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[Putnam]

By the way: easiest way to have "stress-relief squads" is to simply schedule the squads every month at minimum 5; they'll train when they're on schedule then take a break when they need to, basically, and the overall effect is that they spend 50% of their time training.

[FantasticDorf]

By the way: easiest way to have "stress-relief squads" is to simply schedule the squads every month at minimum 5; they'll train when they're on schedule then take a break when they need to, basically, and the overall effect is that they spend 50% of their time training.

If you turn off `Train` from the schedule in a perpetually active state they'll train only to their related martial needs and do other activities like swap out their civilian clothes, pray etc. In reality if you have other facilities in your fortress like a tavern and a stocked library, you're pulling dwarves away from them unnessecarily and priest sermons are great for your militia-dwarves who often spend long amounts of time in active duty for a big dump of religion from a especially zealous priest.

In a way the priest is almost blessing them so they can be mind-focused with a green upward arrow (rare and coveted if they can max out least 80% of their needs) when they're at the very sharpest edge of martial proficiency. Sleeping in their own rooms or very comfortable barracks rooms is advisable.

Dance areas are not because they're very hard to enforce and manage since dwarves stand all over it and it widens the room unnessecarily to the desired cramped area which by rule of thumb is two dwarves for every space, 200 dwarves in a 10x10 required for the biggest events, and the logic in place will mean dwarves will willingly just do that. Its a bit less of a pressing issue recently because of the new dwarf-finding socialization, but it reduced pathfinding to keep things dinky & small.

[scriver]

By the way: easiest way to have "stress-relief squads" is to simply schedule the squads every month at minimum 5; they'll train when they're on schedule then take a break when they need to, basically, and the overall effect is that they spend 50% of their time training.

If you turn off `Train` from the schedule in a perpetually active state

What does this even mean

[FantasticDorf]

By the way: easiest way to have "stress-relief squads" is to simply schedule the squads every month at minimum 5; they'll train when they're on schedule then take a break when they need to, basically, and the overall effect is that they spend 50% of their time training.

If you turn off `Train` from the schedule in a perpetually active state

What does this even mean

Sorry i should have elaborated. If you go to the military screen, and check the squad `schedule` it's by default set to 'train' at all dwarf month phases which when the squad is in a active state, makes them actively hone their skills non-stop only stopping to drink, eat & rest. There are other options you can choose like 'Guard' & 'Patrol' but neither of these in my experience work particularly well, simply cancelling train creates nothing for that scheduled month.

Guard particularly is bugged, they often starve to death on duty because they don't tend to restock their backpacks, so my guarded museum became a exercise in micromanaging a small amount of dwarves. And patrol will tire them out but may be good to use infrequently on a big circular trip around your surface walls to shake off sunlight sickness before you send them out on important missions or precluding a battle (requires routes, so working out how minecarts work first is kind of a prequisite to wrapping your head around it)

Normally i just set a entire season off so another squad can use the barracks or archery range in the meantime, the transitioning does make a mess of their thought screen though, as being re-activated to respond to a threat acts like they were just drafted. The game can't quite grasp that during a inactive month they're not actually unassigned from the squad.

[WindComeCalling]

Note: I was wrong, the following speculation about stress and memory is incorrect. See https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/il1i4z/so_looks_like_toady_shot_down_the_recently/. I'm preserving this so people can see I made a mistake and understand what that mistake was. See also https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/il1i4z/so_looks_like_toady_shot_down_the_recently/g3p7b8a?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 if you want to read some more up-to-date speculation about the logical consequences of how memory seems to work.

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.

Hello, I'm the author of that stress investigation thread. Basically, yeah, the problem is that certain memories are permanent since equal strength memories cannot overwrite each other. (see https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Memories)

I went into more detail in the thread, but the consequence is that the current system devolves into a race to shove eight -1 divisor happy memories into fresh migrants and children before they accumulate eight +1 divisor stressful memories. If you accomplish that, then nothing can touch their source of happiness and they'll be immune to stress forever; if you fail and they split 5 unhappy/3 happy permanent memories, they'll trend downwards forever since note even an infinite stream of -1 divisor happy thoughts can repair their irremovable and constantly recurring source of stress; and if you fail such that a dwarf is filled with 8 unhappy permanent memories (i.e. a fresh migrant gets rained on, attacked, sees corpses, et cetera on the way into your fort), then they're a lost cause.

