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[Neskiairti]

Maybe have a 'mood' last for two seasons.. and for half a season its 'fresh' second half a season its strong.. first half of second season its neutral.. then the last bit its vague.

with a simple point modifyer on it.. 1 for vague, 2 for neutral, 3 for strong, 4 for fresh..

and maybe add a third 'mood' determination.. for whatever reason, but it could keep them steadfast through the harsh times.. but break down in the calm times.. (like alot of people real life) these are pioneers! steadfast and hardy!

it might be a randomly generated thing to add to it, some being more steadfast than others.

more reactions to moods would serve well certainly.. not just going insane and dying or trying to kill your friends
something as benign as taking two to five times as long to complete something... sleeping twice as often..disrupting other dwarves (grouching at them to give them a bad thought) or the oposite too.. working a quarter to twice as fast.. sleeping half as much.. complimenting other dwarves giving them good thoughts..

and some 'thoughts' should have more weight than other thoughts.. watching their friend get slaughtered by a fireman right infront of you should be atleast three times as bad as sleeping on the ground

there's also room for qualifiers in there.. if your mobilized for war.. seeing someone die would be far less of an impact.. if your just arriving.. sleeping on the floor wouldnt bother you much.. if everyone is thirsty it would be doubly worse.. an accumulative.. not just "i couldnt find any water" but.. "were all dying of thirst!"

could be a very dynamic and interesting system... and still room for those extremes.. say everyone was standing around the well partying as the fireman came up and torched your leader.. that.. would be a cause for bezerk mode

[Armok]

quote:Originally posted by Fieari:
<STRONG>I approve.  The question now becomes, what is the mechanism we'd like?  Clearly something with a decay function for getting over the thing that made them upset.  This would REPLACE the "thoughts last for a year" thing.

I'd like the various emotional happenings to work on a multivariable basis.  Initial Hit, Decay Type, and Decay Rate.

The initial hit would be obvious, and is more or less what we have now.  The thing about this system, is that a lot of the numbers we currently have can be raised, maybe doubled or tripled in some cases.  Wow!  This is an awesome door!  It might distract me for a moment or two.

Then we'd need a decay function.  I'd imagine four different types.  All at once, linear decay, quadratic, and root.

Then the last variable would determine how fast the decay happens.  When the thought drops to zero, or within a certain range of zero, the thought is forgotten and cleared from memory.

What do you think?</STRONG>

Good ideas. Seconded.

quote:Originally posted by Neskiairti : more reactions to moods would serve well certainly.. not just going insane and dying or trying to kill your friends

I actually have an idea, a "workoholic" (of corce it wouldent be called that in game) insanity, the dwarf works many times faster and wont eat, drink, sleep, or defend itself if attacked, only work, work, work until it dies of hunger/thirst. If there isn't any tasks it would create its own (100x admantine mugs?) or go berserk.

[Artheon]

quote:Also, when a fortress-wide catastrophe occurs, some defense mechanism should kick in and they should attempt to work together and act rationally, rather than try to kill each other in a fit of rage like they do now.

I agree wholeheartedly with this here.  When shit hits the fan, it turns into an everlasting whirlwind of despair.  "I'm sad, I'll go kill myself."  "Holy shit, he killed himself, now I'm sad, I'll tear off my clothes and stop being a person!", repeat ad nauseum.

Perhaps make the social skills a bit more, hm, elaborate?  Optional characters with no jobs except sit in their office and console people would be neat.

[Bricktop]

quote:Also, when a fortress-wide catastrophe occurs, some defense mechanism should kick in and they should attempt to work together and act rationally, rather than try to kill each other in a fit of rage like they do now.

No, no, no, no, no... That would be boring.

While we do need a better system than what we have now, I don't think it should be all the dwarves just suddenly becoming best friends.

quote:I disagree that they should work together by default, but friendships previously made should probably hold even when they get furious. Let the fortress -factionalize-, with guild wars or whatever.

