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Yes, they need to be recovered.

Yes, and should still be ordered around normally.

No, that seems like a hassle.

[Girlinhat]

This:

It would be amusing to make a hunter or miner that hasn't seen another one of your dwarves for a year or two be marked as missing, but that might be going too far, he he he.

And:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=91093.msg2532118#msg2532118

Discuss.

Also, what's the overall attitude about live disappearances?  The poll is referring to a standard case where an overseer orders a dwarf to wall himself into a hole with a farm, creating a living, single dwarf who's separated from the rest of the fortress by solid walls and has sufficient food/farm/booze to survive his natural lifespan.

The real question is, who are things reported to?  If they're reported to the sheriff as Toady implied, then what if you don't have one?  If they're reported to your expedition leader/mayor, then what happens when your mayor gets locked behind the walls?  Does everyone "disappear" after a while?  Perhaps it should be based on some percentage of population.  If 10% of your population has seen someone, then they have not disappeared, thus allowing bunkered down barracks to operate normally while your lone stuck-in-the-wall dwarf would disappear as intended.

For the record, I'm for Option #2.

[Doomchild-]

this could be interesting. but i think for a dwarf to be reported missing a few requirements should be met. a dwarf who has no friends or relatives shouldn't be reported missing since noone actually misses him. unless he's been gone for a very long time (several seasons) so that even passing aquintances are wondering where he went.
it could affect thoughts ("has missed a friend lately" or "has been happy to be reunited with a long lost friend")
a lot of other things have to be taken into account, such as dwarves who are stuck in the hospital, as far as i know dwarves dont visit their friends or family in the hospital, so prolonged treatment could trigger the missing friend thought.

as i see it, the process could go like this:
dwarves who havent seen a certain friend for a while get the (slightly) unhappy thought of having missed a friend, they'll be more likely to spend their free time searching in meeting halls and the hospital. if they cant find their friend themselves they will question other dwarves about their missing friend, if they cant talk to another dwarf who has recently met the friend in question they will report their friend missing to the sheriff/mayor/expedition leader (attend meeting) failing to meet with an authority person will trigger the more serious "has been very worried about a friend lately" unhappy thought.

it could be a good reason to keep a sheriff in your fortress since at the moment the justice system does more to cripple your fortress than it helps.

[Mitchewawa]

I wonder; will dwarves with grudges bother to report their enemy missing? Are vampires more likely to target grudges? Are vampires more/less sociable?

There are a lot of things I look forward to us discovering, for !!VAMPIRE SCIENCE!!

...!!CRYPTOZOOLOGY!!

[hudders]

I feel like Dwarves should only go missing if they are in an area of the fort that wasn't dug out / constructed by the Dwarves. For example, they could go missing in caverns or out in the forests but not while off mining out your new dining room.

[Mechanoid]

I think dwarves who arn't seen for a while should definitely be defined as "Missing" as far as the player is concerned and not be viewable on the units list (and all the other things the real MIA dwarves do) except the "Missing" dwarves are handled internally within the game as being invisible, like ambush attackers/creatures are. So internally, there are the MIA dwarves who really are in trouble, and the "Unseen" dwarves who just havn't been seen for a while but are perfectly fine and still operate within the fort.

So using the example of a dwarf that's been walled up in a room with a farm, if there were levers in the room and the player ordered them pulled, they would eventually be pulled because the dwarf inside was presumably still alive and got the job order the lever put out. The farm would also be planted, with seeds, plants and barrels moved around as well... But the player, if he watched the area continually, would only see a barrel disappear from a stockpile and re-appear in another; he would never be able to actually zoom to that dwarf until that dwarf was "found" again.
Also presumably, if that lever in the room released a damaging but not lethal creature, the player would observe spatters of blood being generated seemingly from thin-air within the room; and because the player can't view or look or otherwise see the dwarf at all, their condition would be unknown -- at which point the "unseen" dwarf can become a real "MIA" dwarf.

[ASCIt]

This has dwarven ninja implications...

[ThtblovesDF]

I just don't want a dwarf to be missing just because he's been sleeping in his bedroom for a while or just stuck somewhere due to injury for the time being... prisoners going missing during there sentence and therelike... it ought to take a nice amount of time.

[Lord Dullard]

Some kind of 'missing' tag that affects thoughts and such could be interesting. Actually hiding the dwarves from the overseer/player seems like an AWFUL idea.

[nightwhips]

Some kind of 'missing' tag that affects thoughts and such could be interesting. Actually hiding the dwarves from the overseer/player seems like an AWFUL idea.

I'm with you here. Mixing perspectives (aside from enemy detection) gets pretty weird. How would you effectively run your fort if you kept losing miners because they were off tunneling for too long? Adding a "missing" tag that maybe makes dorfs freak out or go to check on their bud would be much more !fun!.

