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Author Topic: *We need your help with game ending stress*  (Read 107733 times)

DG

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Re: *We need your help with game ending stress*
« Reply #15 on: October 29, 2019, 02:23:45 am »

I have a fort that is 3 years old and has every possible stress reliever.

3 years is far too short.

Ptw.
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Atkana

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Re: *We need your help with game ending stress*
« Reply #16 on: October 29, 2019, 02:33:37 am »

Just from my minor anecdotal observations, I find that generally any unit that has any degree of stress vulnerability (or other traits that increase stress) becomes a write-off. Eventually, they'll end up completely stressed out even if they've only experienced minor problems like unsatisfied needs.

As for the idea of wanting civilians to feel bad when seeing a corpse, that's fine, but it would be nice if there was some way to prioritise hauling those corpses to the stockpiles so the hardier dwarves can get them out of sight (from what I remember, the priority feels extremely low). And while on that subject, it'd also go a lot quicker if dwarves could carry more than one body part to the stockpile at a time rather than having to go back and forth for each individual goblin-piece that got cut off (I think that's how it is currently).

Sorgklaan

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Re: *We need your help with game ending stress*
« Reply #17 on: October 29, 2019, 04:20:27 am »

There needs to be more of a hedonic treadmill. Stress needs to stack less, and there need to be more ways of venting stress after it has accumulated.

I'm fine with a handful of dwarves in a large fort snapping after cleaning up after a siege, but currently cleaning up a siege means your fort is dead and on a timer. Yes, you can micromanage stress as it is if you're willing to do so, you can banish dwarves. But doing those things also kill the fun of the game, micromanaging it feels like a massive chore and banishing dwarves kills the narrative feel of the fort.

The version around the 2015/2016(?) release had dwarves that were a little bit too difficult to stress, but that was a far more fun and engaging experience than the frustrating, micromanagement heavy system we have now.

Even if you intentionally mod dwarves to be less stressed, the endless accumulation of stress will still eventually kill your fort. There absolutely needs to be a way or multiple ways for dwarves to vent stress off consistently.
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venicedreamway

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Re: *We need your help with game ending stress*
« Reply #18 on: October 29, 2019, 05:04:24 am »

The stress that results from the deluge of corpses post-siege is one of the reasons I'm not playing DF at the moment. Why doesn't winning a siege produce happy thoughts? We had a hundred goblins on our doorstep, and we drove them away with 0 casualties on our side!

I think it would be really good if dwarves could have beliefs about war/conflict. Someone who believes battle is necessary to resolve disputes could get a happy thought when a siege is won, while a pacifist might get upset; the same for engaging in violent raids. Of course dwarves should still get upset about seeing a corpse if that's their disposition, but I think the stress that results from this should be balanced out by a more contextually-informed thought about where that corpse came from.

Apart from this, I agree with what others have said already about prayer, socialising, and especially meals. It's ridiculous that dwarves will kick up such a stink about not getting a very particular type of food when you have a huge stock of masterwork meals, and doubly ridiculous that even if you do have that type of food, they might not ever actually pick it up and eat it.
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Lysabild

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Re: *We need your help with game ending stress*
« Reply #19 on: October 29, 2019, 05:57:33 am »


3 years is far too short.

Ptw.

This is important to note, the issue is that long term you can never keep up. Show us the fort after the 15th siege.
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some_stranger

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Re: *We need your help with game ending stress*
« Reply #20 on: October 29, 2019, 05:59:36 am »

Stress is a lot like radiation.  Easy to accumulate and hard to remove.
  • Locking yourself up and avoiding everything is the best way to avoid accumulating any, but is boring and will eventually fail anyway because...
  • Family/friends in other fortresses will stress Dwarves no matter what.
  • Rain is too hardcore and will create Dwarf emos very efficiently.
  • Bodies and Combat are absolute devastators post siege.
Suggestions:
  • High discipline military should have higher propensity for good ideology changes involving fighting/bodies.
  • Dwarves should have family vistors/be able to send/receive letters to other fortresses somehow.
  • There is currently a raw edit where you can derive more enjoyment from booze and fend off stress better.
  • Dwarves dying of old age should inspire happy thoughts (ex. "felt accepting when [friend/relative] lived a long life").
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Timeless Bob

