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[FreakyCheeseMan]

So... right now keeping dwarves happy is too damn easy. I've had fortresses I've *wanted* to see tantrum spiral, but couldn't get them to without methodically destroying my entire base.

My understanding is that the current model is a linear system- every good thing tugs you one way, every bad thing tugs you another.

I propose we divide this up into multiple scales- "Art" "Status" "Food and Drink" "Personal Life" "Professional Life" "Sanitation", maybe. Dwarven happiness will be limited by how many of these fields are satisfied. For instance, no amount of Art will make a dwarf happy if he sleeps in a tiny room, eats vermin, is mourning the loss of his family, has had hi smasterworks destroyed and encountered a miasma, possibly resulting from his family.

For specific mechanics, each field would have a range- "Art" might go from 2 to -1, for instance, as there is only so depressed a dwarf can get from lack of art. "Status" might be a greater range, or relate to the dwarf's status in society- a peasant would have 8 to 0, while a noble would have 1 to -7. "Sanitation" might go from 1 to -3; Personal life from 10 to -10.

Each field would compute it's own bonus or penalties, and add them together, resulting in the total happiness level. This way, you couldn't keep a fortress entirely happy with only fancy statues, and to make a dwarf truly ecstatic, it would require keeping them happy in *all* walks of life

[Solace]

Since the one thing that seems to prevent tantrum spirals is the dining hall, maybe there should be a cap for the amount of happiness any one thing can influence? For example, a royal dining hall would give up to X happiness, legendary up to Y, and so on... rather than either one adding X or Y each and every time.

[TheSummoner]

Furthermore, the specifics of the Dwarf's personality should affect the minimum and maximum effect of each area.  A Dwarf with a natural inclination towards art should be heavily influenced by art, but one with no artistic sence should only have his mood minimally influenced by even masterpiece artwork,

[kcwong]

Ninja'ed... what I've been typing is a combination of some previous posts...

So you're proposing a Sims-like system... multiple scales for different aspect, that combines into a single overall happiness score. Interesting.

The dwarf's personality should come into play too. A messy dwarf won't mind being covered in a bit of blood, while a lazy dwarf won't enjoy having to walking 40z levels down to the magma forge to work. A gluttonous dwarf would get mad if he's unable to get food he likes.

Different min/max values would be rather confusing... how about using the same scale (say 0 to 100) for each aspect. Starting value is 50. When something bad happens, give negative points. When something good happens, give positive points. Points over 100 or lower than 0 are ignored.

Then apply a modifier (e.g. x1.5 if he's casual about it, or x0.4 if he cares a lot) according to the dwarf's personality, to combine into the overall happiness score. Nobles would generally have lower modifiers to reflect their higher requirements.

For the aspects:
Health - From sick to healthy. Modifier would be x1 for most.
Body - Body parts missing/crippled/damaged. Modifier would be x1 for most. For cripples, modifier slowly increases as they get used to it.
Possessions - Items owned. Item type, quantity and quality. Nobles would care about this a lot.
Housing - Rooms owned. Size, furniture, etc. Nobles would care about this a lot.
Profession - Amount of quality jobs done (making a masterpiece should be more satisfying). Gaining a skill rank, etc.
Food
Drink - Splitting this from Food because dwarfs care about booze a lot. Modifier for booze could be x0.5 by default.
Friends
Family
Love
Enemy - No. of enemies, and how many times you've argued/fought with them. If your enemy loses argument/suffers/dies, positive points!
Fortress - Total wealth of fortress, is that a goblin in our dinning hall, etc.

[Medicine Man]

Well if personality traits are put in I have a useful one:Sadist:Sadists LOVE killing (more than any other type of dwarf)and get happy from killing painfully,they get happy thoughts for feeling pain and don't care about deaths of other dwarfs.

Now aside from my Failed idea this sounds great.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Right now, dwarfs need a huge bonus to happiness when they're released from prison, because otherwise, they're liable to tantrum at the drop of a hat.  Likewise, tantruming dwarfs tend to spiral down down down, because they get hit, beaten, locked up, and never get any work done.

This kind of needs to happen for the prison system to be an interesting mechanic, because otherwise, it's just a death sentence.  I'm wondering how either of your systems (freakycheeseman and kcwong) would deal with these sort of extreme cases?

I also wonder what your goals are with this system.  Do you want dwarfs to be ecstatic less often?  Or do you want them to suffer tantrums more frequently?  Those two things don't necessarily go hand in hand, and ecstasy doesn't really have any of the bleed into different parts of the game that unhappiness does; unhappiness is the relevant part of happiness, not ecstasy.

[kcwong]

Right now, dwarfs need a huge bonus to happiness when they're released from prison, because otherwise, they're liable to tantrum at the drop of a hat.  Likewise, tantruming dwarfs tend to spiral down down down, because they get hit, beaten, locked up, and never get any work done.

