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[Bumber]

Far too many people are conflating needs with stress. Needs are a separate system, primarily resulting in distraction, not stress. Yes, difficult and impossible needs are annoying; yes, unmet needs add a handful of minor bad thoughts; but needs are quite unlikely to be a source of "game ending stress".

IIRC, there's supposed to be a mechanic where stress moves towards 0 the longer you go without a negative thought. The minor bad thoughts could be preventing stressed dwarves from cooling off.

[Swordtoguts]

Far too many people are conflating needs with stress. Needs are a separate system, primarily resulting in distraction, not stress. Yes, difficult and impossible needs are annoying; yes, unmet needs add a handful of minor bad thoughts; but needs are quite unlikely to be a source of "game ending stress".

To illustrate that point, I modded dwarves with [NO_EAT][NO_DRINK][NO_SLEEP], disabled weather, invaders, and immigration, and removed the active season (and clothing) tokens from the mountain entity. I then embarked with sets of leather armor, assigned uniforms, isolated each dwarf in a one tile area, and let the game run for 10 years. Despite *actively not meeting* all of their needs, not a single dwarf complained about stress, threw a tantrum, or went insane. This is a worst case scenario; even a dabbling overseer can be expected to satisfy some of their dwarves' needs by, say, brewing alcohol and assigning work, so "real game" stress from neglected needs would accumulate even slower than in this test. Additionally, the moderate stress from unmet needs could presumably be offset by positive thoughts the dwarves experienced. If you want to see some heavily-distracted-but-sane dwarves, you can download my test embark or recreate the setup from the description above.

Unmet needs thoughts get stronger when the general bad thoughts change their personality to be more stress vulnerable. Standing in a bubble not needing to do anything will probably save them some of the most common stresses (Which would probably halt the changes into personality) before the needs get so bad that they dwell on them, when they become strong enough that they manifest into bad thoughts that can effect their personality. I've had dwarfs that I overload with good thoughts while trying to save them but the solo thoughts from not praying to their 2nd god or lack of their favorite food get so strong its the only thing keeping him at the stressful threshold even when trying to baby him.

In a long running fort people are not conflating the needs system for stress they are very closely tied, especially with the new reflection system which I notice tends to gear towards the negative changes rather than the positives.

[Putnam]

Multiple lovers fundamentally mean nothing whilst the ability of dwarfs to even make friends is basically broken.  (Maybe a curiosity or two from arriving immigrants.)  Sorry but new features are pointless when the base that they need to work is itself pragmatically non-functional (barring exploits).  To me it just shows a lack of awareness regarding the state of the game on Toady's part.

You think that it's completely impossible to fix things during a rework? It tends to be easier, since such things tend to involve tearing out the existing system anyway.

[Erei]

I made an account so I could answer. I'm new-ish to DF (I know about it for years, but started to play a few months ago). I find some part of the stress frustrating, either because it's rather ridiculous (Urist is depressed on account of thinking about that time he was rained upon, 10years ago. Urist is now berserk), or because the dwarf are just dumb (Urist is mad because he is away from family. Urist is also a new migrant who decided to come without his family). But that's not the topic if I understand correctly, so I'll point the biggest issue I had concerning morale.

My issue is related to fort defense. I had a wonderful place, with mist generators, temple and all. It conern my military, who had had a barrack with statues, a personal mist generator and so on. Living like kings, really, it was engraved and all. Soldiers where in full steel gear, superior and above, trained for years, and had a few fights with nothing bad to record. Moral was mostly higher than average.
Siege comes. Lots of goblin (a lot). I send my company of dwarven space marines, veteran of several fights, to meet them. And here come the issue.
One of my soldier suddenly (and by suddenly I mean instantly) goes from "I like my life" to depressed. Apparently, my dwarves killed a bunch of gob in a row, and each death inflicted some morale damage to this character. The log had a "death is around us..." about 10times in a row. Note that I pick my military to avoid all the negative traits like "hate war" and stuff. So he wasn't especially prone to morale shock. Also, it was his 3rd or 4th siege, it wasn't the first body he saw.
Fight ended, and my dwarf, now tantruming, went to the tavern (next to the barrack), grabbed a poor peasant and reverted the relative position of his skull and brain. Traumatizing a lot of dwarves forever (tavern was packed).

