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[PatrikLundell]

DF will have to decide whether "the save everyone" play style is intended to be viable. I don't think that's the intention. I've played that way for years, but the new stress system has shown that it's not always possible, and I don't think it will be after stress balancing either. Note that "expel to site" is a lot more humane than atom smashing, though (at least if the site isn't run by goblins).

Pilgrimage: I don't like that at all, because it's far too gamey. Dorfs leaving the fortress on their own volition would be far better, and if they get "revelations" out of that I certainly wouldn't be unhappy with that. Dorfs applying for a leave (from which they intend to return) and dwarves demanding to be released from service would be much better ways of dealing with unhappiness, although expelling should still be an option.

Sanatorium: Don't like that either, because it's just weird (sane psychologists? magical tranquility waves?). Making it extremely expensive also means only the fortresses that don't need them will be able to make them.
A far better coding solution would be for dorfs to get more agency so they petition to change jobs and get allowed to pass up corpse and refuse hauling jobs without forcing the player to engage in job (de)assignment micro management hell.
- Hates the scary outdoors and rain? Request permission to skip those jobs.
- Want to do research? Request to be allowed to do so.
- Want to change the job career? Request to change it to a suitable (listed) range of professions.
- Want to do some hobby crafting? Use the hobby workshops using hobby approved materials (could be similar to the stone selection screen, with reasonable defaults [you don't want the one shell you've gotten out of a FB to be used up only to have a dorf go bonkers on a strange mood]). This shouldn't require any permission.
- Want to engage in martial training? Use some free time to do so at a barracks with permission for recreational training.
- Want to engage in maritial (or just love making) training? Target socializing at likely partners.
- Want to spend time with friends? Seek out friends when socializing, or likely targets for friendship to get friends.

It would also help to weed out the most stupid RNG trait combinations (pining for starting a family while being asexual, feel disgusted by the notion of marriage, and never having felt a connection to any other being in their whole life, or the ones that want to fight and feel excitement and run into depression because of that, only to get immediate PTSD with lethally frequent flashbacks for the rest of their short lives ones given the chance to fulfill that need).

[Salmeuk]

DF will have to decide whether "the save everyone" play style is intended to be viable. I don't think that's the intention. I've played that way for years, but the new stress system has shown that it's not always possible, and I don't think it will be after stress balancing either. Note that "expel to site" is a lot more humane than atom smashing, though (at least if the site isn't run by goblins).

This idea of intended viability is important to understand. Many management games allow for perfect states, where all your actors are happy and peaceable, and barring RNG disasters, these perfect states can go on and on and on. It gives the player a feeling of security, however it's also kind of boring.

And your follow up idea with petition-based need solving is brilliant. Though perhaps a bit too easy - I don't think anyone knows exactly what it takes to make themselves happy, but most people will rightly tell you sleeping on bed is preferable to wet mud. A balance would have to be found between solving micromanagement, and the simulation of individuals navigating a social sphere.

[PatrikLundell]

Dorfs know what they're pining for in terms of needs, but I agree it's a lot easier to recognize things you don't like "(I really don't like hauling corpses"). I don't think dorfs should petition for basics such as beds, etc., although I'm definitely not against a complaints board (which I believe has been suggested in the past) where you'd be able to see common complaints (i.e. not per dorf, but on the fortress level), such as lack of chairs and bedrooms, basically simulating the process of management picking up the complaints of the population.

[muldrake]

I haven't read all of that tome, which I'll get to, but the one idea I liked was the idea of a sanctuary, but I think it might be more milieu-appropriate if instead of a sanitarium, since it is in the temple family, an actual monastery.  Some dwarves can't cope with the outside world, but suppose they could retreat into a monastery.  This would have stress relieving capabilities enough to cure almost any dwarf, but the stress relief would only exist if the dwarf remained within the monastery.  So you could have a population of partly hermit monks, the previously unsalvageable.  I'd suggest something like a burrow if they weren't so horribly bugged as to be nearly useless.