I think that this would be much better. If the dwarves stick to their own circle of friends and then fight everyone else (possibly if guilds get put in so that all the miners would stick together etc) then your fortress could still survive the fighting, it would just depends on how the rioting goes.

Also, when a dwarf goes berserk I don't think they should get a bad emotion hit from anything that happens during the berserk. For example, if they kill 5 dwarves in their mood, they won't be made even more berserk by this. That should mean that when it all goes to hell and the fortress breaks down, it should be fairly short-lived as opposed to how it is now where the insanity continues because of the death that it causes.

[Hague]

Simply adding more thoughts and changing the increments on forgetting them to months instead of years would accomplish this. Stronger thoughts have longer timeouts and so on.

[McDoomhammer]

quote:Originally posted by Tahin:
<STRONG>This really needs to be looked at. Dwarves should eventually get over themselves. Also, when a fortress-wide catastrophe occurs, some defense mechanism should kick in and they should attempt to work together and act rationally, rather than try to kill each other in a fit of rage like they do now.</STRONG>

This could provide a use for ruler-type nobles.  Keep them safe or anarchy breaks out.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[McDoomhammer]

Hmmmm.  Maybe military leaders, then.  Which I think has already been suggested.  Or both, to vatying degrees.  Or, you know, not.

[numerobis]

quote:Originally posted by penguinofhonor:
<STRONG>Ah, but what if your dwarves are communists and don't like this kind of thing? Or the leaders are just asses?</STRONG>

Then everybody dies, except a couple who "don't care about anything anymore" and spend the rest of their lives building coffins.

[Neskiairti]

wait wait.. goth dwarves? >.>

quote:I actually have an idea, a "workoholic" (of corce it wouldent be called that in game) insanity, the dwarf works many times faster and wont eat, drink, sleep, or defend itself if attacked, only work, work, work until it dies of hunger/thirst. If there isn't any tasks it would create its own (100x admantine mugs?) or go berserk.

this would defenately be a good one.. but seriously.. sure its fun where the fortress completely goes berzerk.. but once you have a certain critical mass its not realistic..

for 7 lonely dwarevs sent far in to the wilderness roughing it.. yeah.. they would have hair triggers.. but once immegrants start coming in.. the mood would have to even out some.. its no longer isolated.. caravans come.. people arrive.. life goes on.. and they should be proud of their acomplishments..

[vanarbulax]

I think each various emotion should have a "half-life" meaning after a certain amount of time the amount an emotion affects a dwarf is reduced by half. So if something say added 8 to the happiness score and had a half life of a week after the first week it would only be 4 after the second 2 after the third 1 and after the fourth would disappear entirely. This would stop things being all or nothing and also set a time limit on how long an emotion lasts. Your not going to be thinking about the fine door all month and the memory would be less potent as time goes on a half-life of about a day would be appropriate here, it might make the dwarves happy in the immediate put wouldn't last for long. Someone losing a relative would be overcome by grief for the first two weeks or so so we can have a half-life of two weeks. Say it's -16 to the happiness score it might make the dwarf very unhappy but after two weeks the shock would wear of and it would only be -8 and in four weeks they'd be able to cope pretty well and it would only be -4. The system also has the advantage of slightly curbing the everything is going to hell and will stay that way problem that happens a lot. Sure the dwarf will be traumatized for the first month or so but people are able to cope with time, big events become small lurking feelings.

[Helmaroc]

Seconded.
Maybe there could be ''neutral' moods, that have little or no effect on their happiness, such as for millitary dwarves 'went on a patrol recently' or for masons 'made some tables recently'

[Anvilsmith]

Seconded. The happy/sad thought system really needs an overhaul.

[Gantolandon]

Alternative idea: maybe it would be better to tweak making new friends and enemies somewhat? As for now, it's possible to a dwarf to befriend the entire fortress. I know that some people just have rich social life, but come on... who does have about 80 friends, whom he'd sacrifice for? On the contrary, grudges are extremely rare.

As far as I know, friendships are the problem, which leads to multiple, fortress-wide tantrumming.

[Align]

Minor necropost, but yeah, emotions are still weird.