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[Urist Da Vinci]

I was inspired by how bogeymen can vanish and then reappear in front of a fleeing adventurer. The current implementation for bogeymen appears to be that "x has vanished" is a form of death, due to the text color and the fact that undead currently "vanish". The bogeyman that appears in front is probably newly created.

My suggestion is that a new movement style be added, using a token such as [TELEPORTER] (similar to [FLIER]). I'd put the code in the section that currently controls movement, so tile data, pressure plates, traps, occupancy (appearing prone), burrows, liquids, grappling/stuck-ins, etc. would be respected. All that happens is that you forego pathfinding in favor of taking a single step to move directly to the destination.

Benefits could be that certain powerful enemies could bypass your outer defenses. I don't know if that would be fun for the player, but it would certainly be Fun. Maybe we need a new, Hound of Tindalos-style enemy instead of retrofitting old ones with this power. I'd suggest that they only come to your fort once you've survived other threats for years.

Some people currently cheat to speed up the construction of massive megaprojects. If this proposed token was added to dwarves, they could move between the brick stockpile and the top of a tower in a single tick, build a wall at normal speed, and then be elsewhere a tick after they finish.

Drawbacks? Beyond this being another piece of software bloat that would be lower priority than many things Toady wants to implement, it would also be difficult to integrate with adventure mode if you tried to play as a teleporter (and people would try!).

[antymattar]

I think this is too much like the something-men that mojang is making but...

Anyway, I like the idea and I think it would be great to see more magical creatures... however I think they should only be able to teleport to places that they see. How about levels of teleportation?

Lvl1- he can travel only a few blocks in any direction that he is able to see. and there might be accidents (teleporting into walls etc)
Lvl2- like level 1 but without the accidents and further range.
Lvl3- Can teleport to any location he "could" see on the map.
Lvl4- he doesnt even need to see places to go there.
Lvl5- He can go anywhere he likes on the map.
Lvl6- Holy shit-brix he can go anywhere!

[Knight Otu]

I think this is too much like the something-men that mojang is making but...

If we went by "someone else is doing it" as a reason to exclude something, there'd be no game.

Anyway, I would support teleportation since it kind of is a common sight in fantasy (less so in mythology), and had previously proposed a few raw tags for it (and other stuff):

[TELEPORT:TRUE:range]
[TELEPORT:PARTIAL:range]
[TELEPORT:SIGHT:range]
[TELEPORT_TRAIL:material]
Teleportation of certain kinds is a staple in fantasy of course. TRUE teleportation would allow blind teleporting anywhere (with failsafes to avoid teleporting into solid matter). PARTIAL teleportation would  be blocked if there is some barrier in the path that couldn't be circumvented with a few steps (walls block, trees don't, ideally). And with sight teleportation, you could only teleport to places you can see.

Such a system would remove the need for a more arbitrary level system, and a 0 range could act as a stand-in for unlimited range. Something that this system wouldn't currently take into consideration is whether a teleporting creature could teleport into physically reachable other planes. There are obviously other possible additions (origin and/or target restrictions for example - only next to oaks; or antymattar's inclusion of accidents), but that would be the base in this system. PARTIAL teleportation would still use pathfinding in some manner, I guess.

[Urist Da Vinci]

I'm not a fan of adding too many types or levels to the system. Straight goes-anywhere (no going to other planes, no range limit, no accidents) would be the easiest to implement.

Calling it "teleportation" is a modern thing. Creatures in mythology that could do this would often be referenced as appearing or disappearing in a mysterious/sudden manner. Sometimes they are only referenced as being in two places at once, or travelling very fast between two cities. Mythological genies (Jinn) were known to be able to do this. Dieities often did the "sudden appearance" trick, as well as other various spirits, demons, etc. You also get things like the seven-league boots, where the problems of having your feet 35 km apart when you take a step is glossed over.

Funny thing I found on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarnhelm
Dwarves, in an opera made by Wagner in the mid 1800's, made a magic helmet that grants invisibility, shapeshifing, and teleportation. Coincidentally, the name resembles Toady's real name.

Having a dwarven god show up in your dining hall and make a demand of your fort would have to wait until Toady figures out how the various dieties will be able to interact with the world. Having a monster who could appear in your dining hall would be scary. Why did the monster come there? Perhaps it feeds on something esoteric, like legendary experience (if your fort gets more than 30 artifacts!). You'd never see it until the late game, and then only one would be there.

[Wimopy]

This sounds really nice, but it really needs to be capped, of course uncapped would be great for Fun especially with GCS... (Imagine a GCS suddenly tearing apart your dwarves in the booze stockpile... Yes, THE BOOZE)
Artifacts with magic powers might get in later and the Tarnhelm Urist Da Vinci mentioned seems lovely...

If we do get teleportation, I'd like to see it as something like, for example, a dwarf wants to drink booze (typical), he appears in the booze stockpile, but also has to face some lag, like 10-50 ticks (Tag-defined) until it can move again... also some materials might block teleportation outright?

[drilltooth]

perhaps do something like pressurised fluid: If an unbroken path of X exists between points A and B, it can path through instantly. of course, the trick comes in defining what constitutes an "unbroken path"

[Di]

yay! no more clowns will be stopped by a single hatch cover 

[GreatWyrmGold]

Well, maybe some creatures, but if invaders, angry wild animals, or other such critters could teleport, there would be major problems unless there were some restrictions. Not-angry wild animals, like magic rabbits, could use infi-teleporting, though.

Oh, and if clowns could teleport...well...better hope that the pre-breaching circus doesn't spawn any.
Urist McStartingSeven has been struck down. X7

[coolio678]

I like it. Maybe when they teleport, a small (3x3, maybe) puff of smoke or other form of dust/ gas appears where they were standing pre teleport. Why does my computer think teleport is not a word?