Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MC]

Personality changes aren't meant to be prevented. The issue is if those changes make your dwarves unplayable. Are the personality changes actually causing mass unrecoverable depression spirals?

yes lol. My baron went from being one of the typically reliable starting 7 to a nervous wreck (never had a dwarf with that trait stay sane). It seems like once a dwarf gets a thought they can dwell on they're just as likely to get a personality change as before, and while a lot of the sillier dwellable thoughts have gone away basically any dwarf who experience miasma has prepatch levels of shifting. If it was just miasma from the corpses of invaders that'd be one thing, but miasma can be frustratingly common and difficult to prevent, especially if a dwarf gets retasked in the middle of eating and you get the "claimed food on ground" bug.

I get that you aren't supposed to be able to stop all !!FUN!! but going "oh crud, looks like the one dwarf it's literally impossible to replace saw something stinky and became completely useless" is just frustrating. Minor, everyday occurrences shouldn't completely shatter someone's psyche beyond all repair and doom them to inevitable insanity. Some sort of gradiation in miasma intensity so dwarves can tell the difference between "month old cheese rolls" and "my office is full of rotting crundles and my arms are going necrotic" would be nice. Maybe a special miasma thought that triggers if the dwarf also sees a corpse on the same day or something?

As it is though there doesn't functionally seem to be any difference in personality shift rates between this patch and the last, at least for me. It just feels like they've shifted from having a myriad of silly reasons to change their personalities to all remembering that one time urist mcchefface forgot to put away the dog tallow after mincing it.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Ok. That's all intersting, but, again, is "nervous wreck" actually an unrecoverable state, leading to required exile/execution/suicide in the current version of Dwarf Fortress? Is all that really matters.

The point is to judge whether 47.05 changes have stopped the inevitable death-by-depression spiral of 47.04. If personality changes are no longer directly causing this, it's irrelevant. Or at least something with very low priority to be tweaked later perhaps.

[Nilsolm]

Anyone had a go at an above-ground fort in this version yet? I'm curious to know if that's possibly viable now.

[delphonso]

Ptw/provide emotional support.

Personal opinions: stress is just about the only difficulty mechanic which is unavoidable - though it can be avoided, like all things in DF, by clever use of drawbridges. Stress is good and I was satisified with 47.04.

I welcome the difficulty decrease, particularly the food thing, and will probably test out a few microforts and see what happens over the long term.

[Dragonborn]

I have a four year fort in the latest version.  My initial reaction is that dwarves tend to make friends more easily, and they tend to seek out each other to socialize more often than I remember.  Even migrant dwarves are having no problems making friends.  It does not seem as though you need to make tiny meeting areas to force them to socialize either.  I'll experiment with this a bit more to confirm. I see a lot more thoughts about "talking with friends/sibling/loved ones" than I remember seeing in previous versions.  Fixing the prepared meals thought seems to help their overall mood too.

One problem that I have is my expedition leader.  DFHack reports that her stress is at a constant 0 stress level, whereas most other dwarves are in the -1000s range.  The thoughts seem normal, in fact most of their recent thoughts are thoughts about liking the blissful dining room and watching performances.  The one consistent bad thought is they are frequency sad that they can't spend time with their family.  It also shows that she "values family", so that value is likely driving this.  The problem is that she has no family, the 'r' relationship menu shows them as having no family.  This was one of the original 7, so it makes sense that they have no family as these dwarves are created out of nothing.

So yeah the "dwarf has no family, yet is sad about missing family" bug is still around.  It's only thing I'm seeing in their thoughts that would prevent them from getting into the "good" stress level range.

**Edit**  One of my other starting seven dwarves also has no family, "values family", and yet has no negative thoughts about missing family.  Interesting....

[Shonai_Dweller]

Is it a stress thought they're having about family or an entirely unrelated Needs thought?

[Dragonborn]

Is it a stress thought they're having about family or an entirely unrelated Needs thought?

