Children are the only issue of my fortress and I have no clue how to deal with them

[Mepho]

So I'm in my 8th year of embark, the settlement became capital, got monarch and consort all set, everything is golden and my population has stopped on a perfect 200 after being a little above that for some years. I produce a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of everything, food, drinks and commodities, I have 2 legendary squads and a marksman squad, defensive fortifications and I already killed a couple titans and some ettins. I spent a few hours on youtube researching stuff and this is my third fort (first one was the tutorial, second one I abandoned after living enclosed for 4 years due to giant fauna continually attacking every dwarf that went outside and costant undead sieges, plus no water so I decided it was better to just do a new embark) and it would seem I'd got everything figured out, but... I can't for the life of me understand what the ♥♥♥♥ to do with children.

I'm overwhelmed by them (about 30) and they are destroying my fortress.

All of them are stuck in a red or orange mood, they keep either getting depressed or throwing tantrums and each time they tantrum, unless they started doing so in their room, someone is going to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ die because these kids throw giga falcon punches.

I had about 300 toys, noticed all of them were stored in bins. I made 300 more, put stockpiles of them in the guild halls, forbidden bins. Nothing changed.
I tried removing them from chores and after a year nothing changed still.
Now a kid went tantruming again and just punched one of my legendary planters in the stomach so hard that he stumbled 4 floors vomiting towards the hospital and died on his way there. At times they kill more than just one dwarf, other times they start killing animals, they once started an inn brawl that led me to straight reload an autosave as well (70+ deaths).
Captain of the guard doesn't seem to do anything, convicting the kids does nothing.

I'm starting to consider just burrowing them somewhere and atom smash (which is gonna be an issue in itself, considering kids don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about burrows apparently) or start locking them in their rooms when they go to sleep and leave them to die.

What is one supposed to do with these stupidly strong, unsatisfiable killer children?

[zeeb]

I usually give the same advice to everyone having problem children.
Rollercoaster to the core using minecarts.

It's fun to watch, the children will enjoy it, you will enjoy it, it has a big splash at the end as well as having the problem be solved.

Win-win-win situation.

[Mepho]

I was reluctant on mass euthanization because I expected 30 dead children to take a massive hit on the rest of my population's mood. Is that not a thing?

[zeeb]

They'll get over it.

If not, you still have the rollercoaster.
On some coasters, it is advisable that parents ride with their children.

[Mepho]

Originally posted by zeeb:

They'll get over it.

If not, you still have the rollercoaster.

I suppose I'll go with the final solution if that's the only solution.

But are children just not working properly or what?

[zeeb]

I mean, they do chores, but that's it. They're worse than adults in every way, but at least they're not completely useless as they were before.

Sometimes they can even get strange moods which turns them legendary.

[Morkonan]

I had a huge problem with children, but much earlier.

The thing is, if they develop bad longterm memories early, you'll get repeated tantrum spirals. So, if you don't rush to stop them from hauling corpses in the early game, you pay for it later.

I solved for it (mostly, not entirely - Keep in mind some children died because of them) by doing a few things:

Toys do give them bursts of happy thoughts.

Clothes - They're surprisingly concerned about their appearance, even if they don't care about a lot else. Make sure everyone has nice clothes.

Rooms - Build plenty of good bedrooms.

I have toy stockpiles in Guilds/Temples/Taverns as well. Make SURE you include all the material and quality tags or none will be stocked. As it is, I still can't get any sense of any sort of even distribution. (For any filtered item that has multiple stockpiles. The only way I think it can be reasonable achieved is using Minecarts... But, keep trying.)

I also put up more nice quality doors... Dorfs love them some doors. I don't know if Children pay attention to them, but adult Dorfs do and those are free Happy Thoughts.

Children will equip toys and take them. I found a child playing in a coffin in the crypt having happy memories about playing with his new puzzle-box...

I also buy Toys from caravans. I don't know that they don't prefer those, but that's my head-cannon, so I always buy some toys for the kids... :)

[Mepho]

Originally posted by zeeb:

I mean, they do chores, but that's it. They're worse than adults in every way, but at least they're not completely useless as they were before.

Sometimes they can even get strange moods which turns them legendary.