This kind of needs to happen for the prison system to be an interesting mechanic, because otherwise, it's just a death sentence.  I'm wondering how either of your systems (freakycheeseman and kcwong) would deal with these sort of extreme cases?

Add small happiness points when they are released? Also, let them take a break first when released, so they have a chance to catch up with friends and family. Like prisoners of the real world, when released they go celebrate! Compared to getting beaten which will have no happy points, this finally give players a good reason to build a prison (many avoid prison by not having a captain of the guards at all).

Personality also comes into play... stubborn ones will still be grumpy, but others will learn to accept the punishment and reform, thus becoming less unhappy.

I also wonder what your goals are with this system.  Do you want dwarfs to be ecstatic less often?  Or do you want them to suffer tantrums more frequently?  Those two things don't necessarily go hand in hand, and ecstasy doesn't really have any of the bleed into different parts of the game that unhappiness does; unhappiness is the relevant part of happiness, not ecstasy.

I was building on top of FreakyCheeseMan's system, so my goals may not be exactly his. But mine is to make happiness more realistic... when bad things happen you cannot offset it easily with a nice dinner in a nice dinning hall with lots of beautiful statues.

Having different aspects, each capped from 0 to 100, will make that much less likely.

The changes to each aspect will be adjusted by personality, making it more realistic. A fat noble dwarf that likes fine food will be hard to satisfy, as he has a 0.1 modifier on food aspect.

Also how the aspects combine into an overall happiness score can be modified, though not by personality (that is accounted for during increase/decrease). e.g. Luxuries like food, possessions and housing would have a lower modifier on nobles when compared to civilians, while civilians care more about friends, family and profession.

[ghosteh]

Well if personality traits are put in I have a useful one:Sadist:Sadists LOVE killing (more than any other type of dwarf)and get happy from killing painfully,they get happy thoughts for feeling pain and don't care about deaths of other dwarfs.

Now aside from my Failed idea this sounds great.

you could put that in as a sadism/masochism axis with dwarves at one end enjoying inflicting pain and dwarves at the other enjoying receiving pain, with the majority of dwarves in the middle

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Different min/max values would be rather confusing... how about using the same scale (say 0 to 100) for each aspect. Starting value is 50. When something bad happens, give negative points. When something good happens, give positive points. Points over 100 or lower than 0 are ignored.

Then apply a modifier (e.g. x1.5 if he's casual about it, or x0.4 if he cares a lot) according to the dwarf's personality, to combine into the overall happiness score. Nobles would generally have lower modifiers to reflect their higher requirements.

Well, the modifier lets you make some things more/less important than others- max happiness from art should not cancel max misery from dead relatives- your system doesn't let some fields have a different capacity to make you happy than sad.

Take Art. Most people can be made fairly happy by the presence of beautiful works of art in their lives- however, they won't feel their lack all that strongly. Conversely, most people sort of expect to live in clean conditions- having things immaculate might make them a little happy, but nothing compared to the misery they could potentially experience from living in filth.

Right now, dwarfs need a huge bonus to happiness when they're released from prison, because otherwise, they're liable to tantrum at the drop of a hat.  Likewise, tantruming dwarfs tend to spiral down down down, because they get hit, beaten, locked up, and never get any work done.

This kind of needs to happen for the prison system to be an interesting mechanic, because otherwise, it's just a death sentence.  I'm wondering how either of your systems (freakycheeseman and kcwong) would deal with these sort of extreme cases?

I also wonder what your goals are with this system.  Do you want dwarfs to be ecstatic less often?  Or do you want them to suffer tantrums more frequently?  Those two things don't necessarily go hand in hand, and ecstasy doesn't really have any of the bleed into different parts of the game that unhappiness does; unhappiness is the relevant part of happiness, not ecstasy.

Being released from prison would probably count as "Personal Life", and might be a huge thing there; as Personal Life has a high cap, his release could raise it enough to let him happily re-integrate. Or, if it's that much of a problem, "Prison Release" could be it's own category,with 0 to 20- so a cap high enough to make anyone happy, but a very difficult sort of happiness to get.

My goal is to make keeping your dwarves happy more of a challenge- right now it can be done by just having a lovely dining room and spamming enough art objects to drown them in happy thoughts. I have dwarves who remain ecstatic with the deaths of their families, the destruction of their art work, anything, just because I put masterwork statues in all of the stairwells. Yeah, determining when they get sad is more important than ecstatic- I mostly consider "Ecstatic" to be a sort of emotional armor, a baseline you want to keep them at so that when the Plump Helmet Men rise up in vengeance and eat their baby daughter, they have time to get over it before going berserk.

