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[Shonai_Dweller]

Goblin migrants that joined through petitions getting stress from not eating good food or drink (Goblins don't eat or drink).

Honestly, for creatures that don't need to it should be that they don't need to, not that they can't. Would also allow for vampires and similar things to mask their presence even more effectively too, while allowing those needs to be filled.

So long as you have a tavern keeper, vampires drink in taverns now, goblins too. Goblins have a tendancy to overindulge and die though. Acquiring the need to eat after petitioning to join the fortress needs to be fixed though, sure.

[Scruiser]

So long as you have a tavern keeper, vampires drink in taverns now, goblins too. Goblins have a tendancy to overindulge and die though. Acquiring the need to eat after petitioning to join the fortress needs to be fixed though, sure.

I've heard the tavern keepers basically poison your fort members if the booze stockpile is too close or you have too many of them, so the fort where I noted multiple goblins upset by lack of food/drink I only had a single tavern keeper with a reasonably long distance to the booze stockpile.

[Shonai_Dweller]

So long as you have a tavern keeper, vampires drink in taverns now, goblins too. Goblins have a tendancy to overindulge and die though. Acquiring the need to eat after petitioning to join the fortress needs to be fixed though, sure.

I've heard the tavern keepers basically poison your fort members if the booze stockpile is too close or you have too many of them, so the fort where I noted multiple goblins upset by lack of food/drink I only had a single tavern keeper with a reasonably long distance to the booze stockpile.

Doesn't happen often enough to worry about. I always assign the Chief Medical Dwarf as tavern keeper (and manager). He's not only to busy to kill everyone, he possibly ensures people get to the hospital in a timely manner (no proof that this works, just second-hand evidence of wine soaked beds in the hospital and dwarves being "rescued" while in the tavern, apparently not under attack from time to time). Sadly my first fortress in 47.01 saw the Tavern keeper drink himself to death. Damn. Proves that dwarves can manage to die just fine by themselves, I guess.

[PatrikLundell]

So long as you have a tavern keeper, vampires drink in taverns now, goblins too. Goblins have a tendancy to overindulge and die though. Acquiring the need to eat after petitioning to join the fortress needs to be fixed though, sure.

I've heard the tavern keepers basically poison your fort members if the booze stockpile is too close or you have too many of them, so the fort where I noted multiple goblins upset by lack of food/drink I only had a single tavern keeper with a reasonably long distance to the booze stockpile.

Doesn't happen often enough to worry about. I always assign the Chief Medical Dwarf as tavern keeper (and manager). He's not only to busy to kill everyone, he possibly ensures people get to the hospital in a timely manner (no proof that this works, just second-hand evidence of wine soaked beds in the hospital and dwarves being "rescued" while in the tavern, apparently not under attack from time to time). Sadly my first fortress in 47.01 saw the Tavern keeper drink himself to death. Damn. Proves that dwarves can manage to die just fine by themselves, I guess.

It seems that new residents always get "rescued" the first time they get a drink in a fortress, at least in 0.44.12, so observations of dorfs being rescued would have to account for, and eliminate, those bugged cases.

[Pancakes]

I think part of the problem regarding compounding stress is that all stress sources add to the same stress total, especially once your fortress starts getting mature (10+ years, with various beasts and sieges).

For example (I'm going to make up numbers for simplicity's sake), say that getting rained on for an average dwarf, Urist, adds +100 stress. Urist then goes on to not have any good food for a while, adding +100 stress. Urist now has a stress level of 200. After some time without becoming more stressed out, Urist's stress drops by, say, 10 per day. Therefore, after 20 days, Urist is back to their base level of 0. This is, if I'm not mistaken, how stress currently works. Of course, we're ignoring that dwarf's personality, but we'll get to that.

