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[ShadowLop]

Quick Anatomy of a Tantrum Spiral:
Dwarf A dies. Dwarf B is a good friend of A and his death pushes him over the edge.
Dwarf B kills Dwarf C in his tantrum.
Dwarf B is still unhappy, and now dwarf D, E and F, all friends of dwarf C are now also unhappy.
Dwarf B, D, E and F all tantrum, killing dwarf G and H.
Dwarves E, F, I, J, K and L all pile into a tantrum spiral.
Etc. etc.

Two solutions:
a) Make bad thoughts shorter or less damaging.
Not very realistic as friends and family can grieve for years and maybe even never recover completely.
b) Cut the number of deaths from tantrums to prevent the Spiral in the first place.
The main cause of death is that Dwarf B ends up bashing in Dwarf C's skull with one or two punches, which they tend to do with unnerving regularity.
Best way then is to make dwarves in tantrum mode unable/unwilling to strike heads. The only other reliable way to kill would be massive lung damage leading to suffocation, which is not as likely to happen in the first place and unlikely to be a guaranteed death sentence as a head strike.

Dwarves still get sad over deaths, they still get unhappy thoughts from getting into fights and suffering injuries. Throwing beds still has a chance of killing someone accidentally. Lucky hits on major organs could still lead to deaths, but it would make deaths during tantrums an accidental thing, rather than a "READY THE COFFINS!" thing every time a dwarf tantrums, the masons on double shifts because they need to crank out half a fort worth of coffins.

I think that dwarves feeling incredible sadness should tantrum out of the inability to deal with their sadness, rather than malice against any one creature (or species overall) and as such should be going out with either an urge to throw something, or to hit something, but not to the point where they are intentionally meaning to maim or kill. As such, they should not use weapons if they have them and should avoid hitting the head (after all, the meaty midsection is a much nicer target when you're pissed off than a hard head).

[Phlum]

I'm guessing your New to the forums. First off you might want to avoid suggesting stuff that's already planed, (IE. personality rewrite) second, !!fun!! Is always welcome on these foums.

[10ebbor10]

I'm guessing your New to the forums. First off you might want to avoid suggesting stuff that's already planed, (IE. personality rewrite) second, !!fun!! Is always welcome on these foums.

Also nonlethal fistfights and and other actions are also planned.

[GreatWyrmGold]

When societies die, they die explosively. No long period of convalesence for them, they fall fast, in blood or plague or famine or all three.

Tantrum spirals represent a realistic phenomenom in an unrealistic way. Dwarven personality needs a tweak before tantrum spirals can really be fixed, and whaddya know, that's planned. Until then, invest in a great dining hall.

[ShadowLop]

I'm guessing your New to the forums. First off you might want to avoid suggesting stuff that's already planed, (IE. personality rewrite) second, !!fun!! Is always welcome on these foums.

Also nonlethal fistfights and and other actions are also planned.

I am aware of the upcoming personality and combat rewrites. I have not seen a detailed list of all the new factors and aspects of said rewrite.

Just because nonlethal combat is available, does not meant that a tantruming dwarf will choose to use it, instead of putting his fist through the mayor's skull.
If fists get nerfed into the ground (at least to the point where a punch doesn't shatter bones like so much glass) then no problem there either.

I have no problems with tantruming dwarves beating the stuffing out of other dwarves, but when one dwarf can spark off an entire spiral by killing the beloved mayor in his first and only, unarmed attack, that's a problem.

Also, I have no problems with !!FUN!!. It's one action out of your control destroying an entire fort that I have problems with.
Soldier dies in combat or even accident, one family member tantrums because you don't have royal palaces for every dwarf yet, kills a beloved dwarf, goodbye fort.

It's the reason why I always rely on trap hallways and only ever make a squad or two of marksdwarves that I mainly use for cleanup. If you send a squad into melee, lose a dwarf or two, especially early game, you might as well kiss your fort goodbye, because you won't have the goodies required to prevent that kind of tantrum.

One of my forts, I had them at nearly ecstatic, running for about 10 years+. Everything was going fantastic, survived seiges from frost giants and even a dragon. Automatons get into a side passage, my (idiot) soldiers charge. Even though I killed them all (thanks to three fantastic swordsdwarves), those three dead soldiers made everyone depressed. By next season, tantruming dwarves had killed almost a dozen other dwarves and I was in fullblown spiral mode.  Not a damn thing I could do about it. 80% of the fort miserable and even with a hoard of masterwork food, drink, individual smoothed rooms(was waiting for engravers to get to legendary before engraving the rooms), legendary dining hall, etc. It would have been salvageable if it wasn't for the fact that every tantruming dwarf ended up either maiming or killing another. The final nail in the coffin was, predictably, a single punch into the much-beloved mayor's head.