As far as I can tell, this logic explains basically all of the observed problems with the stress system: unmet needs don't actually cause all that much stress despite their blaring importance on the thoughts screen (as demonstrated by http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=174931.msg8049126#msg8049126, where an experimental fort that never met any of its dwarves' needs never had any problems with stress - unmet needs don't generate +1 divisor stressful thoughts that can become permanent sources of stress); dwarves being immune to stress in older versions (back when euphoria from drinking was a -1 divisor thought or thereabouts, and a dwarf could therefore rapidly perma-fill up their long term memory with untouchable stress relief - fixing this is probably why euphoria no longer has any effect on stress, according to https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Emotion); and of course dwarves being consumed by stress in more recent versions of the game no matter what you do (because it's already too late for them by the time you act, they're filled with trauma that will literally never fade).

Fixing this is simple though: Give equal strength memories a small chance to overwrite each other. I'm not sure what the exact percentage chance should be - maybe 20%? - but it should be benchmarked around completely changing a dwarf from eight -1s to eight +1s or vice versa over ~5 years of unrelenting pleasure/torture. That way, a dwarf with eight +1 memories can still be saved, and a dwarf with eight -1 memories can still be doomed if your fort falls apart and their life turns into a living nightmare.

People have had some other suggestions of course. u/Orange-of-Cthullu on the subreddit suggests 2/4/6/8 of a dwarf's long term memory slots should be permanent, depending on their personality as shaped by their culture, so that the slate can never be fully wiped clean no matter what you do. u/QuantGadzooks suggests just having the intensity of memories inherently fade over time so more recent, more intense memories will take their place. And finally, I've come up with a system more closely modeled on what I've seen of real world mental health and therapy - namely that awful memories overwrite happy memories of equal strength, but awful memories reduce in intensity when you talk about them.

[Mechanics wise perhaps they'd only reduce when talking to the 'therapist' nobles (Mayor, Priest, High Priest, any future ones), or talking to dwarves with good Consoler skill, or talking to any dwarf (though ones with better Consoler skill would obviously do better). So for example that +1 'Shaken' memory of being seriously wounded becomes a +2 'Hopelessness' memory when you talk to a therapist enough, and is eventually overwritten by a -1 'Love' memory of gaining a sibling if you live in a safe and caring fortress where no new trauma occurs.

The goal would be to show a realistic process of healing from trauma - you talk to others about the darkest moments of your life, they no longer feel quite as awful, and eventually new experiences show you that the old ones don’t define you. Hopefully this sort of message would be helpful to people - an even more realistic system would include random relapses, but even without that this basic system should be both realistic and helpful. People can change for the better or worse, no matter what happened in their past. It just takes time.]

As for what players can do now... one option is to work around it. Prevent migrants and children from being exposed to any +1 divisor causing thoughts, like death and corpses (see https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Emotion & https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Stress to work out which ones). Then, when they're immune to stress and memory change, feel free to send them to the corpse hauling teams. It's not at all intuitive (migrants are generally far more expendable than long term citizens), and can lead to a weird fort (all the old dwarves should be ushered away to die, grandma and grandpa should just mysteriously disappear when children are involved) but it is how it currently works.

Another option is to paper over it. Mod all the +1 divisor emotions to be +2, so that only pleasant memories can become permanent. You wouldn't have to micromanage fresh dwarves to control the positive/negative split of their memories, but run the downside of all your citizens eventually becoming immune to stress and no longer generating any FUN when you mess up.

The final option might be to rely on the tools the game already has to deal with this, albeit from the most unexpected of places. I'm talking about military training. A lot of people report seeing massive improvements in the stress levels of their dwarves after training them in the military or modding dwarves to have some natural levels in Discipline. The skill, as far as I can tell, reduces the intensity of negative thoughts from witnessing death and corpses and the like, and is rapidly developed under military training. So I speculate that a +1 divisor Horror memory may become a +4 Alarm memory with sufficient Discipline - the memory doesn't change, but the reaction to it does, and that makes the memory less intense and potentially overwrite-able. It works for dwarves witnessing fresh corpses, so perhaps it works for dwarves remembering corpses? It won't work for emotions not affected by Discipline though, if there are any... Ambusher skill seems to be the one controlling a dwarf's reaction to being rained on, so perhaps developing that is the key to saving dwarves in constant rage over memories of rain.

Anyways, hopefully those interim solutions will only be necessary for a short while. I think I've identified the crux of the problem, and some easy solutions, even though all this started with reading a DF wiki article and idly speculating about the implications of one sentence ("After a year in one of the short-term slots, a memory will then be moved to the long-term memory slots if it is stronger than the ones there..."). Hopefully the problem really is that simple, and the system will work as intended once that's resolved. If anyone wants to test this out and perform proper Science (or !!SCIENCE!!) instead of mere theorizing though, be my guest.

