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[thompson]

My take after reading these comments is that the issue boils down to traumatic experiences sensitizing dwarves to stress, which leads them to more easily experience trauma, which further sensitizes them until one or two eventually explode, who then go on to traumatize others in the fort.

To put it another way, the stress system is designed as a positive feedback loop, where stress becomes progressively more difficult to manage until it becomes impossible. It should arguably work the other way, where dwarves become desensitized to particular traumas, but where unhappiness leads to reduced productivity or something. A small minority might crack after a significant trauma, but the numbers would have to be fairly small as a lon-lived fort should be able to survive dozens of sieges with most dwarves just"getting on" with the business of survival.

Conversely, a more prosperous fort that experiences little conflict should be more sensitive to violence induced trauma. This would be due to having few dwarves desensitized to violence, and all dwarves maintaining higher lifestyle expectations.

Perhaps some "expectation" mechanic is needed. If a dwarf is heading to a frontier in a haunted glacier they should expect to spend half their time hauling corpses. As the body count rises, new migrants will know by reputation what they're getting into, so negative experiences have a smaller impact on stress while positive experiences become better for them. If the fort ever overcomes these challenges expectations will rise, and dwarves may let their guard down a bit. You may even have a few dwarves quietly harbouring PTSD who quietly suffered in silence but put up with it because there was simply no alternative. Now, with the stress of constant zombie invasions out of the way they may have nothing left holding them together, just as returned soldiers often crack after returning home. The stress keeps them going, but without it they just can't cope. Conversely, others may enjoy a boost to motivation with their improved lot in life and really strive.

On the other hand, expectations rise for wealthy forts, who then become more difficult to please.

One key thing I think is to tone down the consequences of stress. Reduced productivity or lower quality crafts should be the main problems, maybe increased alcohol consumption and more time drowning their sorrows rather than working. Nothing fort crippling, just a 20-30% drop in total work achieved, with a 50% drop in quality at worst. On a small minority of cases you might get a suicide or someone going bezerk. Most people in the real world will just put up with whatever shit they have to deal with. You can research how people dealt with the world wars or even the holocaust to gain some more insight there.

[thompson]

I'll been thinking about this a little more. Presumably there is some periodic test that determines whether a stressed dwarf commits an assault or goes insane. If the game tracked how many times a dwarf has taken one of these "stress tests" it could factor that information into future calculations. For instance, if the probability a dwarf will go insane is P, and the number of times the dwarf has been tested for insanity without going insane is N, you could modify the probability of future stress tests to be P/(1+N)^2. If the dwarf is tested an infinite number of times the probability goes to zero and the series converges, with the probably of going insane from stress after an infinite number of trials being 2P. This allows the developers to bake appropriate long-term behaviour into the game, while allowing it to be dynamic and unpredictable.

As an aside, N doesn't need to be incremented by 1 each time. The more stressful the event the more N should increase. This way you don't get dwarves becoming invulnerable to stress after drinking without a mug a few dozen times. If the current stress level of a dwarf is S and the maximum possible level M, you could increase N by S/M each test. If you want integers, just change the equation to:

100P / (10 + N)^2

Where N is incremented by 10S/M each time a stress test is passed without the dwarf doing something antisocial. Note that the upper limit for the probability of insanity becomes 20P in this case. Changing the constant factors on the numerator and denominator allow precise control over long-term statistically averaged behaviour.

[therahedwig]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ah, a weird thing I just noticed in a fort I started up to test something. In the first week, none of my dwarves have any stress(0 according to dwarf therapist), except the miner, who wasn't doing anything but mine, they had 12K stress without having bad thoughts(only happy at doing a good job mining) or any sensitivity to stress. They do however have values that see perseverance as bold headed (-12) and craftmanship as not something not to particularly care about (-4).

So, either there's a bug where figures get randomly stressed, OR stuff like values really hit hard on stress, which might need a little bit of nerfing/better feedback in the thoughts text(as in, 'this dwarf is experiencing a lot of stress due to mining conflicting with value x').

EDIT: nvm, I was reading the stress levels wrong!

[GoblinCookie]

With a lot of things, mugs, being raining on or drinking without a well for instance the first few instances should simply be ignored.  Maybe it should add the really adjective whenever the emotion is actually causing stress.

[Bortness]

I have found atom smashing to be an excellent solution to stress.  In a world where multiple previous forts have either been retired or have gone down (in one spectacular case to a dragon), many migrant dwarves are re-migrating to new fortresses as I oversee them.  The current one is intended to be the capital of Dorf Island, and we will not tolerate dwarves who start fights over and over again.

