Bay 12 Games Forum

This is why I always build a tower on the surface, so my barracks is above ground and my soldiers are not cave-adapted.   No Voms for us!

For the love of Armok, can we stop calling it "chain mail".   It's just mail.   There's no type of mail that isn't made of interconnected rings of metal.  Mail was such a common component of protection for almost 2000 years, that it became synonmyous with armor.   Then the victorians started trying to figure out how to label all the different types of armor, and they used mail as a synonym for armor.   So you had Plate Mail, Scale Mail, Chain Mail, etc.   And then D&D in the made it a popular term.   

But the world mail comes from the latin word Mataglia, or "mesh".  Let's just call it what it is:  Mail, and call the other types of armor what they are:  Plate(or Harness), Scale, Lamellar, etc.   

I thought Drop Bears killed the tourists?

Guess this means the end of aquifer plugging for me.   I always liked the cave-in method for it's aesthetics, and similarity to how you build bridges with caissons to get underwater.   

Starvation generates give food jobs, never give water.

It's a simple oversight in message handling: "creature interaction" messages tend to make no difference between sentient and other creatures and consider everything an animal. This usually only manifests in some job cancellations (like the one above). If you have a justice system and regular jail sentences, you could look at the guard dragging a recipient of justice off to jail; this job will be labelled "chain animal".

Yeah, I don't buy this.   Once I pastured my grazers, water spam messages went away.   So something was happenign with the animals and the water.   Nothing else changed.   

Starving animals prompt a give water job.   Animals don't seem to need water, unless they are starving.   This tends to happen if you don't have pastures for your grazers, and it's especially likely with grazer pets like rabbits.  I was freaking out once, thinking I had a problem, and it ended up being a rabbit that wasn't pastured, and instead hung out in the dining hall and forges with it's owner.   Silly thing.   I also had one embark where I forgot about my draft animals and they all starved and stuff.   

Get a well built when you can, and get a safe water source so you don't have dwarves die later whe you really need the water givers.

Ah, yeah.   The time when people tell us that "it's no big deal" to see someone or something die, or a corpse, and it's no big deal.  Then they say that it's no good using real world examples, because we're obviously nothing like people were in the past, and we have such cushy lives that we're more vulnerable to this than dwarves seemingly would be.  Obviously, peasents back in the day were inured to this, because death was all around them, and they just accepted it.   

So, let's talk about ancient greece, then.   Why ancient greece, rather than some other time?   Well, Greek society was significantly less superstitious than some contemporaries(I'm looking at you Germania), very literate for the time, and also espoused widespread universal military service(those men too poor to be hoplites still served in some fashion), while maintaining a cult like appreciation of individual human will, strength and courage.   They frequently engaged in war with neighbors, widely traded, and are generally speaking, the origin for our western values of freedom and science.   

We have numerous playwrights and poets of Greece during the most violent period of it's history(the wars of the Leagues after the persian invasion, and the wars of successors to Alexander, and the Wars of his father, eclipse any wars greece had experienced previously), and we have poets who talk about defecating on themselves while in the ranks, about the horrible sounds of men dying.  We have the Greek Historian Polybius telling us that the Greek and Macedonian soldiers facing the romans were HORRIFIED to see the wounds inflicted on their dead by the romans swords.

Death is a terrifying thing, and violent, mauling death is more frightening still.   Even animals are weirded out by it, and have been known to undergo traumatic behaviors after experiencing the horrors of death.  There are dogs that refused to eat after their owners died and starved themselves to death.   Crows will avoid scenes of previous exposures to the death of other crows.   Elephants practice burial ceremonies for their dead, and some have been known to starve themselves or otherwise behave in a fashion similar to ptsd. 

Also, speakin' of PTSD.   It's not limited to soldiers, nor are most soldiers suffering from PTSD, and different people react in different ways.   But basically, anyone who undergoes a traumatic event may develop PTSD.   It's not a catch-all term for everyone, and it shouldn't be carelessly bandied about, because it's not a simple disorder(mental ones rarely are).   