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Re: *We need your help with game ending stress* (updated 11/4/2019)
« Reply #21 on: October 29, 2019, 06:06:27 am »

I've always wanted to have a hands-off "ant farm" type of dwarf fortress experience, with the dwarven AI specifically working to meet the needs of each of its members, such that the dwarves themselves have agency to meet their own needs, leaving me the choice to designate goals such as construction of monuments or temples or suchlike.  I'd like the option to sit back and just watch them do their thing for generations: see the fortress grow organically without constant micromanagement.  With the current stress system, if I have a simple lodge with a dormitory of beds in one side and a dining room in the other, a simple farm plot and a well for when the booze gets low, then just let the dwarves go do their thing, I have a dead fortress in about two to six years.  Adding in military training (mostly those with the "hunting" labor enabled so they can train in their off-time) and a jail to take care of criminals, vampires, were-beasts, invasions, ect ect ect... The fort is dead in five years tops. It's usually dead more often from internal stress of depressed dwarves stumbling around obliviously because they saw something they hunted die and it keeps haunting them. I haven't had a married dwarf result outside of pre-married migrants since the new version, which is weird and sad. (edit:  Just had a dwarf marriage after 3 years in game of just letting it run without jobs and an itty bitty temple as the only meeting area)

Idea: Why not make each new instance of a stressor have half the potency of the original?  They'll just die off that way naturally as the dwarf becomes further inured and hardened to the normalization of a given environmental stress level.  I think the current model of stress doesn't seem to simulate the normalization of  environmental stress into its model.  A dwarf must have decided to travel to the site of the fortress: the environment leading into that fortress is an expected variable, not a sudden horror when you get within it's boundaries.  Have the period where they are designated "new migrants" with little flashing "x"s be the place that sets the baseline for their environmental stress.  If they have to run from the undead while tripping over mounds of bodies - those that get to safety behind those haunted walls will have a baseline stress of "there will be undead and bodies, and all around horrible nightmare fuel as part of my normal life".  It will be an expected baseline upon which staying inside where its safe gives relatively wonderful happy thoughts compared to that baseline.

Stress or de-stress calculated relative to that baseline rather than as an absolute function, with a tendency to re-approach that baseline through actions or refusal to act (just as hunger/thirst kicks into a survival function that refuses to work until it is satisfied) would seem to be a self-balancing system. Stressed dwarves shouldn't lose thier agency to depression or obliviousness, but rather reclaim it more fully by becoming focused on doing/experiencing de-stressing things until the emotional crisis is averted.

In humans, death often is an aphrodesiac - instead of relying on migrants to refill the pop cap in a fortress, why not increase the likelihood of seeking love and mates after death is experienced by a dwarf?  "I'm upset because I saw a dead <insert entity here>" bad thought could also increase the chance for that dwarf to seek to socialize in order to mitigate that stressor back to baseline.  The more upset the dwarf, the greater the seeking to find love and a mate to sire bunches of children with, or at least to marry as a homosexual union.  If that love isn't available, increase the religious zeal and time spent seeking to commune with their deity.  Stress needs to increase the chance that the dwarf will seek to mitigate that stress.  The more stressed the dwarf is, the less useful it is not because its moping around getting in the way while everyone just waits for it to die, but like when they are starting fights, the dwarf is more focused on mitigating that stress in a myriad different ways.  Inebriation, overeating, over-socialization, study in a library, brawling, dancing, singing, performing or enjoying performances, sleeping, seeking out "fine" objects to enjoy, ect...


Just having dwarves go get what they need, or go talk to the manager who puts that need into the que to be made in the various workshops would be amazing.  Having the Manager be able to designate workshops be built at need if they aren't pre-existing would be wonderful, as would self-excavation of the fortress to create those labrynthine dwarven forts found in Adventure mode...  To actually see that in action as each need forms new rooms and new stockpiles what an amazing experience that would be.

