actually in or you need to add it in) that adds fake bad thoughts to a dwarf, maybe someone could copy and alter the script to instead add good thoughts?

https://github.com/DFHack/dfhack/blob/master/docs/Plugins.rst#id170

[Leonidas]

I've gone almost a year after moving from .09 to .10, and I haven't had the terrible results that others are describing. Stress levels are rising slowly, but they're still within a manageable range. My attitude is that everything that used to be an optional way to improve happiness is now mandatory. You must have a temple for each god, plus a common temple. You must have plenty of grand bedrooms. You must have a waterfall. You must have soap and wells for bathing. You must have a stocked tavern. You must have a variety of quality food and a legendary dining room. You must have high-quality furniture for the dwarves to notice. Most of all, you must give them time off, in the range of a month or two per year of nearly zero jobs, to enjoy it all.

If that doesn't work, there are more ways to cut stress. You can assign rooms to dwarves based on material preferences. You can assign war animals as pets for the most stressed dwarves. You can make a variety of clothes and trinkets for dwarves to collect. You can have efficient atom-smashers scattered around to quickly dispose of any horrifying refuse. You can centrally locate your mayor's office and turn off the mayor's labors, since your stressed dwarves may frequently want to meet with him to blow off steam. And if a particular dwarf's stress level is getting dangerously high, then kill him before he goes on a rampage.

I even made a special horror squad, based on the research in this thread. I collected my ten most stress-proof dwarves into a squad, so that they can stand over the corpses and smash down the zombies as they reanimate. I also collected my most stress-susceptible dwarves into a fragile squad, and made them scholars and scribes who will stay away from combat zones.

Maybe this is working out well for me because I converted to .10 with a mature fort. A new fort under .10 might be more difficult. But then, players often complain that DF is too easy. Toady made it more difficult. DF players have incredible ingenuity about physical challenges. Let's apply that same creativity towards stress.

[thefriendlyhacker]

If you want a quick dirty fix, manually edit the stress counter through console.

This...

Code: [Select]

lua "for _,v in pairs(df.global.world.units.all) do v.status.current_soul.personality.stress_level=-10000 end"...in console will set the stress of all units to -10000.

For repeated application every 100 ticks...

Code: [Select]

repeat -time 100 -command [ lua "for _,v in pairs(df.global.world.units.all) do v.status.current_soul.personality.stress_level=-10000 end" ] If you want something not so bruteforcey, tweak the lua code and add conditionals to taste.

I've gone almost a year after moving from .09 to .10, and I haven't had the terrible results that others are describing. Stress levels are rising slowly, but they're still within a manageable range. My attitude is that everything that used to be an optional way to improve happiness is now mandatory.
...
Maybe this is working out well for me because I converted to .10 with a mature fort. A new fort under .10 might be more difficult. But then, players often complain that DF is too easy. Toady made it more difficult. DF players have incredible ingenuity about physical challenges. Let's apply that same creativity towards stress.

The problem is that the current stress fits into that horrible zone where...

• It can't be managed directly - dealing with it effectively requires planning your fort around it from the start before your fort enters a depression spiral.  You either manage it correctly from the start and then end up nothing to show for it beyond a plain old normal functional fort with a whole bunch of bells and whistles, or you don't manage it correctly and then everything comes apart 3 years down the line and there is probably nothing you can do by then.
• It isn't interesting - watching 25% of your fort slowly go mad and starve themselves or flip out and get ganked by your militia while everything else keeps chugging is pretty dull.  Especially since it is such a long, gradual decline that there is no "spectacle in losing", and because depression spirals aren't actually fort threatening - they weaken a fort, but they aren't coming remotely close to killing it off by themselves.
• Simply putting up with it is an acceptable option - rather than make a whole bunch of extra furniture, leaving dwarves idle and screwing around with all sorts of stress management techniques, just...eat the 30-40% casualty rate from stress?  I mean, you are losing tons of mandwarfpower either way.  Why take the fiddly, unreliable, complex, micromanagement intensive option when you can take the option that is straight forward, simple, reliable, easy and comes with the guaranteed assurance that things can't go off the rails because they already have.

This leaves stress in a spot where it isn't particularly fun or interesting.  It is simply something to grit your teeth and shoulder through.

[xordae]

Good point with the being rained on. That's not a bad memory, that's a bad moment. Once it passes you stop thinking about it. Maybe even feel happy that you're somewhere dry and cozy.

[scourge728]

I've gone almost a year after moving from .09 to .10, and I haven't had the terrible results that others are describing. Stress levels are rising slowly, but they're still within a manageable range. My attitude is that everything that used to be an optional way to improve happiness is now mandatory. You must have a temple for each god, plus a common temple. You must have plenty of grand bedrooms. You must have a waterfall. You must have soap and wells for bathing. You must have a stocked tavern. You must have a variety of quality food and a legendary dining room. You must have high-quality furniture for the dwarves to notice. Most of all, you must give them time off, in the range of a month or two per year of nearly zero jobs, to enjoy it all.

If that doesn't work, there are more ways to cut stress. You can assign rooms to dwarves based on material preferences. You can assign war animals as pets for the most stressed dwarves. You can make a variety of clothes and trinkets for dwarves to collect. You can have efficient atom-smashers scattered around to quickly dispose of any horrifying refuse. You can centrally locate your mayor's office and turn off the mayor's labors, since your stressed dwarves may frequently want to meet with him to blow off steam. And if a particular dwarf's stress level is getting dangerously high, then kill him before he goes on a rampage.