However, the monastery would be a separate fort with its own workshops, stills, kitchens, etc.  Perhaps there could be a special secret, holy beverage brewed in stills in the monastery much as the real world has such beverages, maybe randomly generated for each religious group like instruments are. 

Also, in terms of helping the fort at large, people could seek out the non-hermit monks and complain to them and get advice and get some smaller amount of stress relief.  The beverage from the monastery could also be of particularly high quality and give a good thought, as well as books and other appropriate products.  Worship services in the temple of such a monastery could be particularly potent.

That said, I really don't think there are that many dwarves in 0.47.04 who are completely unsalvageable, unlike the mess that was 0.44.12.  I think it is actually approaching being a non-broken mechanic.

[Moeteru]

I don't think it's an intentional mechanic that some dwarves are doomed to inevitable insanity due to their personality rolls at birth. Those dwarves manage just fine during worldgen and in non-player sites. It doesn't make any sense for a 100 year old dwarf to show up to your fort feeling fine, then suddenly remember that they can't cope with life and start sliding into despair. The player inevitably ends up wondering what they're doing wrong to cause the dwarf's happiness to start declining. Anyway, incurable clinical depression just isn't a very fun mechanic.

I don't mind losing dwarves. I'm not above savescumming if I feel I've made a particularly poor decision, but I always end up building a fairly substantial burial/memorial complex sooner or later. The difference with stress is that the deaths are usually stupid and immersion-breaking.

I'd actually keep the system of traumatic experiences causing PTSD-like flashbacks and personality changes. If a dwarf sees their whole family get killed by abyssal horrors, then it makes narrative sense for them to suffer some psychological trauma. It would be nice if there were more end-points for those dwarves than insanity, exile, or "unfortunate accident" though. I like the pilgrimage (AKA. "Sod it I've had enough of this dump!") idea, but I'd make the dwarf initiate it instead of the player. Maybe they could petition to be allowed to leave the fortress, or they could just declare that they're leaving and walk out. Given the dangers in the wilderness, it would be nice if they waited to leave with a caravan.

The current system of meetings with the mayor/priests could be improved upon. Rather than just providing a small and temporary decrease in stress it could provide a means for particularly traumatised dwarves to receive a major personality change, possibly at some cost to the player. For example, a very stressed dwarf might have a religious epiphany which allows them to overcome their past trauma, but they become a devout worshipper of that god and now spend half their time praying instead of working. Or, as above, they could decide to become a missionary and petition to leave to spread word of their religion. Or a mayor with high consoler skill might be able to help them come to terms with their trauma and end the recurring negative thoughts.

The same sort of thing could even be done with the justice system and libraries. Let incarcerated dwarves have a chance to receive a major personality change, either from introspection while imprisoned, or from being visited by the captain of the guard, the mayor, or a priest. Of course the player should be able to control whether they run a nice, rehabilitative justice system with luxuriously furnished cells, or a cruel, punitive injustice system where isolation and beatings are the norm. Libraries could provide certain stressed and creatively-inclined dwarves the option of overcoming their trauma by writing about it (with the bonus of adding more interesting books to the world!). You could even add a category of knowledge dealing with psychotherapy and self-help, and allow dwarves to gain psychological benefits from reading books dealing with those subjects.

Or, hell, dwarves could just snap in more interesting ways. Maybe the dwarf who has lost their whole family becomes obsessed with mortality and starts looking for ways to bring their loved ones back from the dead. They petition for you to build a temple to a death god and the next thing you know they've got their hands on a slab, raided your graveyard, and are headed off into the wilderness to build a tower.

Honestly though, I don't mind what system gets implemented as long as the player feels like they're in control and can make meaningful choices which affect the happiness of their dwarves. Even a very gamey system would be an improvement.