One idea for that implementation would be a kind of artifact mood that is triggered by a dwarf just before they succumb to stumbling around obliviously.  Maybe not a full Fell Mood, but something that allows them to trigger at the workshop that would fulfill their needs (or build said workshop, to accomplish the task). Corpse stress would be wonderful to create a Fell Mood artifact, but using the corpses that are stressing them out rather than a fellow citizen.  If there isn't the correct number/amount of ingredients for an artifact or a favorite meal, let the dwarf create a slab/codex detailing the recipe/blueprints for that favorite food or intended artifact.  By doing this, and describing said recipe/artifact in the document or on the slab, they get the same happiness boost and the Player can use that item as a non-consumable reagent along with its listed ingredients to actually create said recipe or artifact.  Creatures of industry can copy texts, why not also copy artifacts at will?
« Last Edit: November 05, 2019, 01:26:24 am by Timeless Bob »
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UristMcPea

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Re: *We need your help with game ending stress*
« Reply #22 on: October 29, 2019, 06:44:14 am »

Stress was one of the primary reasons to start using Dwarf Therapist. Apart from that I modded the game a bit to reduce stress vulnerability and the tendency to become violent when stressed by a fair amount. (I didn't eliminate it, though.) There are some issues that bother me - almost all of them are somewhat related to stress:

1) General management

This is basically why I started using DT. With more than 20 dwarves out there I'd like to have a way that shows me

- Who is suffering from stress? (What's the stress level?)
- Who is currently experiencing stress?

The second one is more of a newbie issue, though. ("This guy is throwing a tuntrum? Let's have a look... Dang, he's been running around almost naked for two years and he didn't bother to tell me.")

One idea about resolving this:

Generate reports about meetings with nobles! Dwarves yell at them if they feel bad - why not let them state what their problem is and how they think it could be resolved.

"Hey, Duke, I haven't seen my wife for weeks and this really annoys me! If I can't see her, you should at least give me a temple that's dedicated to <insertnamehere>.

2) Food preferences

Lots and lots of dwarves complain about not having the "right" food and some of them get really pissed about this over time. Fulfilling food needs is hard, really hard. Apart from their choices what to eat seam totally irrational. There're thousands of lavish meals out there, but they pick up that raw plump helmet. I know there're ways to mitigate this such as placing raw food storages and kitchens far away, but this is annoying.

Suggestions:

- Food of a certain quality does not generate bad thoughts. The required quality is of course different for each individual. While one dwarf may be pleased with anything that has been processed, another may want a lavish meal of at least exceptional quality. This could also be tied to value.
- In order to get a good thought (rather than just no bad thought), a particular ingredient may still be required.
- Of course dwarf should be willing to walk a bit longer to look for some food that doesn't make them unhappy or - if available - happy.

3) Rain & Sun

A lot of things have already be said about whether - rain in particular - so I'd just like to add another suggestion:

If it really pisses them off, dwarves could be reluctant to perform jobs that requires them to go outside or in the rain. This could be done by occassional job cancellations. Of course, if the order is repeatedly given, they should eventually do it - depending on stubbornness or the like...

4) Need to acquire something

If dwarves feel the need to acquire something, they need to haul it. Details unknown. (Will they take it out of a bin, if they haul it?) I think this could be solved rather easily:

If a dwarf needs to acquire something, he should go out and get it. Period. This works for food, for clothing - why not for jewelry and the like? Of course preferences should be honored, perhaps quality, too.

5. Clothing management

Right now I never set up some kind of clothing management - I simply produce clothing in abundance and do a manual cleanup occasionally, which is a pain.

Suggestions:

- high quality clothing simply lasts longer than low quality
- leather clothing lasts longer than fiber clothing
- clothing that is dropped on the ground rots away much faster
- option for xused clothingx (and beyond) for stockpiles to sort out that clothing for further "processing"
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ArrowThunder

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Re: *We need your help with game ending stress*
« Reply #23 on: October 29, 2019, 06:48:52 am »

As someone who hasn't played much fortress mode, I may ironically be rather qualified to answer this question. I think the root of the problem here is that your play experience is perfect. You know the game inside and out, so you know exactly how to play it to keep your dwarves happy. You build temples, give them alcohol, etc. You (reasonably) want a play experience where traumatized dwarves are permanently scarred from their experiences, no matter how happy their lives are. This leads you to tune the game in a way frustrating for new players. But we can fix that!

