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[Red Diamond]

This may be a bit of an unpopular idea, what about bringing back on break and parties for stressed dwarves that end up with no job for a period of time.

Parties for social dwarves with antisocial dwarves simply getting a better bonus over being able to go on break and admire furniture. Something to compensate for not being likely to go to a party, or if they do end up going a chance to enjoy it with a bigger bonus and a positive personality change


Could also have it so a civ alert or high priority job can break someone out of the party coupled with a minor negative thought (frustrated at leaving party early) or a positive one for antisocial ones (relieved to be able to get away from a party)

That is sort of how it works, everyone starts 'socialising' if they have no job.  In my fortresses I deliberately create 'holidays' to facilitate socializing.

I find the stress level indicator of DFHack extremely useful it makes you anticipate mental troubles long time ahead. I have a three year old fort and while my militia commander seemed to be doing well the first years, he recently became extremely stressed and started throwing tantrums, despite eating and sleeping greatly, and putting on great clothing. I called him the fortress's crybaby until I read his thoughts more carefully: he has changed attitude towards war: He personally believes that the idea of war is utterly repellent and would have peace at all costs (due to a new romance in 125) ... He dreams of creating a great work of art..

I let him focus on crafting stuff and picked another militia commander. His stress level has been dropping (raw DFHack value raising) significantly ever since.

The problem is they place a huge burden on the player to force them to do things they should be able to do on their own. 

[Manveru Taurënér]

I find the stress level indicator of DFHack extremely useful it makes you anticipate mental troubles long time ahead. I have a three year old fort and while my militia commander seemed to be doing well the first years, he recently became extremely stressed and started throwing tantrums, despite eating and sleeping greatly, and putting on great clothing. I called him the fortress's crybaby until I read his thoughts more carefully: he has changed attitude towards war: He personally believes that the idea of war is utterly repellent and would have peace at all costs (due to a new romance in 125) ... He dreams of creating a great work of art..

I let him focus on crafting stuff and picked another militia commander. His stress level has been dropping (raw DFHack value raising) significantly ever since.

The problem is they place a huge burden on the player to force them to do things they should be able to do on their own.

Not sure I'm reading it right, but having the militia commander just change his profession on his own without the player having input or knowing about it would be even worse imo. What's needed is for the game to tell the player that the problem exists and highlight it. Some sort of complaints tab or important issues section in the UI might work, or maybe having a pop-up when a dwarf yells at the mayor/expedition leader telling you what they're upset about.

[Nagidal]

I have to take my statement back. Relieving him of his post as a militia commander did not help in the long term. He is regularly slipping into depression, complaining about the lack of decent meals and being away from family, unable to acquire, always reliving experiencing the trauma she had when the military killed the invading minotaur in second year of the fortress. He hasn't recovered in two years of pampering.

A lost case. I wish there were a possibility of dwarves just to emigrate. You're not happy in my fortress? You're free to go try find a better place, anytime!

[Bumber]

A lost case. I wish there were a possibility of dwarves just to emigrate. You're not happy in my fortress? You're free to go try find a better place, anytime!

You can manually expel them to a nearby town.

[knutor]

the squad captains, have to have a strong Leadership, Strong Tactic(if they rampage), strong Ambush(if they raid), Strong Teach(if they train), and some other criteria, like Disease Resistance, Discipline, et el.

but.. we lose these highly pampeted psychos to take a nearbye fort. That is a serious, doh, in game design. Ive all but stopped sending the squads out, for anthing, besides explore and raids to steal.

Like, here is a flaw.. I must send my Squad of 10,  about 1/10 of my population, 18d one way, to explore a cave. Upon returning, no idea, how the 3 food in their backpack lasted, or water in skin, well 36 travel days, whelp, they return, with NOTHING! That unfruitfulness right there is a bit rage quit worthy, imo.

[muldrake]

A lost case. I wish there were a possibility of dwarves just to emigrate. You're not happy in my fortress? You're free to go try find a better place, anytime!

You can manually expel them to a nearby town.

That's super bugged though, and for absolutely no good reason (it being a bug) you can't expel anyone who has family that isn't in the fort, and if they do have family in the fort, the family leaves with them and on top of that, other relations who don't leave get really upset by it.

[Shonai_Dweller]

A lost case. I wish there were a possibility of dwarves just to emigrate. You're not happy in my fortress? You're free to go try find a better place, anytime!

You can manually expel them to a nearby town.

That's super bugged though, and for absolutely no good reason (it being a bug) you can't expel anyone who has family that isn't in the fort, and if they do have family in the fort, the family leaves with them and on top of that, other relations who don't leave get really upset by it.

Family leaving with them is a working-as-intended feature. As is relations getting upset.

Child not present bug is a pain though, yes.

Some self-driven fortress leaving would really help, I agree. I mean, wall them in if you're the kind of player who can't stand to have their production flow broken due to a single dwarf going to visit their family, but it should be a thing.