[Phlum]

Well if one or two deaths can cause the death of a fort then the dwarves arnt happy enough. It seems that the death of all a dwarfs loved ones are easily balanced by pretty pictures on the walls coupled with some stew. I mean the pictures can be normal and dwarves still love it.

[ShadowLop]

Well if one or two deaths can cause the death of a fort then the dwarves arnt happy enough. It seems that the death of all a dwarfs loved ones are easily balanced by pretty pictures on the walls coupled with some stew. I mean the pictures can be normal and dwarves still love it.

As I said. Everyone was very happy, legendary dining room, masterwork food and drink. The only thing missing was engravings in the private bedrooms. Three soldiers died, tantrums followed by berzerking dwarves killed 20-30 dwarves in a season. Damage Control procedures almost saved it until someone killed the mayor. Went from 30/80 dwarves miserable to 60/79 miserable in 2 seconds flat. Had disbanded my military to prevent tantrum/berzerk dwarves from shooting bolts into the dining hall, keeping a squad of 3 swordsdwarves for riot control. The mayor's death making them miserable is what made me not bother with trying to salvage the fort.

Dwarves going berzerk and having to be put down didn't help either...but at least when those turned agressive they COULD be put down by my legendary swordsdwarf. Tantruming dwarves are not only aggressive, but immune to punishment outside the judicial system, which only seems to punish them once they actually kill someone...

[Felix False]

Why were thirty of your eighty dwarves miserable? If your fortress was as rocking as you claimed it was, then there must have been some underlying fault in management that caused the tantrum spiral. I keep a military of at least forty dwarves at all times, usually losing half of them every year or so, and I've never had a single tantrum spiral. Sure I've had grumpy dwarves breaking things on occasion, but that's almost never a lasting problem.

Check to see if your dwarves are actually sleeping in their great bedrooms or eating in the legendary dining hall. You should also look and see if they are in fact eating the meals you're cooking instead of just rummaging around for raw plump helmets in the kitchen.

Seriously, you should NOT be having such massive problems after only losing a small handful of your soldiers.

[ShadowLop]

Seriously, you should NOT be having such massive problems after only losing a small handful of your soldiers.

Yeah, I was pretty surprised too when half my fort went from green to red after only a few deaths.
Everyone says they lose tens of dwarves every year from battle, and yet every fort I've ever played it takes only 2-3 deaths in rapid succession to destroy an entire fort, even with all the best luxuries.

[Avo]

Sounds like management issues. Remember, your dwarves are never to happy. You can max out thoughts from certain things, but you can't really max out happiness. Tantrum spirals can be easily avoided by separating your military from your citizens, keeping everybody working as often as possible and placing nice stuff everywhere. Having 30 miserable dwarves will cause a tantrum spiral sooner or later even if you don't lose any soldiers.

[Timeless Bob]

Here's a simple solution to tantrum spirals that occured to me while I was watching a fort collapse from 1 baby dying:  Don't go berzerk, just leave. 

Here's the logic:
Instead of going berzerk or becoming melancholy, the message could be"Urist McUrist has decided to leave this place of woe." Followed by the dwarf grabbing all of their clothes, weapons, armor, ect... then leaving the fortress off the edge of the screen.  The berzerk/melancholy behaviour might be activated two seasons after this message so that dwarves blocked from leaving can go into their suicidal fit, but until then they'd just be useless types nursing their need to get away between tantrums.

Thing is, dwarves that leave a fort get put back into the migrant pool and may show up in later waves of migrants after "wandering in the wilds" for awhile.  They'd get a boost to their happiness upon appearing in the migrant wave and may then find a new chance for happiness.  Suddenly, a fort with lots of unhappy dwarves killing each other off unrealistically because nobody can leave, or a fort with so many starving dwarves who are searching for vermin because nobody can leave, or a dwarf who's creative fit proves unbuildable and who is now too embarrassed to face his fellows anymore but is forced to because they can't leave - those don't happen anymore.  A badly mismanaged fort would just be abandoned by its population.  End of story. 

Berzerking dwarves would be understandable during combat - "Urist McUrist has entered a martial trance" seems like a wonderful time for the berzerk rage to be activated.  That way, the dwarf could "take joy in slaughter" until consoled by no more threats surrounding him or having been killed.