Tutorials are Important

Meeting needs is a balancing act, but a new player can't really balance. When people learn things, they tend to focus on one thing at a time; a new player might be extremely proud of their perfectly-managed agricultural system providing a wide variety of both food and alcohol. Yet by the time the player figures that out, their dwarves are extremely grumpy because they haven't had a place to sleep. Or perhaps you never really took on the intimidating textile industry, so your dwarves are naked and embarrassing each other.

There's also something to be said about impressions. When you give a list of the likes and interests of each dwarf (their favorite animals and food, etc), you put a Chekov's gun in the player's face that tells them "you need to give them this to make them happy" and a lot of times you simply don't have access to the things they like. When you consider trying to custom order something for every dwarf, it's very overwhelming. Perhaps that's information that might be hidden from the player until they discover it? Like, you don't know your dwarf loves kangaroos until either they see a kangaroo and are ecstatic (happy surprise!) or explicitly are asking for one (prompting the player to engrave a kangaroo in their room). In this way, a player doesn't feel like they are expected to counter negative thoughts with pampering but rather by eliminating the root cause of the problem (more on this later).

In fact, this could apply to literally all of the happiness & needs mechanics. They should be introduced to the new player slowly, and they should *not exist* until you're teaching the player how to solve them. For example, make their clothing immune to wear until you've started teaching the textile industry. Once you're ready to introduce that mechanic, artificially introduce the complication in a controlled fashion to create a sense of urgency, like "oh no, Urist McUristson's pants are suddenly looking ragged! Why don't we make em a new pair?"

Unmet Needs are Needlessly Frustrating

Even a solid tutorial mode isn't always enough for new players, who are still learning the ropes. No tutorial teaches every mechanic in the game, and dwarf fortress can be particularly overwhelming. The best way to learn is honestly to make mistakes, and players need to be able to do so without having to abandon everything. This is especially important in a game that encourages players to stick with the consequences of their actions even when they are unfavorable (instead of loading a copy of a previous save). For a bowling analogy, if stress complications are the gutters of DF, there could probably be more bumpers in the game, without fundamentally damaging your desired experience.

Why do you need my permission?
One such bumper is self-solving needs. Some needs should be self-solving if left alone, even if the dwarves do so grumbling and huffily. For example, religion. Pious dwarves without access to a temple might get fed up waiting, claim a workshop as their own (much like a dwarf with a strange mood) and then craft... a perfectly ordinary figurine of their god, from whatever materials are abundant. They they squirrel it away in their room, and use their room as a temple. So long as nothing destroys the shrine they set up, they pray there on their own, fulfilling their needs. This would open the door for a particularly happy thought down the road, should you create an official temple. Suddenly this adds a whole layer of depth to the world of the game, while not permanently punishing players for a mistake or oversight.

Other examples of this would be needs for martial training or crafting. If a dwarf wants to do something, they ought to seek that activity out, regardless of whether the relevant labor is enabled, by doing so in their downtime. Dwarves dance and sing without my permission, so why do I need to make them train if that's their biz? Dwarves whose jobs are fulfilling should be happier overall than most dwarves, but even if their jobs aren't fulfilling they should still be able to find that fulfillment elsewhere. There's also definitely room for mechanisms for players to override these needs (perhaps through the management and justice systems), which might prove productive in the short-term but dangerous to the mental health of the fortress if used extensively. The military already has that, but managers should have that power too.

Get Over It
Another powerful aid to the new player/sadist: adaptation. I know this is implemented for many negative thoughts, but to my knowledge it could be expanded upon further. People live surprisingly content lives even in the most squalid conditions. This is because in part they become used to most conditions, even if they are generally less happy as a result. Continuing our religion example, in a world where personal shrines are outlawed, routinely confiscated or stolen, or just not implemented, they might find other ways to cope. Maybe they pray where they are periodically throughout the day, slowing the progress of their work. Doing this secret praying might give them an unhappy thought at first (forced to resort to private worship) but eventually they should become used to these terms of living, so that a lack of prayer can't drive a dwarf to madness. Thanks to the thought overhaul, that in particular isn't usually a problem, it's worth mentioning all the same.

