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[Silverionmox]

Short-term fix for tantrum spirals: consolation. Talking to a friend when unhappy trains their consolation skill and gives a happy thought. That way, friends aren't a deadly liability any more.

A bit more advanced balancing:

Two categories: Long-term modifiers, and short-term events.

- Long term modifiers ought to be small, and are static (having a child:+1, being married:+0, owning a *rose gold goblet*:+0.2, being handicapped:-1, living in a wealthy fortress:+0.1, having recently lost a child -1 etc.). Those are modified by personality.

- Short-term events just say how happy a dwarf should be when a particular event happens (eg. on a 1-10 scale: losing a child=0, losing a spouse=2, losing a limb=3, eating in a legendary dining room=8, having a drink=6, Just a boring day today=5, ...). Those are modified by personality.

- Dwarves have a short-term happiness memory. That number starts at 5, and when an event happens, it is averaged with the happiness score of that event (weighting may be changed).

- At any time, a dwarf's happiness is the short-term happiness + long term modifiers.

Eg. A dwarf has happiness 8 (6 short term, +2 from being married and having 2 children.)
He eats in a legendary dining room: happiness is now 9: ((6+8)/2)+2.
Nothing else happens that day: happiness is again 8: ((7+5)/2)+2.
The next day he loses his children in an unsecured lava channel: happiness first becomes 3 after losing the first: ((6+0)/2)+1-1,
then 0 after losing the second: ((3+0)/2)-2.
Depending on his personality, now he should have a serious chance at becoming depressed or tantruming.
If nothing else happens, the next day he'll be back at 1,25: ((1,5+5)/2)-2
The day after that, 3,75: ((6,5+5)/2)-2, etc.

This would allow long-term as well as short-term factor to be included. The hard-coded part is to decide which events ought to trigger an emotional update. The quantities themselves would be easily moddable

[j0nas]

I am not entirely convinced about this particular approach, but reducing the deadliness of tantrum spirals seems like a good goal.  Perhaps as a possible alternative, when reaching a certain unhappiness threshold(probably dependent on personality), the dwarf abandons all duties and actively seeks out something that has the potential to give them a happy thought, like maybe talking to a friend or the manager of the fort, dancing under a waterfall, petting a cow, whatever.

[Pilsu]

The very concept of a tantrum spiral is ridiculous. While consoling would certainly have it's place, we need more than a band-aid.

Social skills being rapidly learned by grinding undermines the mechanic. It'd never fail, pretty much making you immune to bad moods.

[Andeerz]

Isn't "consoler" already a skill?

[Pilsu]

They only yell (pacifier) or cry (consoler) on the mayor. Failed check makes the situation worse. A successful one makes the mayor less happy while improving the mood of the other dwarf, sometimes significantly. I don't have the numbers though.

It'd be kind of weird if they went to their only friend, the one they haven't seen in months and yelled in his face because of something someone else did. Probably should limit it to consoling unless the guy deserves it. Leave the yelling for people who directly caused the poor mood. Fist fights would make more sense that way too.

[Silverionmox]

Tantrum spirals are infectuous because dwarves are unhappy when bad things happen to their friends. So everyone having lots of friends makes a tantrum spiral more likely instead of less. So that's the reason that friends ought to have a dampening effect on bad thoughts. Since consolation is already there..

[Soralin]

The very concept of a tantrum spiral is ridiculous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot 

[Acanthus117]

The very concept of a tantrum spiral is ridiculous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot 

OWNED.

just kidding.