[Bumber]

dwarves being immune to stress in older versions (back when euphoria from drinking was a -1 divisor thought or thereabouts, and a dwarf could therefore rapidly perma-fill up their long term memory with untouchable stress relief

Long term memory didn't exist at that time.

[scriver]

By the way: easiest way to have "stress-relief squads" is to simply schedule the squads every month at minimum 5; they'll train when they're on schedule then take a break when they need to, basically, and the overall effect is that they spend 50% of their time training.

If you turn off `Train` from the schedule in a perpetually active state

What does this even mean

Sorry i should have elaborated. If you go to the military screen, and check the squad `schedule` it's by default set to 'train' at all dwarf month phases which when the squad is in a active state, makes them actively hone their skills non-stop only stopping to drink, eat & rest. There are other options you can choose like 'Guard' & 'Patrol' but neither of these in my experience work particularly well, simply cancelling train creates nothing for that scheduled month.

That's only for the Active/Training alert. The default alert of all squads is Inactive -- and you can change the schedules for all alerts if you want to.

I still don't understand what you said in the part I quoted before though.

[Putnam]

They're saying to set some of the "train" months in active/training to "nothing", which my suggestion was, well, literally a better alternative to that I suspect they didn't try; I assume they thought I simply didn't know you could cancel them, rather than having, in my 10 years of experience, maybe actually determined a more effective way than the standard "cancel every 3 months of training"?

[Shonai_Dweller]

They're saying to set some of the "train" months in active/training to "nothing", which my suggestion was, well, literally a better alternative to that I suspect they didn't try; I assume they thought I simply didn't know you could cancel them, rather than having, in my 10 years of experience, maybe actually determined a more effective way than the standard "cancel every 3 months of training"?

Your suggestion was set 5 to minimum, right? That's based on a squad of 10, so half are always on break?

[Putnam]

Yes, but which 5 depends on which ones "need" breaks at the moment afaik.

[FantasticDorf]

They're saying to set some of the "train" months in active/training to "nothing", which my suggestion was, well, literally a better alternative to that I suspect they didn't try; I assume they thought I simply didn't know you could cancel them, rather than having, in my 10 years of experience, maybe actually determined a more effective way than the standard "cancel every 3 months of training"?

That's kind of patronizing to draw conclusions of implied supposition from my words like that Putnam.

If im not making myself outwardly clear in my explanation; I dont know how to really elaborate any further because implicitly the schedule system is very obtuse as is. @Scriver's understanding is entirely to them, i've tried, but ill just throw them a link to the wiki about it and related topics.

This quippet explains the lack of orders from a clear schedule in most relevant detail, compared to squad controls active & inactive, which beyond a point becomes a redundant distinction.

Inactive / no order
When dwarves have an empty spot in their schedule, dwarves with good self-discipline will visit the barracks and train themselves in their spare time - if you see a dwarf doing "Individual training" when they're free, that's what's happening. Technically this is not an order applicable in the 'Give Orders' screen - it is a lack of an order.

Yes, but which 5 depends on which ones "need" breaks at the moment afaik.

I haven't actuallly tried setting less than 10 like putnam suggested (least not in a while) because it draws out worse results from continual training than schedule cycling offduties with other squads activated to use the room in a balanced approach.

 Ranged soliders draw mainly into my concerns because of high dependency on being able to use their weapon outside of factors just like luck in order to shoot with accuracy, a group of 10 with 5 permissed to leave training will mean there will be poorly trained members on the squad that mainly deals with mass volleys of bolts or mixed midrange combat if a melee weapon & the ranged weapon are sufficiently light enough to swap on their backs (from training relating to reduced weapon weight like armor skill).

[knutor]

My training order for soldiers is always an odd amount, I never use 10, 8, 6, etc.. I do both skip months and adjust squad sizes, some soldiers have a small army of beak dogs.  Dont need them pathing to racks every single month.

I force slot the militia capt to always be included in the train order. To raise his Teaching/speaking and the soldiers in Student. Not sure if this helps Leadership, but cannot hurt.

Ranged I do completely different. I superdwarf my hunters, I never bother with teach/student or ranged targets for missile squads. Superdwarf makes the quiver bug, so painfully obvious when a lil hairy psycho, decides he wants a bow or blowgun, instead of crossbow and foreverloops at loading his quiver.

I often times miss that bug when the move at normal gaits.

[muldrake]

They're saying to set some of the "train" months in active/training to "nothing", which my suggestion was, well, literally a better alternative to that I suspect they didn't try; I assume they thought I simply didn't know you could cancel them, rather than having, in my 10 years of experience, maybe actually determined a more effective way than the standard "cancel every 3 months of training"?

I usually stagger training either by season/half-year or one month on one month off.  I generally want at least two full squads available (i.e. equipped) at any time, generally one heavy armor team and one smaller leather/archer team for fast responses to things that are just nuisances rather than real threats.