Specifically with the memory system of dwarves, there's something to be said for humanity's predilection towards happiness. I've had dwarves go sad from reflecting on too much rain*. One bad thought can rack up problems for years to come. People tend to remember happy things better, push away unhappy thoughts, and linger on the good times they have had more than the bad ones. Dwarves should dwell on happy thoughts at least as often as they dwell on unhappy ones, regardless of how unhappy their lives are. As long as they have some anchor in their lives they can reflect on, most people can make it through some pretty crazy traumas.

*Side note, if rain makes dwarves unhappy, why don't any of them appreciate the beauty of a sunny day? Why don't any dwarves love the rain, as some humans do? Sure, loving nature and the outdoors is probably atypical for a race that lives underground, but every race has its oddballs, and working outside has it's own merits that some people find quite fulfilling.

Overcoming Urist's Second Law of Ethodynamics

There's a much more fundamental problem frustrating your players than a lack of understanding of the mechanics of play or having to micromanage their dwarves. Unhappiness in DF feels like it mirrors the second law of thermodynamics; the happiness of a dwarf can only decrease, absolutely nothing can make it increase. While not technically true, it definitely feels that way. This, once again, is partially the result of tuning a game to perfect play. By the time you notice your dwarves are unhappy, (ie they are avoiding crucial boozemaking responsibilities in favor of flipping tables and punching the innocent jeweler square in the face), it's already too late. They need more visible emotions from the main screen (like when they have a strong emotional thought), with inspection giving us insight into the reason and nature of the particular thought. Humans are very expressive, but our dwarves are not.

So far, everything I've discussed has mostly been about helping players avoid getting their dwarves to a point where they start getting upset and causing trouble. A source of trauma may be unavoidable for a fortress, or for a given player's playstyle (especially if inexperienced). Giving them a stopgap on the long-path to recovery is absolutely essential. Yet as the game stands, there is nothing a player can do to immediately start turning a dwarf's life around, even if they start focusing all their efforts on making their life magical in every way. Fundamentally, a sad dwarf still stands perilously close to an outburst. I touched earlier on the notion of how to dwarves should tend to dwell on happy thoughts to escape the bad thoughts. When faced with routine trauma, they attempt to escape by distracting themselves in some way. They don't just withdraw, they indulge.

Coping Mechanisms
Dwarves need coping mechanisms, even if they aren't always healthy for them! This is a great way to give dwarves individuality, as each dwarf might turn to different coping mechanisms. More often than insanity, stress and trauma should give dwarves new needs, which may or may not be ones they already had. These needs are unusually strong, because they are just a transient solution to an unsolvable problem. Perhaps a dwarf might start drinking in excess, reading books (if they can), admiring furniture, admiring art, learning an instrument, learning a dance, crafting new things, something, ANYTHING to get their mind off of what's really troubling them (or what their assigned/typical/skilled labors are!). If the player is bold enough to try to intervene in the dwarf's self-destructive/consumptive/excessive behavior, then all sorts of FUN should ensue. Yet, if the dwarf is allowed to indulge freely, they must acquire an incredibly formidable resistance to sadness.

Mechanically, a coping mechanism shouldn't create a need that can't be fulfilled by what's available to the fortress. Instead, it should dramatically increase the demand for something, in such a way that provides new challenges for the player. Make sadness a setback that provides counterplay, a new obstacle to overcome. Don't make it a punishment. If a soldier copes by admiring furniture, sadness past their breaking point causes them to seek out new furniture they haven't appreciated yet/recently. When they run out of new furniture, then they start demonstrating the effects of the underlying trauma. Now the player has a clear way to keep the morose dwarf happy: make more furniture.

Final Thoughts

Threetoe if you read all that I'm thrilled, heck I'm happy if you just skimmed it. But hopefully I've both given you some insight into the frustrations of your players, as well as some ideas on how to fix them.
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Sorgklaan

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Re: *We need your help with game ending stress*
« Reply #24 on: October 29, 2019, 07:22:17 am »

"  This, once again, is partially the result of tuning a game to perfect play."

