Bay 12 Games Forum

Right then.  Here is a summary of major findings thus far.  Please let me know if you feel something needs changing or clarification.

Updated March 11 2021

General findings:
- Many reports that Stress is close to 34.xx, in so far as the majority of Dwarves reach the state of "doesn't care about anything".
- The frequency of personality changes (often drastic reversals of a core trait) is the same.
- Meal quality definitely helps now, independent of favorite ingredient.
- "Caught in the rain" remains a veritable roulette wheel of effects.  Sometimes it's a minor effect on total stress, sometimes it creates a feedback loop (miserable after rain, then miserable again after remembering that event x10).
- Tantrums due to stress seem less frequent.
- Dorfs seem to be make friends more easily, which helps reduce stress.  As yet unclear how socializing works if the Dwarves have a constant never-ending work schedule.
- Possible that 'distraction / restless due to unmet needs' has a significantly smaller effect on overall stress.  Thus unclear what being distracted actually does, in gameplay terms.
- The justice system remains a double-edged sword (no pun intended).  Victims of crime are definitely happy when a verdict is delivered (conviction of farm animals not withstanding), while the accused are predictably miserable after a beating and/or incarceration.
- Dwarves who are emotionally fragile by default are almost guaranteed to snap, due the feedback loop of reliving a bad memory (often this means seeing a sentient corpse).
- No reports as yet of being able to significantly recover from stress.  That is, going from 'very high/haggard & drawn', to 'happy'.
- Possible that a temple is no longer as critical to the early game if other happiness boosters are present (tavern, beds, mugs, etc.).

Observed new thoughts:
- having an intellectual discussion with a friend/acquaintance
- feeling relieved discussing his problems with an acquaintance

OP:
Put on your big-Dwarf beards, because we have testing to do.  Will be updating this as we go.  Relevant patch notes:


Looks like a lot of issues can now be adapted over time, but excess stress might still break the more fragile Dorfs in the short term.  I'm especially curious about the changes to Minor Thoughts.  Can they have any kind of effect if they stack enough?  Other questions off the top of my head;

Time frame of adaptation for bad weather & sentient corpses.
How depressed can a Dorf get about weather and bodies before rebounding?
Is weather just normal rain, or does it include evil weather types?
Numerical value happiness increase of different quality meals
Does this work on valuable drinks as well?
Logging the new chat interactions (and if possible, relative to a given need like praying or crafting)
Solutions for meeting the needs of Military Dorfs
Can the memory of bad thoughts still create a chain reaction?
What is enough to cause a personality change now?
Will Dwarves automatically try to fulfill needs if not explicitly given free time?  (e.g. only free time is eat/drink/sleep).
How do the starting friendships of the 7 compare to 'normal' developments over the long term?

old thread for posterity

Just occurred to me while reading new posts in ThreeToe's thread about game-ending stress (which I recommend everybody chime in).  How would you feel if your Dwarves were able to act on labors that are not assigned, for the purpose of fulfilling needs?  The mechanic would function similar to a strange mood; one of the few instances where your control is overwritten.  A Dwarf who is assigned only hauling labors needs creative downtime in his life, so he claims a Craftdwarf Workshop, puts your own work orders on hold, then spends a few days crafting stuff and feels better.  Similarly, Dwarves that need some action in their life would be allowed to visit a designated Training Zone and throw down with the military, or start a Tavern brawl.

If the Dorfs were smart enough to mostly handle their own needs, provided we give them the means to do so, I think that would help alleviate a lot of the issues with the current system.  It's not a complete solution mind you; rain, favorite food & drink, missing family that doesn't exist, just to name a few.  However, I believe it would go a long ways towards reducing the micromanagement of the current system.  Doubly so for meeting the needs of military dwarves who won't normally perform civilian labors.

And thus far, it is glorious.  They are natural engineers and begin the game with advanced robotics technology, plus some robot servants.  My home planet is 'Armok', my star is 'Magma', the race's adjective is 'Drunk', and we are collectively known as 'Slaves to Armok'.  The first planet outside my home system has yielded every possible mineral-booster you can get.  The proverbial sugar on the cat biscuit is that my precursor race is a slightly demonic alien that wiped itself out with a galaxy-wide plague, in an attempt to defeat some unknown threat.

(click to enlarge)

I just want to say thank you to all of the wonderful, patient, bloodthirsty insane monsters who call this forum home.  You guys are the best.

Kinda surprised this doesn't have a thread here, though to be fair, I only learned about it from a random DF Reddit post a couple months ago.  Anyone else follow this story?  https://practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com/table-of-contents/

I feel like the show has slowly but steadily been running out of ideas.  The turnover rate is such that we've had half the number of Doctors in the past decade that the original series did over 50 years.  Capaldi's last Christmas special really hit this home for me.  I loved that episode, but seemed like a very obvious 'we can't think of anything, let's pull some classic story to keep things going'.  Whittaker's first season was just one adventure after another, there was no intrigue at all.  Worse, that was effectively intentional, as the writers have confirmed they were getting rid of multi-episode stories; everything is a 1-shot.  Mind you, I'm not disparaging Whittaker.  I think she's doing the best with what she's been given.  Just unfortunate that the first lady Doctor came in at a time when the show has been noticeably losing steam.

Dunno how often (if at all) Toady drops by this subforum, but I hope he looks over this one.  All of these suggestions are based on the current research thread.

- Dwarves should automatically prioritize socializing when they need to.  Currently, they will work to the point of 'haggard & drawn'.  Socializing must be forced with a Burrow.
- 'Caught in the rain' thought needs to be changed or removed.  It's not like they are sleeping in a torrential downpour for weeks on end.  Especially considering the number of clothing layers that Dorfs tend to wear, rain should not have as big an effect on stress/personality as it currently does.
- 'Lack of decent meals' currently depends on favorite foods, not meal quality.  Would be nice if ☼Biscuits☼ actually helped to combat stress.
- 'uneasy or horrified upon seeing corpses & body parts': This needs to change, but I'm not sure how.  Corpse hauling is effectively a death sentence right now, since Dwarves get the bad thought for each body part, and the effect stacks very quickly.  Perhaps limit the bad thought to 1 per body, regardless of how many pieces that body ends up in.