It says: "Within the last season, she felt lonely after being away from family for too long" 

Also, further down in the needs section: "She is distracted after being away from family".  It says she is "somewhat focused with satisfied needs".  Overall, I'd say the majority of her thoughts are good, it's just the loneliness thought that consistency sticks out

[FantasticDorf]

Deflated i couldn't actually prompt patrol thoughts by making them commit to beyond month long route-hikes in the open air wind and rain to build up those outdoor resistances and maybe practice some armor wearing, but satisfied that i've identified a major bug in that sector anyway with militiadwarves being too proud to eat or drink on duty unless they're literally unconcious while sleeping and forcefed by civilians so they stubbornly petrify (extends to guard duty, & station too)

I hoped to have some weather hardened veterans ready which when they flip to elite, will be estatic to be patrolling around the place based on notes from 34.xx 's patrol route response.

Is it a stress thought they're having about family or an entirely unrelated Needs thought?

It says: "Within the last season, she felt lonely after being away from family for too long" 

Also, further down in the needs section: "She is distracted after being away from family".  It says she is "somewhat focused with satisfied needs".  Overall, I'd say the majority of her thoughts are good, it's just the loneliness thought that consistency sticks out

Embark dwarves are generated outside of the chain of dwarven lineage, they dont have any family so they need to be married up to a spouse pronto. Id recommend a bog-standard honeymoon suite, with the added benefit that now dwarves can exchange more topics, they'll keep each other level headed for much longer before you let them free for a breather.

[Shonai_Dweller]

If you don't give your patrol dwarves the food and drink you're supposed to assign to them and ensure they have no access to flasks, waterskins and backpacks then they get hungry. Yes. Annoying, sure. Opaque, maybe. But not a bug as such. Look after your military better.

All it needs is a warning message (hey, your military are out of food). Or perhaps remove the local rations system altogether, replace it with a system for raiders instead which would make more sense.

[FantasticDorf]

Unlike training they literally apply no assertiveness in obtaining it for themselves and will literally march to death and wont restock either if given the rations if the regime doesn't end before they're eaten and drank through all of it putting it on a indeterminate timer. I feel more than capable of providing but the point being that i've had more than one dwarf flake out on me being so over-committed to their duty that they perish while doing it with my easily reproducible method.

I do believe it is based in a bug because of the training disparity having no effect on doing the same things, but i should probably try and investigate other avenues based on the revelation that they wont do it while awake nor will dwarves chase them with buckets to fufill them if not sleeping by seeing if [DUTY_BOUND] has any effect. A scavenging behaviour (the legal de-jure term is 'foraging') to simply obtain food and drink from stockpiles or the wildnerness would be adequate since cavern hermits monster-hunters sealed beneath ground can survive for years on a diet of vermin & lake-water but my trained soldiers cannot survive for 10 minutes unattended.

There remains the possibility that you may indeed be correct and this is how Toady designed it for the activity to have a limited shelf life, which as much as i might wish to be not true i have to keep a open mind on the matter.

In happier news, at least patrol rain-training works for a little while if they don't die, a empty head with no stimulus walking around is in itself sort of a plus because they'll have a lot of time to think and dwell on the things they like and are missing so you can snipe their needs better.

[Shonai_Dweller]

You blocked their rations and access to waterskins, backpacks, flasks, or you didn't, which is it? Makes a huge difference to your "bug". I've seen my military restock their supplies. Gonna have to start a new Fortress now to test if they actually do it during a year-long patrol. They don't tend to run out during the single month patrols I have them on.

--
I've been testing rain with my hunters. No-one seems upset yet, but only a few years in. So far so good.

And, man, why can't crossbow squads just use hunter logic. Stay back, shoot, run out of ammo, flee screaming, reload, repeat.