Yes, this would reduce !!FUN!!, but tantrum spirals are a bug, not a feature.  One easy fix would squash this bug and make forts less likely to kill one squad of goblins, then 80 citizens because a couple soldiers died.

[Timeless Bob]

Addendum: The fact that the Mountainhome has enough dwarves to send in migrant waves seems to support the fact that 80% of them aren't being killed every year in tantrum spirals either.  It breaks the simulation for a player fort have a radically different culture in response to unhappy things.

[darknessofthenight]

It is not perfect but is an intended part of the game. Were a lot of pets killed, that can cause tantrum spirals?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Here's a simple solution to tantrum spirals that occured to me while I was watching a fort collapse from 1 baby dying:  Don't go berzerk, just leave. 

Here's the logic:
Instead of going berzerk or becoming melancholy, the message could be"Urist McUrist has decided to leave this place of woe." Followed by the dwarf grabbing all of their clothes, weapons, armor, ect... then leaving the fortress off the edge of the screen.  The berzerk/melancholy behaviour might be activated two seasons after this message so that dwarves blocked from leaving can go into their suicidal fit, but until then they'd just be useless types nursing their need to get away between tantrums.

Thing is, dwarves that leave a fort get put back into the migrant pool and may show up in later waves of migrants after "wandering in the wilds" for awhile.  They'd get a boost to their happiness upon appearing in the migrant wave and may then find a new chance for happiness.  Suddenly, a fort with lots of unhappy dwarves killing each other off unrealistically because nobody can leave, or a fort with so many starving dwarves who are searching for vermin because nobody can leave, or a dwarf who's creative fit proves unbuildable and who is now too embarrassed to face his fellows anymore but is forced to because they can't leave - those don't happen anymore.  A badly mismanaged fort would just be abandoned by its population.  End of story. 

Berzerking dwarves would be understandable during combat - "Urist McUrist has entered a martial trance" seems like a wonderful time for the berzerk rage to be activated.  That way, the dwarf could "take joy in slaughter" until consoled by no more threats surrounding him or having been killed.

Yes, this would reduce !!FUN!!, but tantrum spirals are a bug, not a feature.  One easy fix would squash this bug and make forts less likely to kill one squad of goblins, then 80 citizens because a couple soldiers died.

Planned. Pretty much.

-----

My money on ShadowLop's situation is that lots of his dwarves were friends with each other. Dwarves A-C died; dwarf D is B's wife and A and C's friend. Dwarf D then walks through miasma, runs into a dwarf he doesn't like, and another Dwarf E, who liked A-C and hit some more bad thoughts, kicked D's puppy, F, down a chute where F died. D and E smash furniture belonging to friends of A-C or lunch them. Those who had other bad thoughts also smash, punch, etc. Notably, G, who is one of A-C's squad mates and friends and who was badly injured for another bad thought, tantrums. This is lethal and leads to more tantruming militiadwarves. Hammerer H and Captain of the Guard I start beating the perpetrators, leading to more sadness.
Is this a vague approximation of what happened?

[Hyndis]

I do agree that emigration would be a useful thing. Tropico had an interesting take on that.

If your citizens become too unhappy they will rebel and begin killing other citizens or blowing up your buildings. However there is a setting where you can encourage unhappy citizens to emigrate, so they will leave your island paradise before going on a murderous rampage. Perhaps a setting in the nobles section to adjust migrant policies could handle that. For example, settings could be: allow migrants (default option, same as current), disable migrants, encourage migrants (more dorfs arrive than usual), disable emigrants, allow emigrants.


Tantrum spirals are also entirely preventable. If your fortress is such that everyone knows everyone else that means all of your dwarves are getting too friendly with each other. Only dwarves who are idle will socialize. If you have that many idlers you aren't building enough megaprojects or you have a very tiny meeting zone.

What I do is get rid of the meeting zone entirely. There is no meeting zone. However every dwarf has a shared bedroom. Each bedroom is a 5x5 area, with 4 bedrooms overlapping and a few pieces of high value furniture to up the value of the room so everyone thinks they have a personal palace. This means each room can hold 4 dwarves. When idle, dwarves will hang out in their rooms and they will socialize with their roommates. This limits friendships to only roommates. You will get enough marriages so plenty of children will be available, but any tantrum spiral will be limited to roommates only, so any damage would be contained. A few miserable dwarves might appear after a disaster, but the rest of the dwarves would be just fine due to having no social bonds with the miserable dwarves.