Not just perfect play, it's fundamentally broken. I have literally paved my bedrooms with gold and mass produced masterwork hemp clothing and lavish meals, with a gold paved dining room, with all the stress modifiers halved in the raws, and my fort was still slowly dying from stress. I don't see how anybody can have a fort that lasts more than a few years without very, VERY specific and rigid conditions and lack of contact with the outside world.
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PatrikLundell

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Re: *We need your help with game ending stress*
« Reply #25 on: October 29, 2019, 07:26:37 am »

I've never had a fortress fail due to stress (didn't play DF back in the days of constant tantrum spirals), as all of the fortresses played since 0.44.12 have been lost due raiding bugs (the first one due to me giving up when realizing dead civ raiding is broken [squads leave, but never move, arrive anywhere, or return], the others due to the raiding corruption crash). However, I've gotten a couple of decades out of some fortresses. Thus, I'm among the group that considers the stress system unbalanced rather than fundamentally broken. It took a little time to adjust to the shift from "everyone can be saved" to "you have to accept that some of them are lost cases".

It can be mentioned that I played with poisoner (a.k.a. staff) free taverns, which probably helped a little.

For issues with the stress system and ways to combat some of them, I'd recommend the 20 or so page thread discussing stress, as I think it contains all the known relevant issues, bugs and mitigations.

As mentioned by others, I think ThreeToe is taking the wrong approach by playing a close to optimal fortress through a few starting years (a 3 year fortress doesn't even have to produce any clothes yet, since there's a fair while before the first set of clothes rot off the bodies of the starting 7). A much better example would be one with normal resource restrictions (in particular regarding food and drink), playing slightly poorly (about as you would imagine a somewhat inexperienced player to play) for something like 30 years. What about a single biome fortress in a Normal or Good Evilness environment with the fortress as the closest neighbor of goblins, and the world generated with standard parameters? Up the difficulty a bit by having the biome as a rainy one, and no pop caps restricting migration until at least the goblin pop siege trigger is reached (80). Take your time to open caverns, resulting in the wood (required for beds at least) having to be cut (and hauled) on the (rainy) surface. Surface farming should be done on the surface (i.e. not under a roof), but it's reasonable to assume starting players will erect walls (with drawbridges) around the surface part of the fortress (pasture and farm plots), adding anti climbing measures only after having had the walls climbed.

Also note that the feedback you'll get in this thread will most likely be heavily skewed towards experienced players who have stuck with the game.

Broad level issues

Sieges: I use cage traps almost exclusively for defense, and have done so since soon after starting with 0.40.X. The main reasons for this are:
- The enormous task of hauling all the corpse bits off, as it can take the whole (small) fortress several seasons, and it takes a fair bit of time even with my limited amount (visitors slaughtered by invaders plus the campers that refuse to leave when the rest of the force fled after having too many of them caged). As mentioned above, multi hauling of at least the bazillion teeth parts would help a lot.
- The fatal impact of corpse hauling on far too many dorfs. As mentioned by others, victory ought to provide a buffer that protects [most] corpse haulers when cleaning up (that wouldn't protect those same corpse haulers from impact when hauling 10 years of accumulated troglo bits out of a recently opened cavern).
- Low priority to build a militia with low pop fortresses where dorf power is always urgently needed everywhere.