Any dwarf who enters with a red status arrow is checked.  Any who are subsequently found to have personality traits making them susceptible to stress (almost 100% of cases, things like "doesn't handle stress well" or my favorite "is in a constant state of internal rage") are immediately sent to the garbage disposal via military conscription for atom-smashing.  It's clean, no bodies to worry about.  Engrave a slab, install it, and you're done.

It's been very, very effective thus far.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I have found atom smashing to be an excellent solution to stress.  In a world where multiple previous forts have either been retired or have gone down (in one spectacular case to a dragon), many migrant dwarves are re-migrating to new fortresses as I oversee them.  The current one is intended to be the capital of Dorf Island, and we will not tolerate dwarves who start fights over and over again.

Any dwarf who enters with a red status arrow is checked.  Any who are subsequently found to have personality traits making them susceptible to stress (almost 100% of cases, things like "doesn't handle stress well" or my favorite "is in a constant state of internal rage") are immediately sent to the garbage disposal via military conscription for atom-smashing.  It's clean, no bodies to worry about.  Engrave a slab, install it, and you're done.

It's been very, very effective thus far.

Expelling is just as efficient. And doesn't involve forcing players to kill their dwarves.
Gotta fix the "child not present" bug though.

[Schmaven]

I have found atom smashing to be an excellent solution to stress.  In a world where multiple previous forts have either been retired or have gone down (in one spectacular case to a dragon), many migrant dwarves are re-migrating to new fortresses as I oversee them.  The current one is intended to be the capital of Dorf Island, and we will not tolerate dwarves who start fights over and over again.

Any dwarf who enters with a red status arrow is checked.  Any who are subsequently found to have personality traits making them susceptible to stress (almost 100% of cases, things like "doesn't handle stress well" or my favorite "is in a constant state of internal rage") are immediately sent to the garbage disposal via military conscription for atom-smashing.  It's clean, no bodies to worry about.  Engrave a slab, install it, and you're done.

It's been very, very effective thus far.

Expelling is just as efficient. And doesn't involve forcing players to kill their dwarves.
Gotta fix the "child not present" bug though.

For some reason the dwarves I expel always come back.  Death seems to be the only liberation from their stress induced mischief.

[GoblinCookie]

For some reason the dwarves I expel always come back.  Death seems to be the only liberation from their stress induced mischief.

Or pressing the expel button again.   

[Shonai_Dweller]

I have found atom smashing to be an excellent solution to stress.  In a world where multiple previous forts have either been retired or have gone down (in one spectacular case to a dragon), many migrant dwarves are re-migrating to new fortresses as I oversee them.  The current one is intended to be the capital of Dorf Island, and we will not tolerate dwarves who start fights over and over again.

Any dwarf who enters with a red status arrow is checked.  Any who are subsequently found to have personality traits making them susceptible to stress (almost 100% of cases, things like "doesn't handle stress well" or my favorite "is in a constant state of internal rage") are immediately sent to the garbage disposal via military conscription for atom-smashing.  It's clean, no bodies to worry about.  Engrave a slab, install it, and you're done.

It's been very, very effective thus far.

Expelling is just as efficient. And doesn't involve forcing players to kill their dwarves.
Gotta fix the "child not present" bug though.

For some reason the dwarves I expel always come back.  Death seems to be the only liberation from their stress induced mischief.

Are you expelling them, or sending them off to one of your holdings (like the dark pits which are now handily economically linked to your site  )? Just wondering if having them roam the wilderness near your site makes them more likely to try to come back.

[Galap]

This is part of my post in the Save the Noobs thread, but it's also relevant here, so I'll put it here too with some additions:

I think that the balance of death to external vs internal forces is a little too skewed toward internal now: a lot of the stuff that can attack you has been nerfed and/or doesn't always appear. for example, I see new players often asking things like "am I ever going to get goblins attacking?" And I think the undead need a bit of a buff again. Additionally, I would make it harder to wall yourself off and prevent enemies from coming in. A dirt wall construction shouldn't be completely indestructible in my opinion, for example. It would be a bit much for things to be able to dig in at you, but I think there should be some circumstances where constructions can be unmade by attackers.

However, I think the whole stress thing is a little out of wack. Specifically, the fact that dwarves get stress from seeing the corpses of sentients, regardless of whether they are enemy or ally, is rather extreme in practice. I think it is right and proper for there to be significant negative thoughts from seeing the corpses of their fellow fortressmates, but the effect should be a LOT less for those who have to clean up a bunch of dead troglodytes, or goblins that tried to raid the fort.