This way if there's suddenly some genuine menace, like an FB or other megabeast/semi-megabeast I can evaluate and decide immediately whether it's worth locking down or just going to kill the thing immediately, or whether to take some mixed approach like letting it take a cruise through the trap corridor before fighting it.

[Leonn3s]

Hello everyone.

This post is old, I don't know if there is still a relevance about Stress problems. However I want to share my gaming experience and how I play. And how I still perceive problems related to Stress.

In Dwarf Fortress, in Fortress mode, I always like to start at the beginning of the history of the worlds that are generated. I like to experience the first things. The first heroes, the first monsters, the first wars, the first Scholars, the first books, the first written poems, the first necromancers. And so on. And so, follow the initial historical facts and see their possible consequences. Follow the story from there.

I like to consider details, history of dwarves that I consider important and all the historical events that he can do.

Well, saying my preferences. I'll tell you now about the last game I had in July, in version 47.04.

I started a fortress in a world in the year 5, in a temperate environment, the fortress is called Èzumorrum “Hameroared”, The Odorous Books (the name was generated randomly and I liked it)

In the year 6 a couple of Dwarfs came to migrate to the fortress and they came as Peasants, they had no skills, but with deep personalities and a newborn daughter.
I focused on choosing the Dwarf man to be a warrior, a HammerDwarf, he eventually became a “Grand Master HammerDwarf” !!! And his name is Sarvesh Udilalmôsh (Sarvesh Lantergleam), “The Hammerer of the Hameroared” (my invention)
He became a legendary warrior and he came to have 2 notable deaths, a goblin and a cyclops. However, he gained a great deal of stress. At first I thought it would be easy to deal with, but it got worse ... a lot. He now has depression.


I went to check his history. And he says he cares a lot about his family.

https://ibb.co/S526jCd

 So I had left him in Idle, to do nothing, so that he might talk to his wife and daughter, to meet the need for Be With Family…. BUT…. as far as I followed, for four months (time in the game), just observing Sarvesh, he always complained about not being able to be with his family, but it seems that he never met this need while in Idle. And he also always complains about the food, even if he fed on a MasterWork Prepared Meal. Rejecting masterwork prepared meal, in my view, is a bug or something abnormal, in previous versions of Dwarf Fortress this would never happen.
And his main dish, no civilization in the region has it, no one has yet discovered potatoes. The drink was possible (River Spirits), but potatoes ... impossible.

And his stress only gets worse, I tried to intervene without using DFHack, but it seems to be impossible to deal with it in Vanilla mode.

This has somewhat frustrated the gameplay, broken my fun a little. And hope that the gameplay will improve in the coming patches.

That's it, I would like to leave it on record. And I'm sorry if I said something very wrong, my English is not good. But I felt a great need to post my experience and my problem on the Stress system.

Hi Dorfs,

We have been going through some extensive testing to find the biggest problems for new (and old!) players that make them give up in frustration.  Most of these people don't bother giving us any feedback, which is understandable.  The game just sucks and why play?  We need your help to nail down what exactly is going on. 

While we are working on every problem we can find, this thread is specifically for problems with the stress system.  There are a spattering of reports that come up on Reddit and other forums from people talking about how the stress system is so screwed up the game is unplayable.  I haven't found this to be the case so I need your help!

I have a fort that is 3 years old and has every possible stress reliever.  Plenty of taverns with every type of alcohol.  Three different taverns and temples.  New clothes.  All sorts of trinkets and trash for them to acquire.  Lavish meals.  You get the picture.

Now the negative side:  I attacked the goblins and in return weathered three sieges of over 100 goblins total.  I killed them all with trained and iron armored dwarves with only a few injuries.  Then I had my entire fortress run out and pick up the bodies.

The results were as follows:  Three dwarves went into a depression.  Some soldiers suffered post traumatic stress.  And one dwarf threw a fit and went to jail.

This kind of result isn't bad.  We want this.

I want to know what kind of play style is causing people to quit in frustration.

We are aware of socialization problems.  I haven't seen a game ending problem here, but these will definitely be addressed at some point.

This is the kind of problem we want solved: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=171185.msg7839740#msg7839740

We really don't want “a cancer of red arrows”

Help us find out what's going on and we will attempt to fix it!

[Sajiky]

This kind of result isn't bad.  We want this.

I want to know what kind of play style is causing people to quit in frustration.

We are aware of socialization problems.  I haven't seen a game ending problem here, but these will definitely be addressed at some point.

Help us find out what's going on and we will attempt to fix it!

I would humbly suggest you're probably damn good at the game.