Frustration over the impossibility to do anything to solve the situation: Dorfs being rained on going down the drain, dorfs going bonkers because it's impossible to meet their needs to be with the family they hate forming (and are effectively incapable of forming without overseer help should they not oppose it in the first place), etc. Getting lost cases once in a rare while is OK, jumping through hoops to save occasional rare cases is OK, but in most cases the dorfs should sort their needs out themselves when provided with the means to do so (e.g. for residents and skilled craftsmen [neither of which haul] pick up trinkets without "stealing" from hauling jobs), seek out friends/family when socializing, etc.
In the same vein, it's extremely frustrating to see residents go nuts because they're in work quarantine for two years, severely restricting their need satisfaction options (and I've had several going into the early stages of insanity [stumbling around oblivious, etc.] well within a month of having their petitions accepted).
Denying dorfs of the means to satisfy their needs ought to make things harder (resulting in more lost cases), but it should be possible to do without e.g. a library if other needs are met reasonably well. Basically a slope where the poorer needs are met the worse the situation gets, possibly with a tipping points somewhere along the "intentionally treating them badly" scale. I wouldn't be opposed to a slider setting for the difficulty of the stress management, as indicated above, but it's extra work to get such a system working. A crucial thing is that providing something that was missing should improve the situation, rather than just prevent a continuation of a downward descent.

Inaccessibility of stress factors:
Currently you have to go to each individual dorf to see the status and factors involved. One of the few things you CAN affect to a rather small extent is purchase of preferred food items from caravans and what crops to grow (when the dorf report isn't lying, see bug reports), but collecting that info by manually going to each dorf and note it down on a paper (or in a spreadsheet) is purely a chore, as is the matching of that list against the paltry selection provided by caravans (I've used a DFHack script to try to achieve this, mostly resulting in "don't care what I eat as what I want isn't available" dorfs eating it). I don't know how to ease the situation in general, but my general feeling is that the overseer should mostly deal with the fortress as a whole, not micro manage individuals in it.
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UristMcPea

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Re: *We need your help with game ending stress*
« Reply #26 on: October 29, 2019, 07:46:55 am »

One interesting tool could be a "highlight preferred goods"-switch that can be turned on and off for individual dwarves (no, multiple or even all dwarves at a time). If any good matches a preference of a dwarf with that switched on, it should be highlighted/flashing/whatever. This would be most important in trading, but also just about everywhere else.
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Broms

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Re: *We need your help with game ending stress*
« Reply #27 on: October 29, 2019, 07:55:52 am »

I agree with PatrikLundell, well said. I'll attempt to summarize what I believe to be healthy for the difficulty and connected systems in the game as they are now.

It sounds like we all could benefit from a "Stress" screen on the 'z' menu next to "Stocks". Perhaps a row for each citizen or long term resident and columns for each category of preference or need.

A site wide buff against corpses following the breaking of a siege would help mitigate the clean up.

In terms of weather, would it be possible to tie dwarf's clothing coverage to their annoyance with rain or snow? Ie civilian shoes or socks and head coverage. I think it would even be fair to make rain/snow cause wear on shoes/hoods for example, but perhaps armor tagged items give no reprieve from weather and thus receive no weather related wear. This could deepen the relationship between the importance of the textile industry and your dwarves' happiness.

Dwarves should take it upon themselves to meet their needs more aggressively. They should acquire things they like with the purple text such as "acquire wanted item", whether that means they wear something on their person or store it in their room. This should also include forced socialization or a way to send letters to family off site, maybe giving the Messanger role more purpose? Even if it was just magic hand waving that meets the need after a "meeting" with the messenger. "Happy after dictating a letter to a loved one".  "Happy after receiving a message from a loved one".

I really think balancing the game on optimal play is wrong because this is a sandbox game. If anything we should have more solutions to problems than problems themselves, but giving the players choices that allow them to actively participate in this system that you believe is acting the way you want it to will allow us to enjoy it as well. It is very possible the system is working perfectly as designed, we as players just are not equipped in game with the tools or features to deal with it in an engaging manner.

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PatrikLundell

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Re: *We need your help with game ending stress*
« Reply #28 on: October 29, 2019, 07:58:39 am »

One interesting tool could be a "highlight preferred goods"-switch that can be turned on and off for individual dwarves (no, multiple or even all dwarves at a time). If any good matches a preference of a dwarf with that switched on, it should be highlighted/flashing/whatever. This would be most important in trading, but also just about everywhere else.
Probably wouldn't be too hard to implement as a DFHack script producing one or more lists (flashing would have the problem of only showing things within the current view window, and would be a mess for anything is quantum stockpiles, workshops, or the trade depots). The problem would then be to keep track of who wanted what and order their construction in the right rooms.
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