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[madpathmoth]

And if someone seems to be losing their mind despite this I exile them, along with their entire dumb family.

This is probably the most effective way for most players to handle it without much effort or having to modify anything.  It's good it works for you, but some players it doesn't work for--  They may not like having to hunt down entire families of dwarves to exile because they didn't micromanage their fort enough to avoid accidentally letting a dwarf have a bad memory.  Or for players who want to make multiple forts in the same world, it's very possible for new migrants to be the already stress-spiralling dwarves exiled from previous forts, making the problem worse.  To say it's inevitable for all or even most forts to lose everything to stress would definitely be inaccurate, but it's still a very common problem that limits potential and frustrates players.

[Splint]

And if someone seems to be losing their mind despite this I exile them, along with their entire dumb family.

This is probably the most effective way for most players to handle it without much effort or having to modify anything.  It's good it works for you, but some players it doesn't work for--  They may not like having to hunt down entire families of dwarves to exile because they didn't micromanage their fort enough to avoid accidentally letting a dwarf have a bad memory.  Or for players who want to make multiple forts in the same world, it's very possible for new migrants to be the already stress-spiralling dwarves exiled from previous forts, making the problem worse.  To say it's inevitable for all or even most forts to lose everything to stress would definitely be inaccurate, but it's still a very common problem that limits potential and frustrates players.

There's also a degree of micromanagement not everyone is going to want to deal with, or problem dwarves may be the immediate family of important workers or veteran soldiers (or worse, might be those very same workers or soldiers,) one may be reluctant to let go or don't have a suitable replacement for.

It's easy to exile Urist the useless Milker and their worthless spinner of a spouse who do nothing but haul stuff and sometimes help build things and their three useless kids - literally nothing of value is being lost there. It's another to exile Urist the legendary metalsmith or Urist the useless Milker who is married to Bomrek the master clothier or hammerlord who consistently slays all the big bad gribblies that visits the fort single-handedly.

And speaking of  new forts in the world, I have to admit I haven't used that feature at all precisely because of the game seeming to prefer to yank people from player forts. Not only does it undermine a sense of permanency in the forts you set up (in my opinion anyway,) but those dwarves will come bringing all their mental baggage to a new fort with no means of mitigating it.

[muldrake]

They may not like having to hunt down entire families of dwarves to exile because they didn't micromanage their fort enough to avoid accidentally letting a dwarf have a bad memory.

I am actually increasingly liking this level of micromanagement.  I routinely make quarters ridiculously good.  Smoothed, engraved, surrounded in blocks of crystal glass, every single dwarf with quarters with weapons racks made out of their favorite stone, armor stands, just living in absolute exquisite luxury.  Also submerged in magma.  That's for my own pleasure though.  Magma. 

Dwarves really love this.  I have my dwarves living at 10,000+ levels of happiness.

Any dwarf who isn't happy gets kicked out, because wtf is even wrong with a dwarf who is somehow unhappy under these conditions?

I just took a look at my stress situation and I think I exaggerated a trifle.  Despite this, I'm actually pretty happy with my stress levels. 

Look at this.

https://i.imgur.com/lUIVi2O.png

This is not bad at all.  This is very typical of my stress levels.

Something I don't understand is why are administrators so orgasmically happy?

[Splint]

You misappropriated a quote, but eh.

But see, micromanagement is something not everyone is going to want to do, for one reason or another, which if I were a betting man has to do with having too many people (yet on the inverse, not having enough makes getting anything done a painfully slow slog.) Still, those stress levels are comparable to what I get with my above ground forts, once my preferred accommodations are set up. Not great for most, but not terrible either, and it's... Good enough, if the trauma is kept to a minimum and the rain isn't a constant (seeing as I go out of my way to avoid miasma and cave adaptation, those are never issues for me.)

But, that's not great for places that are especially accident prone or frequently assaulted and lacking a magma trap or a hall full of trash compactors - someone still has to unjam and clear other traps, and both they and soldiers make a hell of a mess after all.

As to those administrators, my guess is one of two things - they're either popping out spawnlings like crazy, or they're elite soldiers, who tend to be some of the happiest people in the fort (or at least in mine,) due to the barrage of good thoughts from teaching and sparring they often get.

[scriver]

Am I alone in this?  I am finding "game ending stress" just to be something I don't experience any more.  Now, I do a lot of micromanaging, starting out each fort with a list of preferences of every dwarf, and continue this practice well into the game, also routinely checking everyone for stress, moving everyone who seems bummed out into a room of their own, with every dedicated set of quarters smoothed, engraved, and if at all possible, I move every dwarf into a set of quarters personally designed for them out of materials they like.

And if someone seems to be losing their mind despite this I exile them, along with their entire dumb family.

And almost all my dwarves are in like the high 10K+ happiness levels.

I think guilds really help too, turn off all the restrictions on them and let everyone use them.