Now, we're going to break up the sources of stress. We still have the total level of stress, but now it's a summation of the other stress levels, and every stress "pool" drains (and fills!) independently of one another. Using our example: Let's assume that Urist hasn't begun to de-stress yet. While the total level of Urist's stress is 200, it is composed of 2 values, 100 (Stress from rain) & 100 (Stress from bad diet). Suddenly, they have a meal with their favorite ingredient. Hurrah! This doesn't make Urist instantly de-stress, but it does allow them to quickly de-stress at a rate of 50 per day. Now, after 2 days, Urist's stress level is at 80 (50 per day for diet stress, 10 per day for rain stress). Then, after becoming totally de-stressed in regards to their diet, Urist de-stresses at the normal rate of 10 per day for their rain stress, taking

Now, this is grossly simplified, but I think it is something to consider when deciding on how to balance stress. Again, this is all assuming that stress is currently just a sum.

[FantasticDorf]

If your dwarves are drunk anyway and braver than they would usually be, it seems like discipline got a big buff this version since a pet grazing animal collapsed in my meeting hall, fearing the worst i quickly arranged for it to be buried but nobody cared and the pet owner wasn't around to witness it and no discipline xp was gained from seeing it.

So hopefully no more thoughts about rhesus macaques & inefficient monster hunters in general now as long as i keep them absolutely sloshed with alcohol. Bit of discipline training wont hurt either, i still don't take risks letting my dwarves pick up after sieges but as long as i put some disciplined folks to pick up corpse pieces, keep the alcohol-tap flowing & quickly remove the body parts piece by piece with wheelbarrows it should be ok.

But since goblins are so finnicky, i dont know if a crueller race has amblivient opinons on it (i could change goblins to 'town' temporarily) or even positive ones without opportunity to observe and try.

I've also heard that if you put your beer further away from a tavern, and do some nifty maneuvers with jobs restricted to burrows the distance of the tavern keeper walking to collect more alcohol helps pace the amount that dwarves drink when being served.

[Naryar]

I haven't yet encountered stress problems in the new version. Yet again, no sieges, just rain changing moods and a few miasma clouds here and there. I got one unhappy dwarf in a fort of 90, but that's to be expected cuz he's military and has been cut off from things like socialization and prayer for several months- now that he's off duty, I expect him to get better.

That being said, it seems that dwarves worshipping two dozen deities now sounds like a problem (I assume it is a bug, though ?) because it seems dwarves will just spend their time praying and become unfocused / have unhappy thoughts due to being unable to pray to them all.

[Splint]

I've had a few problems due to a lot of one-sided relationships and that damned food demand - in particular there's some who only like carambolas or types of flour I physically can't provide them (neither trade nor the local biome can produce them.)

There's more than one dwarf who is all kinds of upset because they've been away from friends for too long, while others purport to have at least a few.... Some of them being the dwarves who apparently have nothing but passing acquaintances.

[FantasticDorf]

I have a suggestion thread up specifically to combat food 'needs', lets just hope toady's taking notes of the demand for change in that area. Since the related threads going moreso to general complaints about finished food in general being generic and overvalued stretch all the way back to 2010.

Im still trying out a brand new scheme for my temples & dance areas since i will need new areas to do it in. Basically its a raised 12x5 dining room with a 1x12 strip floor tavern down the middle so overflow is forced onto the dining room chairs, and around it are pits carefully tailored to give dwarves spaces for 5x5 activites to fill their needs. Gets consistently good thoughts over legendary dining room and performance pits will allow dwarves to hear music & dance without being on the same z.



I guess the point i was trying to drive towards is that not every fortress a new player makes (or even a experienced player) will be as deliberately thought out and designed, and a lot of fortresses are creations of circumstance. So on the other hand i dont think Toady should explicitly *dumb down* (to use a strong expression) the game for absolutely everybody, but just refine it in areas like was done in 47.xx and hopefully the future.

[Loci]

As far as I know, needs are still not causing "game ending stress".

Back on topic, a case study of one stress-death in v0.47.02:

As Letmosushat immigrated in Fall 201 as a normal dwarf. In 201 As was caught in the rain and experienced a personality change robbing her of the ability to handle stress. In 202 As saw a goblin snatcher die and experienced a personality change triggering constant internal rage. By early 204 As was forcibly emmigrated as an over-stressed shell of her former self. That's less than 3 years to go from dependable dwarf to ticking time-bomb.

