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[SomeGuy3]

Sailing

First off, boats, the player would be able to make ships, these would only require a bunch of logs, but also can hold cannons which are made of steel and need ammo (also made of steel)
When used in water, it would have two times the speed of an experienced swimmer.
But be careful, since if the logs you used to make the ship weren't treated properly (AKA, they weren't high quality logs), your boat would have a chance of breaking, and would be weaker in general.

Pirates

Of course, if you have something, criminals will want to take it from you, and that is the case with pirates.
Pirates would behave similarly to bandits, except instead of just bullying or attacking if you are really stubborn, they straight up storm your ship, grab anything you have that has any value to them, and kill the crew that shows resistance to the attack.
If an attack is successful, the pirates might decide to take control of your ship.

Continents

Now, if you had this incredible sailing ability, what would you do with it? Well, you probably would explore deeply the unexplored, and, if you have a similar fate to the real world's Cristopher Colombus, you might find a new continent!
But, first, what is a continent?
Well, i say that continents should be randomly selected chunks of the map, that have the requirement of containing a huge landmass, a regular world should have around 4 to 7 continents.

But continets need names! How would continents be named? Well, i propose that before discovery (i'll explain how i suggest discovery works later), the continent is named after a piece of culture (be it a hero, god, monument, etc) of the dominant native civilization of the continent (AKA, the one that controls the majority of the land in the continent), for example:

Main god of the dominant civ's pantheon: Ashurath -- Name of the continent: Ashurathia

After discovery, the continent would instead be named after the person that discovered it, so it would look like:

Person that discovered the continent: Moldath -- Name of the continent: Moldathia

Discovering Continents

But how does discovering continents work?
Well, there would be a list of requirements, if these requirements are met, then it is a continent discovery:

1. The discoverer must be from a different continent to the one he's discovering
2. He must be the first foreign to reach this continent
3. If a party that fullfills both requirement 1 and 2, the discoverer is the first one of the party to geographically enter the continent

When a continent is discovered, the legends entry of the character and the legends entry of the continent should say:

At *Year* *Season*, *Discoverer's Name* discovered *Continent Name (Post-Discovery)*

[Shonai_Dweller]

Tarn on boats:
https://www.pcgamer.com/why-the-creator-of-dwarf-fortress-is-really-excited-about-boats/

And he's talked about it a in a few interviews since including potential programming issues and a love of Pirates!

It's due during the development arc on "moving fortress parts" (so after Mythgen and after the politics/society/starting Scenarios rewrite). About....20 years or so? Maybe.

Still very early, so likely not many concrete ideas yet.

[SomeGuy3]

Tarn on boats:
https://www.pcgamer.com/why-the-creator-of-dwarf-fortress-is-really-excited-about-boats/

And he's talked about it a in a few interviews since including potential programming issues and a love of Pirates!

It's due during the development arc on "moving fortress parts" (so after Mythgen and after the politics/society/starting Scenarios rewrite). About....20 years or so? Maybe.

Still very early, so likely not many concrete ideas yet.

Oh, cool, i didn't know about that interview, that's cool, i'm glad that maybe in the future i won't need to create a shark man character just to cross lands!

[Azerty]

For the boats, I would put several modes of propulsion, such as sail and rows, while allowing modders to add others such as steam or nuclear.

As for the continents, we would first have to define continents and islands; as for their names, maybe places could have different names by culture.

[Starver]

Discovering Continents

But how does discovering continents work?
Well, there would be a list of requirements, if these requirements are met, then it is a continent discovery:

1. The discoverer must be from a different continent to the one he's discovering
2. He must be the first foreign to reach this continent
3. If a party that fullfills both requirement 1 and 2, the discoverer is the first one of the party to geographically enter the continent

When a continent is discovered, the legends entry of the character and the legends entry of the continent should say:

At *Year* *Season*, *Discoverer's Name* discovered *Continent Name (Post-Discovery)*

2b. And return home.
2c. Before anyone else.
2d. And long enough before anyone else with better flattering/lying/persuasion skills.