I even made a special horror squad, based on the research in this thread. I collected my ten most stress-proof dwarves into a squad, so that they can stand over the corpses and smash down the zombies as they reanimate. I also collected my most stress-susceptible dwarves into a fragile squad, and made them scholars and scribes who will stay away from combat zones.

Maybe this is working out well for me because I converted to .10 with a mature fort. A new fort under .10 might be more difficult. But then, players often complain that DF is too easy. Toady made it more difficult. DF players have incredible ingenuity about physical challenges. Let's apply that same creativity towards stress.

Several problems with this
1. What if you don't have a river or some such, goodbye waterfall
2.Giving them time off in that manner is, in my opinion, super tedious
3.Assigning rooms to dwarves based on preference is A. tedious and B. requires having materials the dwarf has a preference for
4.Atom smashers are kinda cheaty
5. Killing dwarves for stress levels is A. kinda not fun imo and B. creates an absurd number of bad thoughts for anyone who sees the corpse

[userpay]

If you want a quick dirty fix, manually edit the stress counter through console.

This...

Code: [Select]

lua "for _,v in pairs(df.global.world.units.all) do v.status.current_soul.personality.stress_level=-10000 end"...in console will set the stress of all units to -10000.

For repeated application every 100 ticks...

Code: [Select]

repeat -time 100 -command [ lua "for _,v in pairs(df.global.world.units.all) do v.status.current_soul.personality.stress_level=-10000 end" ] If you want something not so bruteforcey, tweak the lua code and add conditionals to taste.

I've gone almost a year after moving from .09 to .10, and I haven't had the terrible results that others are describing. Stress levels are rising slowly, but they're still within a manageable range. My attitude is that everything that used to be an optional way to improve happiness is now mandatory.
...
Maybe this is working out well for me because I converted to .10 with a mature fort. A new fort under .10 might be more difficult. But then, players often complain that DF is too easy. Toady made it more difficult. DF players have incredible ingenuity about physical challenges. Let's apply that same creativity towards stress.

The problem is that the current stress fits into that horrible zone where...

• It can't be managed directly - dealing with it effectively requires planning your fort around it from the start before your fort enters a depression spiral.  You either manage it correctly from the start and then end up nothing to show for it beyond a plain old normal functional fort with a whole bunch of bells and whistles, or you don't manage it correctly and then everything comes apart 3 years down the line and there is probably nothing you can do by then.
• It isn't interesting - watching 25% of your fort slowly go mad and starve themselves or flip out and get ganked by your militia while everything else keeps chugging is pretty dull.  Especially since it is such a long, gradual decline that there is no "spectacle in losing", and because depression spirals aren't actually fort threatening - they weaken a fort, but they aren't coming remotely close to killing it off by themselves.
• Simply putting up with it is an acceptable option - rather than make a whole bunch of extra furniture, leaving dwarves idle and screwing around with all sorts of stress management techniques, just...eat the 30-40% casualty rate from stress?  I mean, you are losing tons of mandwarfpower either way.  Why take the fiddly, unreliable, complex, micromanagement intensive option when you can take the option that is straight forward, simple, reliable, easy and comes with the guaranteed assurance that things can't go off the rails because they already have.

This leaves stress in a spot where it isn't particularly fun or interesting.  It is simply something to grit your teeth and shoulder through.

Are you talking about the DFHack console or the windows console? If you do the repeat one do you have to redo it each time you start the game?

[Leonidas]

Several problems with this
1. What if you don't have a river or some such, goodbye waterfall
You almost always have water in the caverns.
2.Giving them time off in that manner is, in my opinion, super tedious
3.Assigning rooms to dwarves based on preference is A. tedious and B. requires having materials the dwarf has a preference for
4.Atom smashers are kinda cheaty
5. Killing dwarves for stress levels is A. kinda not fun imo and B. creates an absurd number of bad thoughts for anyone who sees the corpse

There are technical solutions to 1 and 5. But let's focus on the big picture. Toady has a vision for a game in which at least part of the challenge is dealing with dwarf stress. That's why he has built so many interesting mechanisms that alleviate stress. Just last night one of my high-stress dwarves went to his mother for comfort and received a Love emotion. Soon we will have more interesting religious services, musical performances by professionals, group dancing and maybe other stress-relieving activities that contribute to the overall storytelling that Toady wants.

The stress is a feature, not a bug. Right now it's a bit out of tune, but it's not going away.

[scourge728]

I was never saying stress was BAD, but since you said you had no problems, and said that these things to do were now mandatory, I pointed out the problems with doing those things, at least for me

[strainer]

Here is the bones of a stress moderator script. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

-- configurations:
local df_ticks_per_month = 33600
local ticks_between_adjust = 1200   -- (a fortress day)

local stress_decays_towards = -50000   -- (fairly happy)
local tend_rate_per_month = 0.2  -- (decay 20% per month)

-- interest rate conversion formula:
local rate_per_adjust = 1 - math.pow(
  1 - tend_rate_per_month
 ,ticks_between_adjust / df_ticks_per_month
)

function moderate_stress_daily()
  for _,u in pairs(df.global.world.units.active) do
    local stress = u.status.current_soul.personality.stress_level
    local adjust = (stress_decays_towards - stress) * rate_per_adjust
    u.status.current_soul.personality.stress_level = math.floor(stress+adjust)
  end
end

--dfhack.lua api to set moderate_stress_daily to run every 1200 ticks