[Gilihad]

<snip>

as i see it, the process could go like this:
dwarves who havent seen a certain friend for a while get the (slightly) unhappy thought of having missed a friend, they'll be more likely to spend their free time searching in meeting halls and the hospital. if they cant find their friend themselves they will question other dwarves about their missing friend, if they cant talk to another dwarf who has recently met the friend in question they will report their friend missing to the sheriff/mayor/expedition leader (attend meeting) failing to meet with an authority person will trigger the more serious "has been very worried about a friend lately" unhappy thought.

it could be a good reason to keep a sheriff in your fortress since at the moment the justice system does more to cripple your fortress than it helps.

I like this process, but it might have to be simplified to just:
Urist McSocialite gets thought to see friend
Urist McSocialite starts searching for friend (there'd have to be a time limit on this, right?)
Finds friend (happy thought) or fails to find friend (minor negative thought)
Urist McSocialite reports missing person to sheriff, upon which the announcement pops up that a dwarf has gone missing.

[hudders]

I like this process, but it might have to be simplified to just:
Urist McSocialite gets thought to see friend
Urist McSocialite starts searching for friend (there'd have to be a time limit on this, right?)
Finds friend (happy thought) or fails to find friend (minor negative thought)
Urist McSocialite reports missing person to sheriff, upon which the announcement pops up that a dwarf has gone missing.

You would get a lot of false positives. In fact, if Urist McSocialite is locked in the same room as the sheriff, suddenly you're looking at N-2 "missing" dwarves.

[Doomchild-]

the report to the sheriff/whoever should simply serve to improve the mood of the concerned dwarf.
the announcement should be made even when the concerned dwarf fails to report his friend missing.
"Urist mcSocialite has reported Logem mcHideAndSeek missing" => reported to justice system
"Urist mcSocialite is searching for Logem mcHideAndSeek" => failed to report/taking matters into his own hands

if a dwarf cant report his friends missing (after sufficient time and effort to find them/learn of his location through others) they could spend more and more time wandering the fortress/surroundings trying to find their friend. if they can report the missing dwarf, they'll rely on the justice system to find them and spend less/no time searching themselves. it should all depend on their relation to the mission dwarf and their personality (is your only friend a bad socialite then you're pretty much screwed :p)

i think the announcement for missing dwarves should completely depend on the amount of friends and their social skills, dwarves who frequent parties and are loved by all should be reported missing far sooner than the grumpy miner noone really knows.

also, dwarves searching for their friends could result in !!FUN!! when the fortress' party-animal goes missing and all his friends start a largescale search&rescue operation.

but i guess we'll see how far Toady is willing to go with this system

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Rather than just immediately count a dwarf as "missing" perhaps the Sheriff could go investigate the whereabouts of Urist McMissing, by searching and asking around if anyone has seen him.  After some due diligence the Sheriff goes to report the result to the Mayor and Urist McFriend.

Fewer false positives, lengthened turnaround on marking someone missing.

[Chthonic]

Rather than just immediately count a dwarf as "missing" perhaps the Sheriff could go investigate the whereabouts of Urist McMissing, by searching and asking around if anyone has seen him.  After some due diligence the Sheriff goes to report the result to the Mayor and Urist McFriend.

Fewer false positives, lengthened turnaround on marking someone missing.

I like this one.  Gives the sheriff something to do.  As a corollary, you could have the fortress guard do "rounds" around the fortress, checking in on various dwarves.  If Urist McFriend can't find Urist McMissing, but a member of the guard has seen McMissing recently on rounds, then McFriend can be reassured that McMissing is out there somewhere, but too busy to chat.

[Noodz]

Many good ideas in this thread, but i think live missing dwarves should operate mostly internally, with overseer reports ocurring only if the missing dorf is stranded/walled in. Some thoughts.

1) I love the idea of having sheriffs/fortress guard be responsible for finding missing dorfs, since missing dorfs are potential crimes, which are their responsibility.

1.1)In fact, since they are the fortress' internal security, it would not be a stretch for sheriff/fortress guard to periodically engage in "patrol" tasks where they actually go around the fortress, keeping tabs on dorfs, asking questions (thus learning who the questioned dorf saw) and maybe even catching crimes red-handed. Thus, they are more likely to know the location of most dorfs and resolve missing reports immediatly. This will also incentive large fortresses to assign more people to the guard if your captain is spending most of its time patrolling a huge fortress alone. (ninja'd by chthonic :p)

2) Regardless of how the missing live dorfs are implemented, i dislike the idea of hiding missing dorfs from the player's view. Missing reports could serve as valuable warnings that a dorf is walled-in/stranded, and hiding the missing dorf only makes his rescue more difficult. At most, make it impossible to zoom in creature the missing dorf on the unit screen, but it should be visible on the main screen and obey orders as normal.

2.1) Basically, this could make the sheriff/fortress guard work as a unit-list analogue to a record keeper. If you ignore it or put too little time/dwarfpower on it, you will have lots of missing reports and lose the precious ability to zoom in on the missing dorfs.

2.2) What i worry about is the announcement spam. All of this missing dorfs systems needs to be balanced to avoid excessive announcements.