Also, in american litarature, there's a book called The Jungle about what it was like being a butcher in an industrial setting, processing beef in Chicago, I think, back in the 19th century or early 20th.   Been a decade or more since I read anything about it.   But it's a great read if you want to look into how brutal and disensitizing the business of death is.   

Pictures from the American Civil war, to today, of war, horrify and appal people.    I have seen animals die gruesome deaths(sometimes at my hands*), and I've personally given chest compressions to a man after he was hit by my van, untill the firefighters got there and pronounced him dead.   Various parts of that encounter were disturbing, from the way I noticed his shoe had been knocked off some 30yds from where he was laying, that his right leg was bent at a terrible angle that wasn't possibly, his teeth were knocked back in his mouth, and blocking his airway(probably), his eyes were blue and there was no cognizance in them.   That was 8 years ago or so.  And I get a little nausous when watching documantaries of the holocaust, or video footage from ISIS.   Or that buddhist monk from vietnam burning up. 


*Technically foot.   I once accidentally steped on a kitten's neck, and it died, and blood squirted everywhere, and I still feel terrible when I think about it.   That's atleast 20+ years ago, and I still feel bad about it when I think about it.   

Are you really having a massive problem with Tantrum spirals still?   The seem to be much harder to trigger now.   Or maybe I've just stopped killing dwarves in random ways in large quantities?   I certainly don't accidentally on purpose flood my fortress anymore.   I've stopped letting mountain gnomes nick my booze all at one time.   The tree's are not bombing us anymore, so your planter shouldn't just be randomly killed.   Training is so awesome now that danger rooms arn't even worth the risk of injury.   

I find roasts, grand dining rooms and individual rooms tend to make dwarves pretty happy.   Access to clean water means you don't lose injured dwarves to dehydration.   And keep'em busy.   Busy dwarves are not socializing and making friends, but they are ALSO gaining skills which will allow you to generate happiness(through more masterwork tables and statues and chairs and beds) in some way.   The more happiness your dorfs have, the less stress they will feel, and you can normalize them.   

Also, Military training.   Wanna prevent tantrums?  Keep as many dwarves as possible under orders.   They gain skills and attributes rapidly.   They don't just become better fighters, they will become better socializers(I think it's through attribute and observer gain).   Lots of indimidation, but lots of conversationalist, consoler, comedian, etc.   It's the best thing a dwarf can do if he's not making valuable goods.

Unlike earlier versions where military training was slow and tedious, currently, it's amazing.  After 6 months, your dwarves will be stronger, faster, tougher, better fighters and more disciplined.   They will have gained ranks in student and teacher.   I don't know what the advantage of Teacher and Student are, but dwarves with higher levels of student seem to pick up skills rapidly.    I wonder if that's why they are generally better with social skills?   They have a bonus to skill gain from student, so they hit higher levels quicker?

I think rotating dwarves in and out of the military is probably where it is at for preventing tantrums.  While the dwarves are training, they will be gaining skills and attributes that will help in the fortress(strong, fast, hard to tire stone haulers?   Sounds amazing!), which will allow you to keep more dwarves happier.   They should also acquire good social atrributes, which should help them trigger happy thoughts in other dwarves more often.   They should have a higher threshold to bad stuff happening, as well as less exposure(if they train in a barracks, they arn't getting horrified going to the refuse stockpile) to bad stuff, except when REALLY bad stuff happens.

Say, this would be a theoretical set up:  70 dwarves, 50 of them are in the military and training.   16 of them are year-round soldiers:  if they take a break from training, they are stationed or defending a burrow.   Or pump operating.  But training is my favorite.   24 of them are in 6 man squads, set to 3 months training, 9 off.   Or 4/8.

My biggest fear is the combat drill thing.   Turns out that dwarves love to do combat drill.   They absolutely love to do it, even if they're not active.    I sometimes fear that you could end up with military dwarves who do lots of drills, and don't do a lot of hauling.   IF it works well with skilled crafts, then you could do some cool things with having your entire fort cycle through military training:  after four years of that, those dwarfs would be bad mama-jammas, and problably extremely resistant to tantrums.