You can see how daft the whole "no leaving the fortress" thing is when you breach the circus. Dorfs with plenty of time to get away mill about in panic on the surface blocked by an evil invisible wall that strangely doesn't effect any other site in the world.

[George_Chickens]

I wish dwarfs could petition for stress leave. I have my Urists on military duty or making crafts repeatedly and  I can't always micromanage their needs when the fort starts getting 60+ inhabitants. If they could formally complain that their needs are not being met and actively seek out to meet their needs instead of needing to be manually placed in a position to do so, it would be so much easier.

I had a dwarf become haggard because of a lack of temple visits for his multiple gods. He had no job for months and had all the opportunity to go, but just never went to the temple. Practicing a craft can be like this, too, as I have had dwarfs desperate to craft things who just never do it, even while being locked in a room with a mason shop and the labor turned on.

As far as I can see this all stacks with lingering emotions on things that are unavoidable for the player, like missing family and old friends, and fixating on things for years that can't be avoided without serious micromanagement from the player, like being stuck in an argument or smelling rotten food once.

[Chief10]

This has all been said, but just chiming in: I find stress related to seeing dead enemies a bit not-fun. The main reason being that it disincentivizes combat.

[Nagidal]

Here is an insight into the brain of a super unhappy tantruming dwarf. It just does not compute, pretty much all good thoughts, and yet, Limul Besmarlinem, Tavern Keeper is throwing a tantrum! Stress level 34018 (negative thoughts highlighted). I guess this crybaby just wants to throw tantrums.

She has become haggard and drawn due to the tremendous stresses placed on her and is throwing a tantrum.
She feels euphoric due to inebriation.
Within the last season, she felt lonely after being away from family for too long.
She felt lonely after being away from friends for too long.
She felt self-pity after a lack of abstract thinking for too long.
She felt satisfied while yelling at a priest. She felt satisfied while crying on a priest.
She felt wonder remembering communing with Istrath.
She was content after eating a pretty decent meal.
She felt satisfied at work.
She was delighted remembering putting on a truly splendid item.
She felt satisfied at work.
She felt satisfied after crying on a priest.
She felt satisfied after teaching dodging.
She was interested after learning about striking.
She felt euphoric die to inebriation.
She was uneasy dwelling upon seeing a goblin's dead body.
She didn't feel anything after seeing a giant wolverine's dead body.
She was blissful after sleeping in a fantastic bedroom.
She felt satisfied remembering the acceptance of a petition for a temple for The Order of Silver.
She felt satisfied upon improving discipline.
She didn't feel anything after seeing a wolverine's dead body.
She felt satisfied upon improving observation.
She was interested after watching a performance.
She was delighted after putting on an exceptional item.
She felt pleasure after a satisfying acquisition.
She felt pleasure remembering a sparring session.

[hanni79]

Just this week I had to expel 5 dwarves, because they were inevitably going to tantrum ( two did - and kicked a lots of fellow dwarves in rather unpleasant places  ). And I'm playing without invasions ...

What I find most frustrating is the lack of information what is actually stressing these dwarves and how to mitigate the stress factors.

There also seems to be some things going on like dwarves having too many gods to pray to, one of my dwarves was excessively stressed because he was unable to pray to his gods, although he had every single task disabled and did basically nothing else besides praying ...

What might help a lot could be a simple holiday schedule, similar to the military schedule.
Simply give us the ability to schedule in which months a dwarf has to nothing  ( = disable all jobs, maybe even hauling jobs etc. ) but to do what he wants and/or needs.
This could also mean, he could accept jobs he simply wants to do, like accepting jobs to satisfy his crafting needs.

Also, an overhaul of food preferences and the dwarves capabilities to choose what they eat would most likely be very welcome. Most of my dwarves complain about a lack of decent meals, although 1/3 of all meals is mastercrafted and they simply choose not to eat what they like in the first place, even if what they liked were availlable.

Another thing that might be helpful, sort the thoughts of dwarves by priorities.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Just this week I had to expel 5 dwarves, because they were inevitably going to tantrum ( two did - and kicked a lots of fellow dwarves in rather unpleasant places  ). And I'm playing without invasions ...

What I find most frustrating is the lack of information what is actually stressing these dwarves and how to mitigate the stress factors.

There also seems to be some things going on like dwarves having too many gods to pray to, one of my dwarves was excessively stressed because he was unable to pray to his gods, although he had every single task disabled and did basically nothing else besides praying ...

What might help a lot could be a simple holiday schedule, similar to the military schedule.
Simply give us the ability to schedule in which months a dwarf has to nothing  ( = disable all jobs, maybe even hauling jobs etc. ) but to do what he wants and/or needs.
This could also mean, he could accept jobs he simply wants to do, like accepting jobs to satisfy his crafting needs.

Also, an overhaul of food preferences and the dwarves capabilities to choose what they eat would most likely be very welcome. Most of my dwarves complain about a lack of decent meals, although 1/3 of all meals is mastercrafted and they simply choose not to eat what they like in the first place, even if what they liked were availlable.

