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[Dwarf_Fever]

Any time I lose 5 out of 100 dwarves to the first encounter of enemies, despite having a nice pile of alcohol and everyone being reasonably happy, the end result is always that the other 95 dwarf idiots kill each other off until there are about 5 or 10 left. Dwarven outpost my arse. More like feeble-minded, bloodthirsty orcs.

Having looked up the wiki, apparently there is nothing further I can do other than just try to avoid actually doing any combat. Is there some mod to disable or reduce this "feature?" It makes things immensely frustrating and I would find DF very boring as a non-combat game. However, since even a slight combat loss nearly always results in the self-decimation of your entire population, I don't see any real alternative outside of a hack or mod.

[ext0l]

With runesmith you can modify your dwarves happiness.

Also, try building bigger dining rooms, more statues, etc. to increase happiness.

[Dwarf_Fever]

Losing 5 dwarves to goblins and 85 dwarves to "grief" is just absolutely ludicrous, regardless of wether a dining room had a few more feet on the sides or one more statue. Surely there is some sort of mod to limit the tantrum murders other than hacking happiness stats.

[Reelyanoob]

Play better. This will never happen again. Are you dwarves often idle (as in idle counter > 1 or 2)? Idle dwarves = higher tantrum spiral potential. Have plenty of cooked meals + drinks.

Seriously this has never happened to me even once, and I run 200 dwarf forts.

I even was atom smashing everyone's children (30 of them) once and only got 1 or two tantrumers. I hardly pamper my little slaves either other than the bare minimum of undesignated single bedrooms and a big dining room, and I don't get spirals. I don't even bother smoothing or engraving walls most of the time.

So there's a lot you could do, plus stuff that I'm not even doing, which could reduce tantrums spirals to a minimum.

[Dwarf_Fever]

This is the third time out of three games it has happened, and I run with the wiki open all the time, looking up things as I go. And yes, I focus on keeping my dwarves busy, the last two games even micromanaging task permissions like crazy with DwarfTherapist to find new tasks for idle dwarves. Why would this have something to do with tantrums?

[NecroRebel]

You might be able to mod them such that they are unlikely to make friends, though that would have its own problems due to preventing marriages and such. To do that, you'd probably add the [PERSONALITY:FRIENDLINESS:0:15:30] to the dwarf creature entry, or possibly similar numbers, and possibly other related personality traits like gregariousness or trust.

If you're consistently losing that many dwarves to tantrum spirals, though, you're doing something wrong. You're letting dwarves make friends, which means that you either don't have a big enough meeting hall, aren't keeping your dwarves occupied enough, or both. You also aren't doing enough to compensate for deaths; as mentioned, a better dining room, nice individual bedrooms, art pieces scattered around the fort to be admired, good food and drink, and similar happiness boosters are not that difficult to put in place and really do give a good buffer against these things.

Edit:

Why would this have something to do with tantrums?

Dwarves don't grieve for strangers or passing acquaintances. They'll only get unhappy thoughts if a friend or family member dies. If a dwarf is idling near another dwarf, they'll talk, gaining various speech-related skills, but also becoming more familiar with one another and, fairly quickly in some cases, friends. More friendships thus occur if you let your dwarves idle. As friendships give minor happy thoughts while active but devastating unhappy thoughts when they violently end, friendships are a bad thing, and are the main - perhaps sole - reason for most tantrum spirals.

[Dwarf_Fever]

Eh, if you ask me, whoever decided a high "FRIENDLINESS" stat would result in insanity and murders is the person who is "doing it wrong."

[Vercingetorix]

This is the third time out of three games it has happened, and I run with the wiki open all the time, looking up things as I go. And yes, I focus on keeping my dwarves busy, the last two games even micromanaging task permissions like crazy with DwarfTherapist to find new tasks for idle dwarves. Why would this have something to do with tantrums?

The number one rule is to build a gigantic dining room...even if it's furnished with cheap rock furniture and not smoothed/engraved it'll probably be legendary on account of its size.  That'll offset a ton of bad thoughts.

[Dwarf_Fever]

Thanks, however, my dining hall is "legendary."

[NecroRebel]

Eh, if you ask me, whoever decided a high "FRIENDLINESS" stat would result in insanity and murders is the person who is "doing it wrong."

Perhaps, but that stat doesn't affect tantrums directly. The game is an alpha release, remember, so there are surely many things that are errors, placeholders, otherwise flawed, or simply not instituted yet. For now, friendships are problematic and it is best to avoid allowing them to form. That aspect of dwarves' personalities just encourages or discourages formation of friendliness by causing dwarves to idle in meeting places or in private rooms.

[Dwarf_Fever]

You'd think the amount of friendships should have a large impact on stability and preventing violent bouts of insanity. Alright, thanks for the tips, maybe I will revisit things in a few versions.

[celem]

The size of the dining room isnt for legendary status alone.  A small but pimped dining room hits legendary sure, but when dwarves idle they are within speaking range.  A bigger dining room means that idling dwarves are less likely to be in speaking-range.  (It also obviously raises its worth)

[Quietust]

Make sure that your dining room is built from high quality (i.e. exceptional/masterwork) tables and chairs - dwarves never actually get thoughts from looking at engravings (the contents and quality of the engravings merely affect how valuable they perceive the room to be), but if they eat at a masterwork table+chair, they might admire it while they eat and get an additional happy thought.

Another way to keep dwarves happy is a sculpture garden - if they're going to be standing around, make sure they've got some really nice furniture to look at, preferably artifacts. Sculpture gardens in particular, although they permit dwarves to organize parties, make dwarves get even happier from looking at valuable furniture because it's "tastefully arranged".

[utuki]

Do you bury your dead quickly ? if someone dies that should be top priority as buring decrieces unhappiness hit. Same goes for pets.
Build mist generator and some golden statues in bedrooms(everyone should get bedroom), those give very nice happiness boost (good bedrooms are epecially important for military who dont visit dining hall).
Another way to fight tantrums is working justice system. Build some luxiry jails (chains) and appoint sherif or capitan of guard.
I almost never get tantrum spirals while often loosing 20-30 dwarves per year so it fully depends on your ingame actions and not modding or game version.

Another fun thing to do is making everyone used to death. By regulary dropping puppies to dining room from 10+ z-levels.

[loose nut]

I'm the opposite. I've never ever had that happen. I had a fort tantrum spiral once, but they'd taken 90% casualties. My dwarves just don't make friends much. In fact usually the only dwarves in my forts who even have friends are the starting seven, the occasional child or noble, and in .40d, the military. What do you do, just leave all your dwarves idling for a whole season so they can make friends with each other? I feel like I am doing something wrong too! In a way. 

I am pretty good about not having idlers, less so in DF2010 since it's harder to keep track of who should be doing what.