Constant internal rage is a personality trait on the tail end of the bell curve, occurring in 0.4% of generated dwarves ( 1 out of 250 ). Unfortunately, it is much more common as a result of personality changes. Constant internal rage is almost always fatal, though the loss of stress handling accelerated the process a fair bit for As. It appears that the stress behavior was designed under the premise that "constant internal rage" would be exceedingly rare, but the newer personality change code shifts dwarves in that direction far more frequently. By year 206, my fortress already has three other dwarves with "constant internal rage" who will soon be following As on her final mission. (That's 4 out of 50, and doesn't include those who are just more "quick to anger" now.)

[Hyndis]

As far as I know, needs are still not causing "game ending stress".

Really? Huh, never knew that. Always thought it did. Having unmet needs can result in negative thoughts, and it seems that stress is a mixture of positive and negative thoughts. If some thoughts create stress while other thoughts do not create stress how's the player to know that unmet needs don't cause stress? How is the player supposed to fix the problem if they're not presented with accurate information?

The stress system is completely opaque and needs to be explained to the player far better.

I like the way Rimworld handles it. Thoughts have a magnitude and a duration. You know exactly why your pawns are happy/unhappy, and how long the current mood buff/debuff will last. Moods are complex because pawns may be under the influence of 20 different thoughts at the same time. This not only provides the player information on what precisely is causing unhappiness, but it also tells the player how to fix it and how long the player needs to hold on while the pawn recovers from her terrible mode. Some thoughts may last for multiple seasons, such as getting married or having a family member die. Some are brief, such as having eaten a fine meal or eating without a table. Rimworld communicates this information to the player very well.

[delphonso]

Loci, I think Hyndis is referring to the thoughts about "same old food" and "lack of decent meals" - which are negative thoughts categorized in the stress side. Dwarf Therapist shows they cause a small amount (but consistent and unavoidable) of stress.

Your research into needs is important, though - and you're right about the two being commonly conflated.

The fact that this keeps coming up and needing to be clarified is exemplary of the issue: stress is complicated and not clear to new players in the least.

[Hyndis]

I'm not even a newbie player, and its still confusing to me!

Check my forum account. Registered in 2008. Been around DF for a while now, and the only way I've been able to cope with the stress system is to edit the raws to set dwarven stress vulnerability to 0, discipline as a natural skill to 15, and then add in a reaction to booze to make booze alter personality to keep stress vulnerability at minimum. And still, despite all of this, one siege or one rainstorm can ruin a dwarf forever.

I do not know how to reduce stress. Masterwork everything. Bedrooms like personal palaces. Temples and taverns and safety, and yet still stress inexorably climbs.

The only way I've ever been able to keep stress from inevitably climbing is to simply seal off the fortress like its a Vault-Tec vault.

[Putnam]

Some thoughts remove stress, some thoughts add stress, and different thoughts and emotions cause different amounts. Unmet needs cause very minor stress.

Personally, I inadvertently made a race that can easily be prevented from game-ending stress by just making them especially violent and having them all regularly do military training. This was sufficient, which surprised me.

[FantasticDorf]

Some thoughts remove stress, some thoughts add stress, and different thoughts and emotions cause different amounts. Unmet needs cause very minor stress.

Personally, I inadvertently made a race that can easily be prevented from game-ending stress by just making them especially violent and having them all regularly do military training. This was sufficient, which surprised me.

hehehe Goblins in a nutshell. Only ones you have to watch out about those are that there are plenty of other reasons goblins want to stab each other like bad temperament, corruption and jealousy. You might want to make them unequip their weapons off duty just to be sure it doesn't sink into anybody else.

Saying that, the clogged up load of military bugs and screens don't help new players get into the swing of making effective fighting forces and curb the Dwarven (and otherwise other race) itch to practice martial combat or just a few sparring sessions to beat out the stress, if there was a guild like establishment (of which there are still none for philosophers) for military subjects that crossed this need off it'll probably not require mass conscription for a minimum level of training.

• There's plenty of suggestions about it, not least ones relating to gladitorial combat in some capacity or watching planned or unplanned violence from a safe distance for sport to get more out of pits outside of roleplaying fortress design.

Perhaps replace martial practice with uhh exercise?