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[Fleeting Frames]

I would guess they also won't use the training facilities if they're unpathable*, so could combine that with month-long repeater.

* Bridge/grate drop with walled off barrack building, flooding a recessed room, lowering vertical bars/grates...

Also, iirc if their training facility is overlaid with a library (in right order? don't recall) and they're scholar in it, they'll ponder instead of doing individual drills, though this unfortunately won't satisfy their socializing and praying needs.

[Loci]

It seems inevitable that the fort collapses due to everyone going into fits from witnessing dead bodies.

Your dwarves' personality changes tell a rather different tale. Of your 47 dwarves, 30 have experienced a personality change from miasma (and 16 others have been at your fortress less than 2 years). 14 have experienced a personality change from "nasty water", which likely means you didn't have any alcohol or a well. 11 have experienced a personality change from worn clothing. Only 9 have experienced a personality change from seeing a body.

They may currently be complaining about corpses, but their stress has been building since embark.

(I'm not suggesting that stress isn't broken, I'm just pointing out several additional areas where you could reduce your dwarves' stress.)

[fearlesslittletoaster]

I've managed to keep a fort going through multiple sieges without any exotic corpse disposal, just a 10z dump and an atom smasher. Essentially you have to be really careful about everything else.

- Make sure to flag high stress-propensity dwarves on arrival and keep them away from battlefields.
- Make sure there is always booze, is a well, is a legendary dining room, that they can replace worn clothes with really nice ones... really, to the best of your ability, make darn sure the battlefield is the ONLY thing stressing them.
- Make sure you military is satisfying their needs instead of "individual combat drilling" their way to the brink of madness. To do this with the least micromanagement possible, exploit the fact that on-duty dwarves ignore burrow restrictions. Designate the ENTIRE map, from the sky to the magma sea, as a burrow. Then cut the barracks out of that burrow. That way, unless they are scheduled to train, your military will not go in there.
- After a battle make sure corpse disposal is an absolute priority and use this process:
   
1. Designate the entire battlefield for dumping.
    2. Go into stocks (make sure your bookkeeper is set to highest precision) and un-forbid corpses and body parts.
    3. Make sure everything gets to the garbage dump. A dropped ear on the main stairwell is a disaster in the making. The trick here is to make sure             every corpse-bit goes directly to the trash to minimize exposure. 

- Finally, it takes a bit of active management for when a dwarf gets high stress. I automatically exile/terminate any Dwarf who is haggard, oblivious, or committing acts of violence. However, it is possible to stabilize a dwarf who is not doing... great. In my last for I had one live with a flashing red arrow for over five years; he never quite got un-stressed but I kept him from falling apart.

[Fleeting Frames]

- Make sure you military is satisfying their needs instead of "individual combat drilling" their way to the brink of madness. To do this with the least micromanagement possible, exploit the fact that on-duty dwarves ignore burrow restrictions. Designate the ENTIRE map, from the sky to the magma sea, as a burrow. Then cut the barracks out of that burrow. That way, unless they are scheduled to train, your military will not go in there.

‼

*tests*

It works! (expect unless the dorf is already drilling, which'll pass)

Also, you only need to cut out barracks building itself out of the burrow to make it work, which is useful if you place barracks in active areas on purpose.

Thanks for sharing, this is useful.

[Dragula]

One would imagine the dwarves would eventually get battle hardened and used to it.

[PatrikLundell]

One would imagine the dwarves would eventually get battle hardened and used to it.

Those who survive and actually participate in battles will, by participating in battles. Civilian corpse haulers won't, since they're not fighting, and those fighters who went mad during the cleanups won't reach the "eventually" stage.

[Magistrum]

Training the "discipline" skill in your corpse haulers is also recommended, since it makes them less likely to rout upon witnessing a corpse(taking longer to clean up and getting even more stressed.)
The best way is military training, since just getting horrified is undesirable and somewhat slow. I usually set some 60% of the total civilian population as reservists, training a season during the year. It helps a lot with the amount of death going around.

[evilDagmar]

This is "fiddly" but it helps.

First off, it appears that dwarves are less upset about bodies and mayhem when they're in military service.  This is important.

Secondly, you're definitely going to not want to plant corpses above ground, because of the value-add of an underground mausoleum.  Yo'll need to assign a temporary storage location here and there (enough to store a six-pack of dwarves) possibly including on the surface, but it needs to be enclosed and the doorway not facing your dining hall or whatever so no one sees inside without going in there themselves.  You also want it enclosed to keep the possibility of shipping delays causing miasma to a minimum.

So, make your underground mausoleum on it's own level, with a staircase that provides access to enough floors to matter (including a surface-level entrance), that's all off to one side.  Mark the whole thing with traffic-areas so the other dwarves will not consider it the shortest route to anywhere.  Yes, off this stairwell is a good place to create your morgues.  You will still need to have normal access to the mausoleum for those emo dwarves who want to pay their respects, but it should not be near the traffic-modified express-stairwell.

Now pick a handful (2-4) of dwarves who are in your military (preferably the fastest ones, and maybe the most disposable, er... fragile dwarves) and strip them of almost all other job responsibilities except cleaning and corpse-removal and one crafting skill (if they start to get maudlin about not having crafted anything in awhile).  Now relieve everyone else of corpse-toting duty.  Bind these guys (custom job title: "Undertakers"  Does the name make sense now?) into their own warren which includes pretty much everywhere except the other non-corpse-bearing stairways.  When they're not training they'll be free to roam about and they'll have a pretty decent life (having to go a little out of their way to use their assigned stairwell is not going to bother them) and when someone dies, they'll be free to come and grab the body and whisk it out of sight and straight into the expressway to the mausoleum, out of the eyes of more sensitive dwarves.


..and let's be clear, putting your mausoleum down deep and having just anyone drag bodies through your entire fortress is a great way to traumatize everyone at once.

[PatrikLundell]

I think evilDagmar has misunderstood DF's logic in a few ways:
- As far as I know, corpses being hauled don't traumatize those witnessing the hauling dorf.
- Corpses in coffins (by whatever name) are out of sight, and so can not traumatize anyone (and glass ones aren't see through). Corpse stockpiles are another matter, of course.
- Burrows do NOT tell dorfs where they should be, only where they may take up jobs. This means that they'll take the "shortest" route between job locations regardless of whether that brings them out of the burrow.
- Half a dozen dorfs will take a very long time to clear up a decently sized battlefield, probably longer than it takes for it to be restocked with fresh corpse bits due to new sieges.