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[Spyton]

So I just read a large amount of the improved farming, rebooted agricultural revolution.http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=76007.msg1920005#msg1920005 and it gave me an idea that could end up being a bit of fun, and satisfying part of the goals of that thread. This is not to say that it is any sort of a solution for the problem stated in it.

My idea was one for underground garbage dumps that would be set up with a chute channeled downward that all your garbage would go into, and when it reached the base floor of the dump it would scatter and what not into a cavern, this gets rid of garbage obviously, but instead of it just rotting away, it turns the cavern into a sort of deranged wonderland that produces its own natural food/plant sources that could be gathered by your dwarfs. But plants would not be the only thing that would grow in the pit. New (or old) monsters and creatures would form from the muck in the pit. So this pit would now create food, monsters, and random creatures. <overall it would just be a new source of fun and diversity.

For the most part the creatures that would grow from the pit would be rather innocous and usefull only as pets, pests, and short term food. but rarely a creature would form that would be dangerous, Such as a Blob or a fungus behemoth(wich would have a building destroyer capability.

The pit itself would have to be rather large to start dumping in order to hold all the garbage. The ground would become coated with a slick ooze after a while or after a set amount of garbage had been dumped into it. It could act like a self replicating mud.

 And a new job could be created for it, Pit Harvestor! Pit harvestors would be skilled in not slipping and sliding on the ooze and avoiding any monsters or beasts in the pit while still harvesting all the good parts of the pit.<this of course would be a fairly nasty job and only suited for very few dwarves.

Of course you could just wall off the pit and have it as a simple garbage dump and not know any thing about whats growing within it. Maybe the floor ooze itself chews away at the rock and makes the cavern bigger(to a set size as to not become impeding)

Who knows maybe the ooze will create an intelligent monster man that starts its own civilization on the refuse of your dwarves.

Bonus points for creating multiple chutes for the garbage to go down.

Sorry if post is repeat at all. I did search found nothing I considered similar.

[10ebbor10]

Well, one thing is that this suggestion is a rather specific hardcoded one. You could, maybe, replace it with a general framework using a small number of contaminants to track different source of garbage, and as such achieve the same, but dynamically.

So each piece of waste has X parameters(biological waste, magical waste, heavy metals pollution, ...) and based on these parameters stuff could happen.  You could tie it in with a magical field system for extra fun.

[NW_Kohaku]

I see a problem in enticing people to want to interact with this system in the first place.

That is, people can already dispose of garbage in ways that involve completely destroying it (like dumping it in magma or atom-smashing) rather than just dumping it into a cavern and hoping that never comes back to bite them. 

In fact, not only do people not have much reason to want to do that, but they have good reason not to want to do that - junk items still consume FPS, and disposing of those items permanently by moving them off-map somehow restores FPS.

In order to make people want to try messing with this, there has to be either some reason the simple current solutions don't work, or that the new system provides benefits that the old solutions can't provide that somehow make up for its negatives.

Simply adding more !!Fun!! is kind of why most people don't build into the caverns, already - survival depends on controlling and mitigating the chances for Fun.  Food alone, likewise, would be contingent upon food actually being scarce enough to be worth taking risks to obtain.

[10ebbor10]

There are several options for that, the most simplest of which being that destruction of the garbage in any way just moves the pollution into the ground.

[Di]

The idea in whole, I find it a tiny bit over restricted. It limits the players to the only way of playing, the one you've come up with.
Though I like this part:

just dumping it into a cavern and hoping that never comes back to bite them. 

kinda resonates with the idea of elven necromancers bringing wooden furniture to life.
That stuff would fit in nicely when it comes to magic and otherworlds.
You know, so that all copper items would turn into small beetles and run away at a place of death of an ancient beast, or so that in some weird realm a dwarves would have to avoid creating cat tallow roasts for they transform into homicidal cookie midgets. Or something weird happening when you mix your normal refuse with the waste from alchemy lab.

[Loud Whispers]

New (or old) monsters and creatures would form from the muck in the pit. So this pit would now create food, monsters, and random creatures. <overall it would just be a new source of fun and diversity.

First saplings. Then shruberry and vermin. Before long, endless waves of filthy creatures rising from the muck...

Sounds like something brilliant, but it'd as Di said be better as a feature not a game mechanic. Like finding this thing near the SMR for example, or somewhere in the caverns or buried in evil rock layers.