[muldrake]

I don't mind losing dwarves. I'm not above savescumming if I feel I've made a particularly poor decision, but I always end up building a fairly substantial burial/memorial complex sooner or later. The difference with stress is that the deaths are usually stupid and immersion-breaking.

A major problem is if you rely on the game itself to warn you, the warning is nearly invariably too late.  If they're already slipping into a depression or canceling jobs it's usually already too late and they are going to lose their minds.  If you consistently attack it whenever they're substantially above 0 it seems to work better.  But this requires micromanaging.

Also there are certain dwarves that have ridiculous preferences that can't be met because that substance just doesn't exist in your fort and can't be obtained, or for whatever reason, they get little to no benefit from stress relieving activities, or at least, it isn't obvious or determinable which activities would actually work, if any.

[PatrikLundell]

As muldrake said, attacking issues when they're starting gives you a chance to succeed, but you need 3:rd party tools to get that info, and even then, you'd have to scan the list regularly (with DT you can sort on "Happiness to only have to look at the worst ones, but that still would have you change the sorting). Once DF indicates issues with a red arrow the dorf is lost much of the time, as any action you take won't prevent the stress from continue to climb up the roof for reasons not displayed (+500 stress from finishing having a good drink to finishing the next, typical, job of yelling at the expedition leader [with no rain or other unpleasantries when chasing the expedition leader around the map], with no visible thoughts added).

[FantasticDorf]

I'd actually keep the system of traumatic experiences causing PTSD-like flashbacks and personality changes. If a dwarf sees their whole family get killed by abyssal horrors, then it makes narrative sense for them to suffer some psychological trauma. It would be nice if there were more end-points for those dwarves than insanity, exile, or "unfortunate accident" though. I like the pilgrimage (AKA. "Sod it I've had enough of this dump!") idea, but I'd make the dwarf initiate it instead of the player. Maybe they could petition to be allowed to leave the fortress, or they could just declare that they're leaving and walk out. Given the dangers in the wilderness, it would be nice if they waited to leave with a caravan.

Any sort of crueller race might have shipped the dwarf away with the caravan in a cage, but waiting as a visitor to have opportunity for second thoughts for the caravan season to arrive would be sensible.

Though on a off-chance, it feels like a lot of deaths may have been preventable by a non-lethal way of taking them out of the game to be transferred to someone's labor camp or just some sort of capital prison/private royal menangerie for giants and such. Its a pity the bug that releases them is not fixed.

[PatrikLundell]

:
Though on a off-chance, it feels like a lot of deaths may have been preventable by a non-lethal way of taking them out of the game to be transferred to someone's labor camp or just some sort of capital prison/private royal menangerie for giants and such. Its a pity the bug that releases them is not fixed.

Bug? Dwarven ethics does not allow for slavery, and so you can't sell sapients. If dorfs would refuse to move containers containing things that cannot get sold you'd get even more problem with bins, so either "items" that cannot be sold are removed or the dorfs would refuse to move containers containing goods that cannot be sold.

[A_Curious_Cat]

I think I know what happened.  At least for the problems people keep having after sieges.

I think what happened was that late one night Toady One was working on DF and he noticed that his map_rejection_log.txt was full of lines that said "Not enough low attitudes after s*** goes down" and he endeavored to fix the problem...


I'll be here all evening.

[Mort Stroodle]

I've noticed that simply having a number showing the exact numeric stress value of each dwarf like in dfhack makes dwarven stress management far less of a headache. It's impossible to tell if your current stress strategy is working for some particular dwarf when the only information you get on their condition is these huge bins of "Stressed", "Haggard", or "Harrowed". By the time you learn that a stressed dwarf's condition is getting worse, they've already hit haggard and it's too late to prevent tantrums. Being able to see a dwarf's stress level slowly increase or decrease lets me know if my strategy is working or if I need to get that dwarf doing something else.