Another thing that might be helpful, sort the thoughts of dwarves by priorities.

Again, none of that is necessary to sort out the too many gods bug. Just write code which allows dwarves with tons of gods to get through them all without going insane or disallow worship of tons of gods. It's a bug, it doesn't need workarounds, just fixing.

But a fortress-wide automatic schedule might be useful. I switch off everything manually once or twice a year anyhow, so an automatic system would help save me couple of minutes every year.

Could make it far too complex, which would be lots of fun, with the ability to set all the levers, workshops, zones and stockpiles on different timers to switch on and off at certain times of year.

[PatrikLundell]

@hanni79: As far as I know, dwarves are actually fairly good at eating things that are on their preferred list. HOWEVER, there are a number of bugs and a lingering misdirection in DF.
- It used to be that the meal quality was important. Now, however, the quality has an effect only if the meal contains a favorite ingredient (misdirection).
- DF lies about what favorite ingredients are for animal products, saying Cheetah, when the actual ingredient required is Giant Cheetah Eye (the description does not distinguish between giant or regular (or, in fact, animal people when it comes to milk), and it does not point out the detailed item. Exactly the desired thing is required.
- DF generates preferences that are physically impossible, like body parts of vermin and body parts that can never be acquired by butchering an animal because the animal isn't large enough you yield that part.
- DF generates preferences without regard for whether it has actually provided that creature in any biome in the world.
- A lot of plants are bugged so they can't be farmed sustainably because you can't get seeds from them (seeds can occasionally be gotten from caravans, as can impossible body parts).
I've probably missed to mention half of the issues, but the bug tracker has all that's known.

Edit: Something completely different:
The dwarf need satisfaction decay rate is way too quick, in my view. Trying to deal with trouble dwarves, I give them time off, see that they got a need to craft, arrange for the crafting of an item: Happy, but only for a month or so before it's down to brown again, which leads to constant micro management of your grumpy buggers. Add to that that to get anything out of military training, they'll have to be at it long enough to learn something, which seems to frequently be a month, and not getting anything out of that time isn't uncommon either.

Another problem with the rapid decay rate is that you can't really plan any R&R activities so their friends (if they've managed to get any) might be off at the same time as a mitigation strategy. I've been trying to keep a yearly schedule with spring for agriculture, summer for fruit harvesting, autumn for catching up on jobs fallen behind (mostly hauling), and winter off for R&R. While the dorfs are better at recognizing each other in this release (all of them have acquaintances to several others after 4 years), the friend making is decidedly poor still.

They can also go from fine (less than 1000 stress) to 24000 stress in less than a month if caught in (harmless) freakish weather repeatedly while felling trees (despite liking being outdoors). The only indication is the red arrow you might see if you happen to look at that dorf.

[scriver]

So I've been playing this a bunch since the release and for what I can see it comes down to one major thing.

Dwarves don't do anything on their own. They don't have any hobbies. They have needs to have fun in whatever ways, but they aren't able to seek activities out of their own volition. It has to be you who micromanage them and make them part of production or put them in the military or whatever.

So yeah, I think dwarves should have hobbies. Martially inclined dwarves should train on their own (or seek out other dwarves with the same interests and wrestle or box or whatever). Dwarves who want to be creative or craft things should craft things on their own. Dwarves who want to spend time with their friends and family should have a "spend time with friends/family" action that brings them together. Or "make friends" actions where they go to the tavern and have increased relationship gain or something.

[Shonai_Dweller]

So I've been playing this a bunch since the release and for what I can see it comes down to one major thing.

Dwarves don't do anything on their own. They don't have any hobbies. They have needs to have fun in whatever ways, but they aren't able to seek activities out of their own volition. It has to be you who micromanage them and make them part of production or put them in the military or whatever.

So yeah, I think dwarves should have hobbies. Martially inclined dwarves should train on their own (or seek out other dwarves with the same interests and wrestle or box or whatever). Dwarves who want to be creative or craft things should craft things on their own. Dwarves who want to spend time with their friends and family should have a "spend time with friends/family" action that brings them together. Or "make friends" actions where they go to the tavern and have increased relationship gain or something.

Dwarves without jobs do all these things except joining the military. They socialize, make friends, enjoy art and get crafting needs fulfilled in the guildhalls. The micromanagement is giving them the time to do so (fortress wide holidays being the least "micro" way) and working out martial needs, which, yes, should be addressed as that's pretty fiddly.

Dwarves suffering from the "too many gods" bug don't get time to do this stuff because they're too busy praying, and dwarves who are already stressed spend too much time shouting at the person in charge and tantruming. Sort that out and we're almost there. Plus fix food needs and maybe add an indicator to warn if dwarves have "impossible" needs (needs to see family, currently residing in the dungeons of a far off Dark Pits, etc). Not that most impossible needs matter too much if they have plenty of others.

Although missing family for too long causes stress thoughts too. But, hey, most people who know their children are out there being abused by goblins to the point where they'll have to kill them next time they meet are likely to be a little stressed.