It was extremely frustrating. That guy was not only highly experienced, but it was not his first fight. And he proceeded to traumatize half the fort.
I want to add that was not a singular case. Fort defence is highly traumatic, to the point I entirely rely on traps nowadays. Between going outside in the sun, under the rain, seeing bodies and whatnot, warrior goes from "I'm fine" to "I want to die" in a single siege. After the incident I mentioned, the next siege had another dwarf lose his mind the same way, and the next. Ironically, I didn't have any dwarf lost in several sieges from fighting, but I lost an average of 1dwarf per siege through mental breakdown and personality shift. Also, I even had my champion lose his mind at some point. A guy who was with the fortress for a long time, legendary in everything, killed a metric ton of enemies, and even had a nickname. He was happy and all, but in a singular fight, his mind broke.

I abandoned the fortress, and created a new one in the same world/same civ. One of those traumatized warrior came in a migrant wave. She had her personality shifted to prone to depression or something, and was a wreck in a permanent state of tantruming. No matter how well she was, a few bad event would throw her from average to depression. Not only I had to deal with that sh** in my previous fortress, but they came to haunt me in the new one. Dwarven stubbornness is real.

[PatrikLundell]

Multiple lovers fundamentally mean nothing whilst the ability of dwarfs to even make friends is basically broken.  (Maybe a curiosity or two from arriving immigrants.)  Sorry but new features are pointless when the base that they need to work is itself pragmatically non-functional (barring exploits).  To me it just shows a lack of awareness regarding the state of the game on Toady's part.

You think that it's completely impossible to fix things during a rework? It tends to be easier, since such things tend to involve tearing out the existing system anyway.

The base as it stands is broken, and adding another story on top of that has no useful effect (it might add some flavor to some stories, at best). Lover relationships, should they form through a miracle, do not seem to have any useful effect in needs fulfillment terms (Lovers count as friends. When lovers marry the Family need gets fulfilled and the formerly fulfilled Friend need gets booted out).
Thus, feelotraveller is correct in the that statement. However, IF the relationships making logic is fixed (and the ThreeToe issue correction threads seem to indicate he and Toady are aware of some of the problems and are seeking ways to address them. However, I agree it's worrying to see both of them indicating unawareness about fundamental issues [building new features on top of broken ones and thinking a 3 year fortress (both of them) would provide any reasonable indication of how DF behaves long term]).

The marriage age change was made about a year ago and applies to fortress mode primarily, but no DF version has been released since, so those changes won't become available until the Villains release is done. Since adventurers are completely blank in sexuality, marriage of adventurers remain a non issue for the time being.

I find Loci's experimental results very worrying. If unmet needs by themselves don't generate stress, but experience shows meeting needs in stressed fortresses alleviates stress a little (at least that's my experience), that, to me, implies unmet needs instead act as negative stress amplifiers, which is a lot worse than if they're stressors in themselves.

[feelotraveller]

You think that it's completely impossible to fix things during a rework? It tends to be easier, since such things tend to involve tearing out the existing system anyway.

Impossible no, and easier perhaps (depending on whether the tearing out/overhaul is of the same mechanisms but I'm not sure that it is here - since it is the not the theoretical possibility of making friends in fortress mode that is at question but the actuality of it happening of its own accord).

But I see no sign that any such work has been done, nor do I know of any comment made along the lines of 'fixed dwarfs so that they now make friends in fortress mode'.