Ultimately, It's Fun to lose because you got killed by an enemy attack,  and it's also Fun to mess up when playing with water pressure and flood yourself or wreck youself with some self-made disaster like that. Unfortunately, it's not really so fun to have the thing that does you in be things like stress from having to bury the goblins, or a loyalty cascade that is completely inexplicable, even in hindsight. Or additionally, the inevitability of FPS death.

Maybe there should be an option to disable stress, for those who don't want to play with it in the game. That's a bit of a cop-out for the problem, though, since I feel like there probably is a way to have it in the game that makes it more fun to play, but right now, it's kind of like the money that existed in times older than these; currently it really only serves to make things frustrating, since It's not really fun to lose to internal issues like that. At least it shouldn't be nearly as common as it is.

In general, the problem with stress is that it's mostly a positive feedback loop with not very much of a counter-force, and that it gets disproportionately harder to recover from once it's already happened.

[gchristopher]

I've found that almost all dwarves can have their stress managed, even if it means they go on permanent socializing vacations next to a waterfall surrounded by artifacts, plus occasional activities tailored to their needs. Also, make sure corpses are always contained in a self-managing (atom smashing or lava floodable) area so you don't have to deal with corpse sight. If that's the case, you really don't need a military, just make that a trap killing ground with your method of choice.

Of course, what I just described is an awfully boring fortress, so maybe one problem with stress is that the available solutions lead to uninteresting, tedious game solutions?

I think a bigger problem is that individual stress isn't frequently tied to a larger narrative that the player would care about. Reading Galap's "death to external vs internal forces" comment, I realized that there's no "concerned about the direction of the fortress" or "worried about dwindling metal supply" or "fearful of another bad harvest" or "dreading going outside where the goblins might be lying in ambush" or "worried about rumors of Zombie Giant Kea nearby" thoughts for dwarves.

Simply put, the dwarves don't seem to care about anything the player cares about, and vice versa. Since a lot of the fun of DF is the emergent story that the game tells, this disconnect makes the stress system less of a feature and more of a random bit of busywork to manage while you go about the parts of the game and story that are of more interest.

What if dwarves dreamed of conquest and grew restless if never sent on raids? Or a powerful fortress led to a rising wave of nationalism and dwarves demanding the collection of far-flung artifacts, by force if necessary? What if subgroups of dwarves with conflicting values were stressed, sometimes to the point of conflict, over their political polarization?

Connecting the stress system to the more collective goals of the fortress might make it more relevant and permit more interesting stress reactions, positive and negative?

All of the collective-oriented thoughts above are pretty common in real life.

[PatrikLundell]

Just having traps doesn't work for a number of reasons:
- You'll have corpse bits to haul, resulting in corpse hauling stress.
- At least I got campers after most sieges, which required the use of a cleanup squad.
- "Spies" (goblin civ members in performance troupes) report the location of the traps they've seen to their home civ. It looks like this will be more common in the Villains release, added to active sabotage from the inside.
You can block off the surface completely, of course, which results in a fairly boring fortress.

I think gchristopher has a point when it comes to stress thoughts disconnected from player interests, but I don't see the added focii suggested being reasonable targets for the Premium release: it seems like something more aligned with Starting Scenarios.

[gchristopher]

Just having traps doesn't work for a number of reasons

Sorry, to clarify, I didn't mean trap, the boring little one tile stock construction. I meant Trap, the fun, large, overly complicated things-moving-flying-and-flowing design of your choice.

And I remember post-siege campers being an issue, but sieges are so rare now, or require so much extra effort to trigger, that they aren't really part of my expectation when I pick DF back up to play anymore.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Just having traps doesn't work for a number of reasons

Sorry, to clarify, I didn't mean trap, the boring little one tile stock construction. I meant Trap, the fun, large, overly complicated things-moving-flying-and-flowing design of your choice.

And I remember post-siege campers being an issue, but sieges are so rare now, or require so much extra effort to trigger, that they aren't really part of my expectation when I pick DF back up to play anymore.

Sieges are rare now? Hmm. Best check your settings. Missing sieges haven't been a thing since 40.24.

I mean, you might easily miss the option to reduce the population siege triggers or turn on the wealth triggers, but, hey, that's why there's a user friendliness update coming.

[anewaname]

This is not a response to anything posted recently in this thread, although others might have already expressed this...

It seems strange that a dwarf that has been pushed past the brink will drag others with them, while none of the other dwarfs will attempt actively to pull the dwarf back from the brink.