[NW_Kohaku]

Hmm... I've actually got a half-written suggestion that includes something fairly similar to this as part of it.

As such, I support it, although in a slightly different form, but would rather just post my own rather than go down point-by-point.  I guess what I really need, though, is to summon the willpower to write the rest of my manifesto.

I will say this, though, I would rather like to see something about a need for dwarves to have at least some socialization.  Currently, all socializing is seen as basically just making your fortress vulnerable to tantrum spirals without having any serious benefit, as the positive gains of socializing are so small, especially compared to the "just put statues everywhere" bonuses.

The ease with which tantrum spirals can occur, and the introduction of penalties for NOT letting dwarves have some social life would help remedy this problem.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Hermit games can still be fun, and we shouldn't make that impossible. I agree that socializing should be more of a double-edged sword, though, and less of a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot.

I'd put that in "Personal Life", which would have the biggest range- thus you could get a lot of happiness out of giving your dwarves a healthy social life.

[NW_Kohaku]

Tantrum spirals in general should be nerfed, though.  Currently, whole fortresses can descend into screaming madness at the death of one well-connected dwarf.  A limit on how depressed dwarves can be over the death of people they know, so that having an otherwise very functional fort which keeps dwarves fairly happy in other ways will not lead to domino effect tantrums and general riots on the streets would be both fair and relatively realistic.  (How many cities in real life have exploded in orgies of violence because one popular person died, even if those cities weren't particularly good places to live to begin with?)

As for hermit games, I agree that they should still be possible, but at the same time, should take very particular dwarves.  Having reclusive personality traits may exempt one from the need to socialize for long periods of time, so that you could still have a "One Dwarf Against The World" scenario where it would just take a severely anti-social dwarf to do it.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Tantrum spirals in general should be nerfed, though.  Currently, whole fortresses can descend into screaming madness at the death of one well-connected dwarf.  A limit on how depressed dwarves can be over the death of people they know, so that having an otherwise very functional fort which keeps dwarves fairly happy in other ways will not lead to domino effect tantrums and general riots on the streets would be both fair and relatively realistic.  (How many cities in real life have exploded in orgies of violence because one popular person died, even if those cities weren't particularly good places to live to begin with?)

As for hermit games, I agree that they should still be possible, but at the same time, should take very particular dwarves.  Having reclusive personality traits may exempt one from the need to socialize for long periods of time, so that you could still have a "One Dwarf Against The World" scenario where it would just take a severely anti-social dwarf to do it.

See... I've played a lot, taken several fortresses to ~20 years, and I've yet to see a tantrum spiral. Kings have died, I've unleashed demons with my military nowhere nearby... nobody gives a damn. A few of my original dwarves rotted away in prison, nothing. They sound like one of the most Fun things in DF, but... I just don't see them. So I'm in favor of making them more hardcore, not nerfing them.

Also, I'd say that the deaths of family should have a very high cap- or low, depending on how you look at it. I imagine enough family member deaths would depress you a lot more than any amount of bad art, shitty food or poor accomodations.

And yeah... you can see personality traits at embark, right? So i guess that works for hermit games. So long as people know that.

[Solace]

See... I've played a lot, taken several fortresses to ~20 years, and I've yet to see a tantrum spiral. Kings have died, I've unleashed demons with my military nowhere nearby... nobody gives a damn.

I agree, this is the second fortress I've made that's been 80% depopulated by goblins, after some failed artifacts left insane dwarves running around, and this time right after dwarves where dying left and right from a lack of food and dehydration (not that I was low on booze or water). I literally could not make my dwarves less happy unless I started breaking stuff myself, but that one dining hall...

[aepurniet]

So you're proposing a Sims-like system... multiple scales for different aspect, that combines into a single overall happiness score. Interesting.

The dwarf's personality should come into play too. A messy dwarf won't mind being covered in a bit of blood, while a lazy dwarf won't enjoy having to walking 40z levels down to the magma forge to work. A gluttonous dwarf would get mad if he's unable to get food he likes.

even if we make lots of different little scales combining them into one big one would just defeat the purpose.  we (the 'royal' we) need these little levels to affect behavior.  having only dwarves act out when they are sad limits the realism of the sim.  i think really clean dwarves (dirty phobia) should act out and constantly clean when there are lots of dirty dwarves around (urist mcOCD was disgusted by another dwarf today).  gluttonous dwarves should eat more when they are sad about something else (and then get fat and slow).  dwarven personality traits should really come into play, not by combining their happiness levels across subjects, but by their individual levels in those subjects.

i hope it gets implemented this way, and im already salivating at the prospect of all the little bugs of the initial release (if it ever happens).  there was a nice thread about how these psychological rolls could be implemented a little while back.