Even before the introduction of the needs system dwarfs had great difficulty in making friends.  Basically only the starting 7 and the odd dwarf in the first immigration wave or two ever stood much of a chance.  In all my fortresses in 44.xx versions I have yet to see a single dwarf make a friend (the starting 7 usually arrive with established friendships between a number/most of them).  In the closest (but not that close) calls I've had with dwarfs making friends in 44 the potential friend has always been the outpost liaison.  So yep, it's broken, been made worse, commented on both before and after the worsening, fat zero has resulted thus far, and it's literally been years.

(And yes you can 'force' the issue with honeymoon suites and so forth, but I regard that as an exploit - glad for people who enjoy doing so but there is no way that should be a necessity for every fort.)

I find Loci's experimental results very worrying. If unmet needs by themselves don't generate stress, but experience shows meeting needs in stressed fortresses alleviates stress a little (at least that's my experience), that, to me, implies unmet needs instead act as negative stress amplifiers, which is a lot worse than if they're stressors in themselves.

I don't think that is quite what Loci was saying.  I understood the experiment was purporting to show that unmet needs by themselves do not produce 'sufficient' stress to cause dwarfs to breakdown, i.e., that unmet needs only contribute a minor (perhaps even trivial) amount to the stressed-out/game-ending dwarf problem.  So we should be focusing on other elements - viz, corpses, weather, seeing death, and vengeful (being the short list that springs to mind though there are probably others).

[Nameless Archon]

Far too many people are conflating needs with stress. Needs are a separate system, primarily resulting in distraction, not stress. Yes, difficult and impossible needs are annoying; yes, unmet needs add a handful of minor bad thoughts; but needs are quite unlikely to be a source of "game ending stress".

Okay - I'll bite. This is interesting. It implies that there's a source of stress that either we're not seeing, or that isn't being reported, and that what we're seeing reported is possibly not even what's causing the stress we do see.

[Fleeting Frames]

Here's Fleshbits example with a save of fortress falling due repeated 0-casualty invasions resulting in progressively worse stress.

[Loci]

Far too many people are conflating needs with stress. Needs are a separate system, primarily resulting in distraction, not stress. Yes, difficult and impossible needs are annoying; yes, unmet needs add a handful of minor bad thoughts; but needs are quite unlikely to be a source of "game ending stress".

Okay - I'll bite. This is interesting. It implies that there's a source of stress that either we're not seeing, or that isn't being reported, and that what we're seeing reported is possibly not even what's causing the stress we do see.

Stress is a running total; accumulated stress is not removed when a bad thought "drops off" the thoughts and preferences screen. A dwarf that goes insane in year 10 could still be riding a wave of stress from a rainstorm back in year 5. That dwarf might even go insane with no recent bad thoughts at all, particularly if a recent personality change reduced the ability to handle preexisting stress.

Unmet needs thoughts get stronger when the general bad thoughts change their personality to be more stress vulnerable.

Sure. And when a boat with a giant hole in the side sinks, do you blame the water? If a personality change causes your dwarf to go insane from the weakest of bad thoughts then the personality change is to blame, not the minor bad thought. (I pointed out that personality changes were problematic back on page 1.)

Anyway, my test dwarves are now up to 20 years without even complaining about stress from their chronically-unmet needs.

[Atarlost]

I would venture that stress is perhaps something it is not advantageous to simulate until other systems are more developed.  Most people even when subjected to extreme stresses like being in the French Army between 1914 and 1918 or having half of everyone they know die of the black death or living in an economically depressed despotic hellhole like North Korea don't break the way dwarfs do.  Having dwarfs distracted by religious concerns and not working as effectively is something that could reasonably apply to enough dwarfs to be worth simulating, but catatonia and berserk rages are so rare historically that it's hardly worth it.  0.195% for Japan is a serious public health concern, but it also translates to about two suicides every five generations in a 200 pop fort and many people consider that past the framerate death line. 

The effect of stress on health does apply to everyone, but only a fraction of a percent of the most vulnerable dwarfs should be eligible for the effects that are the whole point of the stress system until the health system starts covering more than just injuries and forgotten beast extract. 

