It's half a question, half a suggestion :
I might be totally mistaken, but it seems DF only models "isolated" parts of the natural life cycle :
animals breed but don't eat (grass e.g.),
plants grow but in a seemingly random manner (not by spreading/seeding),
predators tend to predate just for fun (and mostly dwarves),
Wildlife could locally be simulated as an ecosystem :
- plants grow, spray spore/flower and spread
- animals breed and feed on plants/other animals
If a local animal/plants disappear from the DF mode, it can be injected by the border of the map after some delay.
That way, the player has to be more careful about ressource management.
(Dwarf Fortress as a tutorial to Sustainable Development ?
)
For the global world, since such systems are too complex,
it would be sufficient to simply keep a more or less constant population of each specie,
if the prey/predator differential equation for the population numbers evolution give bad results (unstable ? ).
Intuitively, I would say that the more different animals and plants species the system has,
the more the populations will be stable because of the multiple interactions.
Also, it implies filling all ecological roles : bees, carrions, predators, preys, plants ...
On this idea, my personal opinion :
+ it's interesting/add depth to the simulation
+ it forces the player to manage ressources
- it's too complicated for little difference with an "ad hoc system" like the current one
- feeding animals AND dwarves is too difficult
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Topic: Ecosystem: Animals & Plants lifecycles (Read 748 times)