Do you play the game as is or do you use third party apps?

[muldrake]

Do you play the game as is or do you use third party apps?

I use dfhack but largely for the labormanager script, autogems, decaying food, and that kind of thing.  I don't really do anything that changes the mechanics.  Dwarf Manipulator does make it a lot easier to keep track of stress though and if you proactively go after stress before it hits high levels it seems to keep it from spiraling.  It seems if for whatever reason it hits 10000 or so the dwarf is doomed.

The only dwarves that seem to end up that way though usually got one of the persistently recurring bad memories that seem to wreck a dwarf.  This is a lot less common now though.  Last version it seemed the entire fort went nuts every few years.

[scriver]

Is Dwarf Manipulator part of dfhack or another programme? I usually download dfhack but I only use it to change the starting dwarves number to ten, so I am very unfamiliar with it.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that the game should be designed from a stand point of players not using third party programmes.

[muldrake]

Is Dwarf Manipulator part of dfhack or another programme? I usually download dfhack but I only use it to change the starting dwarves number to ten, so I am very unfamiliar with it.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that the game should be designed from a stand point of players not using third party programmes.

A major problem with it is it is completely impractical in a fort of any size to check stress by poring over the text describing every single dwarf.  And by the time you notice it through in-game events (like tantrums or depressions) it is often too late to do anything effective.  I usually start out by copying the preferences/dislikes of every starting dwarf to a text file, and I can generally manage this for the first couple waves but much over 50 dwarves become entirely impractical to use this method.

I think it's more effective than just looking at the raw numbers, though, and getting started off on the right foot stops the stress spirals that seem to start about 5 years in.  I think it may just be the early dwarves spend a lot more time getting rained on and having other unpleasant experiences, while also not having guildhalls, temples, mist generators, and other dwarf soothing things.

So while it's entirely possible to manage stress without the raw numbers, it's more time consuming.  The trick is more or less the same and it's just starting early and catching stress before it becomes serious, and also finding the hopeless dwarves and getting rid of them, either by exile or by arranging for an accident.  (A magma chamber in a secluded area where nobody has to witness the unfortunate event avoids more stress.)

[Shonai_Dweller]

New UI contains numbers of stressed/unhappy dwarves at the top of the screen, so that's done.

[Dorsidwarf]

New UI contains numbers of stressed/unhappy dwarves at the top of the screen, so that's done.

Except you kinda have to catch them before they become actually stressed/unhappy, as soon as they start not being "very happy", because then they start manifesting behaviours which make them less and less happy.?

[PatrikLundell]

I agree that the time DF displays them an unhappy it's too late, as they're caught up in the "cry/yell at the expedition leader" cycle every second actions at that time, ensuring they don't have time to see to their needs as well as blocking the expedition leader from achieving much work either.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I agree that the time DF displays them an unhappy it's too late, as they're caught up in the "cry/yell at the expedition leader" cycle every second actions at that time, ensuring they don't have time to see to their needs as well as blocking the expedition leader from achieving much work either.

You've played with the new UI with it's DFhack style happiness indicators. Amazing!

[Schmaven]

I wonder if the happiness count in the new UI is just like the one on the bottom right in DFHack: where it just gives you total counts, but doesn't directly point out which dwarves are at what level of stress?  To save a dwarf, it can take several other dwarves and a focused effort to arrange the right conditions for them.  So not knowing which dwarves of the fort need special attention, it would be a much grander undertaking to apply the same level of coddling to every dwarf in the fort.  Other than Dwarf Therapist, what other utilities allow the player to see stress levels of individual dwarves?

[muldrake]

I wonder if the happiness count in the new UI is just like the one on the bottom right in DFHack: where it just gives you total counts, but doesn't directly point out which dwarves are at what level of stress?  To save a dwarf, it can take several other dwarves and a focused effort to arrange the right conditions for them.  So not knowing which dwarves of the fort need special attention, it would be a much grander undertaking to apply the same level of coddling to every dwarf in the fort.  Other than Dwarf Therapist, what other utilities allow the player to see stress levels of individual dwarves?

Is it actually wrong for dwarves to expect to live in conditions befitting their status as elite crafts-sapients and so on?  Why shouldn't dwarves live in living quarters that are absolutely lavish, filled with objects creates by expert craftsdwarfship, made out of substances entirely to their liking?  If you mistreat and neglect dwarves, why shouldn't they be unhappy with their conditions?

[Schmaven]

It's not that they should be happy with neglected conditions, but that to truly bring a dwarf out of the pits of despair, it takes way more work than just nice conditions.  Crafting, praying, socializing, sparring, avoiding corpse handling, and more.  To do that for every single dwarf in a good sized fort would require all other projects to essentially stop.

But if only 3 dwarves of 20 were starting to stress out, it is a much simpler task to cater to those 3 first than to not know who is unhappy and try to cater to all 20.