[Dishmab]

I am literally singing and dancing as i play my current fort. yeah shits happening with tantrums, but its not to the point of, wa wa wa i want to quit playing. i hope the stress balances more and more for more fun!

[Sver]

militiadwarves being too proud to eat or drink on duty unless they're literally unconcious while sleeping and forcefed by civilians so they stubbornly petrify (extends to guard duty, & station too)

Another way to deal with this is to make a schedule that allows them off-duty time every odd month, e.g. Squad-1 patrols in June, August and October, Squad-2 patrols the same route in July, September and November.

There are 33600 time-ticks in a month. A dwarf only gets an unhappy thought for thirst after 35000 ticks, for hunger - after 65000. Barring the occasional "thirst sadness", this schedule should work without any issues.

Alternatively, you can use strategically placed barracks (single weapon racks anywhere and everywhere) + training duty instead of station and burrow duties; you can also use those as their "off-duty" time as described above without actually sending them home. Since they eat/drink normally while on training duty.
Barebones barracks as "rally points" is a very helpful mechanic overall. You can even throw some beds in and set it up so on-duty dwarves would only sleep there, if you want.

I personally prefer that station/guard/partol duty dwarves don't go all the way back to the dining room to have themselves a jelly donut while there is an important job to do. "Soldiers choosing to let the fortress die to goblins because they wanted a drink" was a persistent problem for a long enough time.

[FantasticDorf]

militiadwarves being too proud to eat or drink on duty unless they're literally unconcious while sleeping and forcefed by civilians so they stubbornly petrify (extends to guard duty, & station too)

Another way to deal with this is to make a schedule that allows them off-duty time every odd month, e.g. Squad-1 patrols in June, August and October, Squad-2 patrols the same route in July, September and November.

There are 33600 time-ticks in a month. A dwarf only gets an unhappy thought for thirst after 35000 ticks, for hunger - after 65000. Barring the occasional "thirst sadness", this schedule should work without any issues.

Alternatively, you can use strategically placed barracks (single weapon racks anywhere and everywhere) + training duty instead of station and burrow duties; you can also use those as their "off-duty" time as described above without actually sending them home. Since they eat/drink normally while on training duty.

I know, i do regularly and always advocate giving soldiers rotating rotas because its just more efficient for a use of space and need management to let them get some fresh clothes and cycle squads who are currently training at the same barracks without interacting, i just set up the long-patrol march deliberately to see how long and far they'll go & collect stress/thought data.

Also exactly, normal drink/eat whilst training, even stationing from squad controls (different to note static stationing) which is the comparison im drawing.

You blocked their rations and access to waterskins, backpacks, flasks, or you didn't, which is it? Makes a huge difference to your "bug". I've seen my military restock their supplies. Gonna have to start a new Fortress now to test if they actually do it during a year-long patrol. They don't tend to run out during the single month patrols I have them on.

They were never supplied with anything not even armor because it was a informal test at the time, they just refuse to feed or recieve help under any circumstances and like my report sets out, you can set their rations to zero and they'll lack the self-awareness to resort to desperate measures or remove themselves from the activity to tend to their needs like they can be observed to do with sleeping.

I have had fully kitted burrow guards be moved to the tavern because its a different kind of logic in about 47.04 with tavenkeeps sniping drink needs acting different to altruistic bucket water couriers just to keep ontop of thirst before assigning them off when the rations are gone. At the moment it seems like the only viable use for the schedule order at all for any prolonged amount of time.

[Shonai_Dweller]

So they're working as designed. Not eating because you haven't assigned them any rations. You ordered them to their deaths. And the game is rightfully punishing you for completely ignoring the very obvious signs for a whole year that your valuable military dwarves are dying of starvation and thirst.

If they were able to go get regular food by themselves, the rations system wouldn't have any reason to exist. Yeah, that's a poor system which really makes no sense considering how small sites actually are and is better off being removed altogether until raider squads who actually travel distances requiring rations are able to utilize them. But, not a bug.