[A_Curious_Cat]

I, ultimately, see DF as a story generator.  I believe the overseer should be able to get a fort to a point where they can sit back and let the stories unfold in front of them.  This is why I support the idea of dwarves taking care of their own needs and also why I oppose anything that makes micro-management mandatory.

[Mr_Salty]

As a relatively new player (I just started a couple of weeks ago), I can only relate the struggles I've had with getting up to speed. 

1.  It's a lot of information to take in, especially as your fortress gets larger.  It's not intuitive to figure out what's wrong and what to do to go about trying to correct it.  There's a lot of looking up on the wiki to do.  For me, that's fine but I wonder how many stop there after the first dozen lookups or so?  Do many simply write it off, after a while, as the game is "too hard"?

2.  Some of these things seem straight forward, but are not.  For example, a dwarf stating that they're unhappy from not sleeping in a proper bed.  I have more rooms (bed, chest and cabinet) than I do dwarves.  Why are they not sleeping in it?  Or, unhappiness about an inadequate meal when I have tons of masterpiece meals available.  Why are they not eating it?  Why are they unhappy drinking without a goblet when there are tons available?  What seems to be a responsive solution to the problem doesn't "fix it" leading to a frustrating experience making the player feel like they're doing something wrong.

3.  When you do finally see a problem with a dwarf and figure out the resolution, it doesn't always seem to address the issue.  Perhaps it takes time, after implementing the fix (e.g. adding a bed), to see the happiness turnaround.  But it feels like, it's a downward spiral that can be impossible to turn around from once it's started.  As in, once they start spiraling it "feels" like it's almost too late at that point.

I knew going in that there was a steep learning curve, so these are not complaints, but merely my observations in response to the the original question.  I'm way too new to suggest the fixes, but I am curious if there is a way to show that you're moving in the right direction as problems crop up?

[FrankMcFuzz]

The problem is that there is no easy way to meet the things that they are mildly upset about, and all that is adding up faster than positives.

Things like not being able to practice a craft. Yes. You're not a craftsdwarf; you have no useful skills! Of course you're not able to practice a craft! That and martial arts, and just generally a lot of stuff you'd need to micro to ensure all your dwarves get to experience them. I have a few ideas that could help with these issues.

1) I think that having a workshop be allocated as "Any idle dwarves who want to practice a skill may use" just to sate this need may fix this one thought issue.
2) Having a squad assigned that appoints idle dwarves who want to practice a martial art.
3) Assign a location job as 'part time', so that any job who wants to socialize can be a performer or tavern keeper or priest etc, in their down time.

The problem here is finding ways to avoid micromanaging when a macro approach will make the experience more seamless. Having workshops, squads, taverns etc that appoint people who want to work there in their off time will sort out the needs that minorly frustrate them, and generally improve the fortress overall!

It may just be as easy as a button on each dwarf preferences screen; allow down time y/n, maybe with a yearly/monthly toggle, and then they'll go work on the things that dissatisfy them. Could be fun to see how dwarves act in this mode too, but the issue with the current system is that I don't really want to have to turn off 120 dwarves skills individually so they have less stress.

So then when they walk past Bomrek's rotting corpse in the hallway, it will be less stressful, because they are satisfied on improving a skill recently.

[BrythonLexi]

I just saw the Reddit stress thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/hjt112/i_think_ive_figured_out_the_stress_spiral_thoughts/

TL;DR Equal strength long-term memories cannot overwrite eachother.  If a dwarf has 5 traumatic memories of +1 and 3 good memories of -1, nothing will change and that dwarf will always slowly succumb to stress without micromanagement.

That's not okay and explains why some of my dwarves just crash.  Would be best to have some n% chance of overwriting equal strength memories so that no dwarf is irredeemable, and no dwarf is 100% happy 100% of their life.

EDIT:  As someone who has personally lived through the trauma of being homeless with an injury and lack of income, even I have been able to see some stabilisation in my mood - even with the trauma still present in my memory and hurting to this day.