...otherwise they get gazumped, and there's nothing they can do about it (at least until enough future scholars have written about them/more than scholars continue to support/invent the false claimant).


ETA: Hmmm, I think you've just got me to solve the problem about what I should do in my own 'exploration'-based concept game.  Cheers.

[Eusebio Ptolomeu]

For the boats, I would put several modes of propulsion, such as sail and rows, while allowing modders to add others such as steam or nuclear.

As for the continents, we would first have to define continents and islands; as for their names, maybe places could have different names by culture.

I think "continents" are kind of defined in the game already, if you check the Legends mode, each Landmass has it's own name. About boats, I understand it's challenging to create multi-tile moving parts, so until this is better achieved, couldn't we get a simpler version of a boat? I was wondering if it would be feasible for a simpler boat to be treated as a "tool" or "piece of cloth" that an unity is using, which allows it to "walk" (not swim) on water. Of course, this would mean every boat would carry only one unity, so we can forget about ships, carracks, caravels, we would only be able to have tiny boats for a single unity like Minecraft. However, if this is easier to code, than I think it would be nice to have these simpler boats first, while we wait for more complex ones.

[Starver]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coracle (and/or any of the various similar craft described/linked therein....)

[Shonai_Dweller]

In a game basically made by one person (besides artists), adding something in order to delete it later for already planned features is basically wasting time when there are so many other things to add. Simple placeholder things to help other mechanics work, sure, but boats is neither simple nor something that would enable currently worked on features to run more smoothly, so not likely to happen.

[Fikilili]

I've already made a similar thread a while back, proposing simple models for small boats that could work in a similar fashion to Wagons. But the thing is, implementing boats is quite a chore and wouldn't bring much to the game itself. For now, that is.
Having boats would do what? Expand the economy, facilitate transport, open communications with other continents and unreachable civilizations, create naval warfare, start piracy... All of those things are great, sure. But most of these basic features that are already present in the game must be polished first. First of by having an actual economy going on, or even multiple possible economic systems. Being able to create wagons and trails, as well as polishing migrant arrivals as well as the entrance of certain nobles to the fortress (A king just doesn't appear alone out of the forrest like that), Diplomacy must be expanded and made anew, improve warfare and militias, and improve already existing bandits.
Then you have the technical problems, how big should a boat be? How would it rotate? How would you rotate a multi-layered vehicle? How would you implement the wind that would blow the sails? How would you represent the ropes and the sails without making it confusing? Boats would bring hefty amounts of changes in physics and the way the game handles objects. But the thing is... It wouldn't be that game changing.
Each update had a game-changer. Each creature, mechanic, event and improvement brought something to the main modes; Fortress and Adventure mode: Forgotten Beasts changed Cave exploration, Necromancers changed the way people deal with the dead and a new menace that works completely differently from goblins, etc. And certainly Magic is gonna change the way we approach elves and fantasy beasts!
What would boats bring? Dwarf Fortress is a game that is based around fortress management, shocking, I know! Althought boats could change many things in World gen and economics, as of now, the game needs to polish certain of its aspect before jumping onto boats. Ships have so much particularities, and such history IRL, it would take a good bunch of DF's files if they were implemented, they would redefine the physics, but not the entire game.
Sure, you could say Adventure Mode could allow you to become a captain, but considering how "incomplete" adventure mode is, there's much more to focus on than implementing boats.

I mean, someone could do a DF-like ASCII Pirate game where boats are the main feature of the game. Maybe that could be you, or me, or anyone else. But as of now, DF needs polishing.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Suggestions thread is for suggestions. What needs doing now is irrelevant when there's decades of development left. Besides boats are already confirmed as being part of the next major update after the next major update after Mythgen. That's a heck of a lot of time to make suggestions in.