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[NW_Kohaku]

It's nice to see people rezzing older topics like this to add things on...

Anyway,

Already I'm surprised at why they domesticated animals like dogs and cats (you know, forest/plains dwellers) and not things like crundles as pets, and dralthas instead of cows.

Yaks and mountain goats yes, because they shave the same starting biome. But waterfowl ? Hell, cows, which require large amounts of grass, and not cave fungi, to eat ?

I presume it has mostly to do with the fact that in the 2d and 40d eras, there were no domesticated cavern creatures, besides maybe purring maggots. 

It is, as Bumber says, a decent assumption that they simply bought dogs, horses, chickens, and so on from humans in trade. 


In any event, I've been more interested in the idea of gas/air quality as a means of forcing some engineering challenges.  Draco18s had some detailed arguments back in 2010 that I still think are the best arguments, yet. (Although I still prefer not to use the exact term "phlogiston", and instead just use "fresh air" and "bad air".)

Currently, there's nothing stopping you from digging a vertical up/down stairway straight to the magma sea in the first Spring, and largely just bypassing all the caverns.  Requiring of players that they build more elaborate ventilation systems the more vertical they build (or at least, setting up air-recycling lichen farms underground or something else that is interesting, an engineering challenge, and time-consuming,) would make the separate layers of caverns things to actually stop at, especially if they bring with them some extra fresh air. 

[Draco18s]

Oh man, I don't even remember that post. <3

Just for the record, I'm not attached to the word "phlogiston," it does however make for a really good sciency word that means exactly what we're modeling without using the more modern words.  "Hydrogen" for example was coined in 1785(ish) meaning "water maker" because when burned it produced water (2 H₂ + O₂ -> 2 H₂O).  "Oxygen" was coined at the same time, "acid maker" or "sour maker" for similar reasons (various reactions with it produced an acid or substance with a sour taste or smell) even though acids are actually free H+ ions (bases are free HO- ions (or some other compound with a negative charge and typically features an oxygen molecule, eg. HCO₃-)).

"Fresh air" and "stale air" also works, though.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, to be honest, it was the first contact I'd had with the word "phlogiston", and it was such a bizarre term that it kind of stuck in my memory...

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I also mentioned it in the Improved Farming thread, as well, as an alternate use of farming.  Part of the point in that thread was to make players make a serious choice, since you have to "spend" fertilizer to grow anything organic.  Hence, players are given a choice:

Food to eat.
Wood to make beds or other items.
War animals to protect your fort.
Air to breathe.
Clothes to prevent tantrums.

Pick two.

[Waparius]

The mention of ventilation fans I saw in the other thread is also a meaningful and fun choice, since it gives more uses for machinery and potentially opens the fort to climbing/flying/abseiling intruders.

But I mean I still think that the best improvement farming could have would be to make it impractical for a fort to farm all its own food, making it easiest to rely on (by then automated) trading with hilldwarves.