Bay 12 Games Forum

The initial phase of training when they bring food to the cage still works, but the reinforcement training wont happen while the animal is in the cage. It needs to be removed in some way, most simply by assigning it to a pasture which doesn't include the cage.

Solitary confinement works by preventing the dwarf being exposed to more bad thoughts while still allowing them some good thoughts. On average a dwarf in solitary confinement will tend to get happier over time provided his confinement isn't awful. Also many happy thoughts (such as the one from a waterfall) last for quite a long time and it wont matter if s/he goes for a few months without being re-exposed to the source of the happy thought.

I've used solitary confinement to rehabilitate dwarves from old forts who arrive in a very unhappy/miserable state. As well as preventing their unhappiness from spreading to happy dwarves (which can and will trigger a tantrum spiral), they also quickly recover their happiness since there's just nothing they can get upset about in solitary confinement. Dwarves simply don't suffer from boredom or social isolation so provided they have a bed, food, drink and a table and chair they'll only get happier. This is especially so if the table and chair are made out of solid gold (The cells were also exposed to waterfall mist through fortifications).

When I was doing this, it was amazing how quickly their mood deteriorated when released from their bubble. So I kept them in solitary until they were ecstatic and only then released them.

Locking them in the bubble usually isn't necessary. I assigned them the bed and burrowed them in their room. They generally stayed put in their room and other dwarves could still go in, for example to enable them to do their profession while confined (I built a kitchen in the bubble of a miserable master cook). But if they were tantruming I locked the door. And then when it was time to release them, I removed them from the burrow but let them keep the luxury room for a bit longer, like until another dwarf needed it.

But the point with being a lot of work to set up, is it's easy for half a dozen dwarves, but if you're trying to split up fifty or a hundred dwarves into individual bubbles then it's simply going to get tedious. Still easy, but tedious.

I think atomsmashing children is distasteful. It's better to brick them into tiny individual rooms and let them starve to death. Their deaths remain undiscovered, but it leaves evidence of dwarven culture for future generations. The methods all centre around the idea of de-constructing stuff to lure children. Simple example, dig out a bunch of 1x3 rooms, have a door into each room, and a constructed wall in the end of the room. Have an "adults burrow" with all the adults assigned to it, and excluding the death chambers. Order the walls to be de-constructed, when a kiddy goes into a room, lock the door.

It's kind of like asking "what's your opinion on modding?"

I play using Fortress Defense Mod. I've modded plants to take 4x longer to grow and outdoor plants are seasonal and underground aren't. I've modded steel production to get 4 steel bars per flux stone.

I use DFHack prospect all, reveal (occasionally), autodump (occasionally), cleanowned, vdig (though that's scarcely an exploit). Usually I use these things when I think the dwarves should be able to do these things (for example using autodump to recover an item which has fallen into a pond, which a dwarf should be able to fish out with a long pole. And I attribute the prospect/reveal stuff with dwarves being good prospectors and/or having a supernatural ability to sense metals).

I refuse to buy or use training axes for woodcutting. On embark I don't buy single units of food etc to get freebie barrels/bags. But I do buy metal ores rather than bars to get bars at about 1/16th the cost, and I buy raw materials rather than finished goods - basically the prices just aren't balanced at all although the intent probably is that metal bars are the cost you "should" be looking at and the raw materials should be maybe half as expensive at most, but not 1/16th. Gold nuggets basically "should" cost 4x as much as gold bars and native gold blocks.
Basically how I see it, is a wooden axe shouldn't be able to cut down a tree. You shouldn't be able to buy a wombat heart and a barrel, for less than buying a barrel without a wombat heart. You should be able to save money by buying raw materials and processing them. So if it's a matter of the balance being off, I exploit heartily. But if it's a matter of defiance of common sense, I usually refrain.

Quote from: Fredd on June 26, 2012, 09:16:42 pm

How many you have in each squad, and the min you set could be a contributing factor. As a temporary fix, send them out on kill orders against easy targets

How you define easy is important, I was had a fledgling military curb-stomped by a enraged yak.

Quote from: weenog on June 26, 2012, 10:09:38 pm

Quote from: misko27 on June 26, 2012, 05:26:59 pm

They need to be DEPENDABLY happy. So, Give them a break every four months. Good for morale.

Not really, or at least not as good for morale as it should be.  For some buggy reason, perceived duty length is cumulative.  A dwarf that goes one month on, one month off, one month on, one month off, for two years, will be exactly as pissed off by it as if he had spent one solid year on active duty.  All a break actually does is give you some time to catch up with the bad thoughts and overwhelm them with good ones, before you resume pouring on the bad thoughts.  Not much different doing deliberate public killings gradually instead of all at once, to harden your dwarves instead of driving them insane.

Hmm, well, i dont know about that, someone should do some !!SCIENCE!! on the subject. I know that the vast majority of my soldiers are content in a realm of the mostly ecstatic.

Military dwarves still get most or even all of the usual happy thoughts. Ones about having a good meal, a good drink, sleeping in a good bedroom, comforted by a waterfall, admired fine furniture, made a friend etc. Mainly they're just busier than normal dwarves and get less opportunity to gain those happy thoughts. But depending on how you design your fortress and manage your squads, it's certainly possible for military dwarves to get lots of happy thoughts, especially when you furthermore include happy thoughts for sparring and slaughtering.

Sometimes it's worthwhile producing steel hammers/maces. Dwarves pick up a weapon based on value. They will prefer a low quality steel mace, or a highly decorated copper mace from traders, to a high quality copper mace, but the high quality mace would be better in combat. So if you have a legendary weaponsmith, you should make hammers/maces out of valuable metal to ensure that the dwarves are using weapons made by the legendary weaponsmith. There are other ways to deal with this problem, but just being consistent in weapon material works well. Steel has a base value of 30, iron and silver have the same base value of 10, bismuth bronze is 6, bronze is 5, copper is 2.

Most nobles continue to work, so they aren't actually a burden on the fortress. And their requirements are usually pretty easy to meet. It's got a lot easier over time.