Yeah I did get a number of artifacts from their depressed moods, but I'd rather have a happy colony with less artifacts than a rich one full of dead adults and bloody-fisted children...

[zeeb]

Originally posted by Mepho:

Originally posted by zeeb:

I mean, they do chores, but that's it. They're worse than adults in every way, but at least they're not completely useless as they were before.

Sometimes they can even get strange moods which turns them legendary.

Yeah I did get a number of artifacts from their depressed moods, but I'd rather have a happy colony with less artifacts than a rich one full of dead adults and bloody-fisted children...

Best way to solve that issue is to make sure the adults are carrying weapons, incase they need to "discipline" the children.

[zeeb]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Clothes - They're surprisingly concerned about their appearance, even if they don't care about a lot else. Make sure everyone has nice clothes.

Do dwarves automatically equip better clothes?

All dwarves have shoes, but I've made some leather high boots and they ain't switching.
Though, the quality of the boots was just normal, so that might've been the issue.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Mepho:

Originally posted by zeeb:

I mean, they do chores, but that's it. They're worse than adults in every way, but at least they're not completely useless as they were before.

Sometimes they can even get strange moods which turns them legendary.

Yeah I did get a number of artifacts from their depressed moods, but I'd rather have a happy colony with less artifacts than a rich one full of dead adults and bloody-fisted children...

Tantrum'ing children are little murder-machines and can one-shot a Legendary Weaponsmith. :/

Artifacts are nice, but good luck with Thief and Intrigue spam.

I prefer happy Dorfs, too. When I see that, I like to think it's because I'm doing a good job as their benevolent overlord. And, unhappy kids make me unhappy for them... in the roleplaying sense.

[Mepho]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

...

Sounds a lot like my same experience, I didn't have the issue with stockpiles due to quality but rather because of bins (which is probably my second biggest problem with the game, in truth, so I'll try to not get started about it).
I went through other attempts as well, like making a waterfall for them, but nothing ever solved anything (or even made a difference, really).

I didn't check clothes, but I set a number of work orders in the beginning to make sure my clothing needs were satisfied. I didn't check if kids use different clothing tho, may that be the issue? I never saw a naked kid run around tho.

Bedrooms are all 3x3 (got a whole floor dedicated to them) and smoothed with bed, chest and cabinet. They seem to be very good for adults, do children even need more?

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by zeeb:

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Clothes - They're surprisingly concerned about their appearance, even if they don't care about a lot else. Make sure everyone has nice clothes.

Do dwarves automatically equip better clothes?

All dwarves have shoes, but I've made some leather high boots and they ain't switching.
Though, the quality of the boots was just normal, so that might've been the issue.

Yes, they will change clothes to better ones. Sometimes... infuriatingly so.

Dorfs don't really understand the concept of advanced footware. Shoes/Boots will be worn, but they don't really understand "materials." They are quite happy wearing just socks...

If you want them wearing something specific, either only provide that for them to wear or get all of them into a Civilian Squad and designate Uniforms.

PS: You'll find decent clothing that still has wear to be worn out of it on the floor, discarded in favor of some new higher-quality silky thing or some such. Different Dorfs DO have preferences in terms of how well dressed they want to be. I've also seen Dorfs wearing multiple amulets as I have a glut of those, thanks to the King and his passion for them.

[Mepho]

Originally posted by zeeb:

Best way to solve that issue is to make sure the adults are carrying weapons, incase they need to "discipline" the children.

But they won't use them even if they do. At least one axe lord got face blasted by a chad-kid punch already. They just try to get away and the kid will chase them until they stop breathing. I wish at least it would be the kids getting the short straw which would "somewhat" solve the problem but no, there's no escape, lol.

[jeetrix]

all my children are happy playing games and skilling on toys.
no child labor in my fortress. Saves on psychosis incidents in puberty :)

They are a real treasure for the future.

Not sure how y'all fubarring the little buggers tho having them hauling corpses and what not , wtf do you expect

[Mepho]

Originally posted by jeetrix:

[...]

In truth they didn't even haul wood because I've noticed in my second fort that getting rained on seem to be like rape for them, so I didn't want em on the surface at all.

The only thing that may have scarred them in this run is not being able to pull toys from bins for a couple months at worst.