[scourge728]

until the health system starts covering more than just injuries and forgotten beast extract. 

it barely even covers those

[Vito]

I definitely agree with earlier points that stress is too opaque and too dependent on factors outside of the player's control. I think the first step to fixing this would be giving players tools to manage the information overload, with in-game menus for monitoring stress and preferences. Build Dwarf Therapist's functionality into the game. Give the dwarves a suggestion box so they can make requests.

If I may request one quick little kludge, though? If we're going to keep rain as a random source of stress, then how about adding meteor showers, or "bearded stars", as a random source of stress relief for dwarves while they are outdoors. And if you decide to expand upon dwarven astronomy later, how about giving dwarven astronomers the ability to make weather forecasts? That way, at least we know when it's going to rain so we can prepare. I think that a lot of the problems with stress could be alleviated if players at least had more information available to mitigate it.

[PatrikLundell]

@Vito: I don't think the purpose of these "please help us" threads is to get suggestions for nifty features far into the future (that's what the Suggestions sub forum is for), but rather to help with emergency relief measures that makes DF less unsuitable for a commercial environment (i.e. the Premium release).

Toady has stated he doesn't want to see spreadsheets in DF, but doesn't shy away from introducing things that are best presented in such formats. I certainly would prefer spreadsheet like views to features being dumbed down, but I'm fairly happy with DT as an outside tool, and it may well be that a division of labor between Toady/ThreeToe and semiofficial utilities is the best for the game's development, but may not be that good for a commercial environment.

Weather forecasts would be rather useless for fortress mode given the fortress time scale. It takes a dorf days to walk to the edge to pick up a sock from a visitor who died of old age on entry, and the same time to return. In a rainy embark this means the dorfs can be subjected to several showers on a single trip.

[V12US]

Instead of expecting the player to micromanage every single dwarf to fulfill their needs, the player should be expected to provide the means for dwarves to fulfill these needs themselves.

There's no reason a dwarf shouldn't be able to pick up a new piece of clothing or a shiny bauble from a stockpile at their own volition.  There's no reason a dwarf shouldn't be able to find their preferred food or drink in a stockpile. There's no a reason a lonely dwarf shouldn't be able to go to the tavern and socialize. A lot of these things seem like common sense, and the fact that it's not what is happening is what's throwing people off. Right now dwarves are simply too stupid to live. Like koalas starving to death because their smooth brains fail to recognize leaves on the ground as food because they're not attached to a tree.

[PatrikLundell]

Instead of expecting the player to micromanage every single dwarf to fulfill their needs, the player should be expected to provide the means for dwarves to fulfill these needs themselves.

There's no reason a dwarf shouldn't be able to pick up a new piece of clothing or a shiny bauble from a stockpile at their own volition.  There's no reason a dwarf shouldn't be able to find their preferred food or drink in a stockpile. There's no a reason a lonely dwarf shouldn't be able to go to the tavern and socialize. A lot of these things seem like common sense, and the fact that it's not what is happening is what's throwing people off. Right now dwarves are simply too stupid to live. Like koalas starving to death because their smooth brains fail to recognize leaves on the ground as food because they're not attached to a tree.

Well:
- Dorfs have no problems with picking up clothes from stockpiles. That part works as it should (other clothing issues can be discussed elsewhere). However, it's true trinket getting is, inexplicably, tied to hauling.
- Dorfs have no problem getting favored foods/drink in stockpiles. The issues are that the stockpiles never contains favored food for the majority of the population (the situation can be improved with booze cooking and booze variety embark tweaking). UI bugs lead to the conclusion they won't get what they like, but the UI is lying: much of the details are not shown in the case of animal products at least. The impossibility to acquire the food wanted by the majority of the dorfs is the problem ("impossible" as in "doesn't actually exist in the world and never has" all the way to "no neighbor capable of sending caravans is able to provide it", to "the elves may, once every 10 years, happen to bring a suitable exotic animal with them", and a lot of cases in between these).
- Dorfs have no problems with the going to tavern part for socializing: the problem lies within the tavern where they don't seek out others.