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[Helgoland]

but what if they are full of food?

Then you should worry what your dwarves are eating...

[Machiavelli]

Of course, you could just mark it for dumping (ha!) and have it all dropped in a pit to create a Dwarf offal mass singularity

[Liamar]

With the new elven sites, climbing and multi-tile trees, will we see some improvements to the elven race, such as often-times suggested "magic" wood types ( eg. Ironoak, stonebark etc.) that could rival metal armors and weapons, in order to make elves suck less? As well as trading with the elves for said wood(That they don't get offended if you resell it) in order to create a sort of a global monopoly for wood imposed by the elves by threat of war? Basically like it's been so far, but more justified logic-wise.

[WillowLuman]

You may think elves suck, but then again you might not have been invaded by elephant, rhinoceros, and bear cavalry.

[Liamar]

They don't always have acces to such beasts, and not always do they spawn with them.

But no, I have only been besieged by zombies so far, and reverted to adventure mode after catching around 20 necromancers in cages. :|

[EnigmaticHat]

I think elves need their own fighting styles.  Magic wood would just be metal with a different backstory.  The Threetoe stories and donation rewards have featured elves employing woodland traps, poison (and I think poison gas), animal people allies leading hordes of animals, and also portrayed elves as being a bit more explicitly magical than the other races (except maybe goblins).  Those things plus stone arrowheads and knives should make them a force to be reckoned with.  They'd have trouble getting through full plate and dwarf fortresses, but so does everyone else, and both of those should be at least kind of rare in the world at large.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

they're immortal, they should all be legendary in anything they do by now.
that can actually be done through modding, i play with toned down skill rates for dwarves, and pumped up skill rates for elves, my dwarves take years to reach proficiency in any skill, but all elves that visit my forts are legendary in several skills, i tremble in fear of an elven kidnapee showing up leading a squad of gobbs.

[NW_Kohaku]

Will there be a need for toilets sometime?

It's been the subject of some of the most heated arguments in the Suggestions Forum, since it's one of the few things suggested that can get people really up in arms (besides homosexuality).  Specifically, there's the fear that it will result in something like people making "poop moats" that they drown elves in or something, and DF having its reputation warped into "that game where people drown elves in poop".  (Of course, the already-extant atrocities we commit daily and the fact that there are things like mass vomitings in this game don't seem to be considered in this context...)

Although it's mostly shaded by my heavy involvement with the Farming threads, the biggest argument for biological waste products I value, however, is that it links up the Nitrogen Cycle, and serves as a critical means of recycling other nutrients in farmlands.

Or, more bluntly, poop, even dwarf poop, is valuable manure for farming. 

In a world before the Haber-Bosch process invented the capacity to artificially create nitrogen or other fertilizers, you basically couldn't just take nutrients out of the soil and just replace the nutrients with something you buy in a bag from the store.  What you took from the soil, you had to return. 

In fact, even in the modern day, 70% of all the nitrogen in fertilizer is nothing more than decomposed urine.  (And urine is the body's way of getting rid of excess nitrogen from protein you've consumed.) It's just more efficient that way.

Hence, yes, I like sewers, too, but more than that, it lets you change the game from a place where food is spawned ex-nihilo from wet dirt into an actual ecosystem simulator with conservation of mass.  For dwarves to live, they must eat the crops, for crops to live, they must eat the soil, and to replenish the soil, you must decompose the waste.  (Plus, if we can decompose goblin and animal corpses as well, you create a serious "ashes to ashes" theme...)

[Lolfail0009]

Will there be a need for toilets sometime?

It's been the subject of some of the most heated arguments in the Suggestions Forum, since it's one of the few things suggested that can get people really up in arms (besides homosexuality).  Specifically, there's the fear that it will result in something like people making "poop moats" that they drown elves in or something, and DF having its reputation warped into "that game where people drown elves in poop".  (Of course, the already-extant atrocities we commit daily and the fact that there are things like mass vomitings in this game don't seem to be considered in this context...)

Although it's mostly shaded by my heavy involvement with the Farming threads, the biggest argument for biological waste products I value, however, is that it links up the Nitrogen Cycle, and serves as a critical means of recycling other nutrients in farmlands.

Or, more bluntly, poop, even dwarf poop, is valuable manure for farming. 

In a world before the Haber-Bosch process invented the capacity to artificially create nitrogen or other fertilizers, you basically couldn't just take nutrients out of the soil and just replace the nutrients with something you buy in a bag from the store.  What you took from the soil, you had to return. 

In fact, even in the modern day, 70% of all the nitrogen in fertilizer is nothing more than decomposed urine.  (And urine is the body's way of getting rid of excess nitrogen from protein you've consumed.) It's just more efficient that way.

Hence, yes, I like sewers, too, but more than that, it lets you change the game from a place where food is spawned ex-nihilo from wet dirt into an actual ecosystem simulator with conservation of mass.  For dwarves to live, they must eat the crops, for crops to live, they must eat the soil, and to replenish the soil, you must decompose the waste.  (Plus, if we can decompose goblin and animal corpses as well, you create a serious "ashes to ashes" theme...)

How would manure be handled though? Would it be an item, or a fluid due to it's affinity with liquid waste?
How would it be processed? How would corpses be processed?

[Damiac]

I have to say, I don't get toady's weird issue with having 'dwarven waste' in the game.  To say it would make people think poorly of the game is a little silly, when you consider stuff that's already in the game:

Monsters made of vomit
Children kidnapped/murdered/maimed
The fact that there's a special programmed event where a dwarf goes insane, murders another dwarf, and makes an artifact out of his bones!

I mean, it's a natural, real life, bodily process that has very real implications in the medieval setting the game is set in.

That said, it's his game, and his call. 

[zwei]

I have to say, I don't get toady's weird issue with having 'dwarven waste' in the game.

You can spend few months adding, quite literally, shit.

Or you can add stuff like:

Guilds and sects should be able to make demands for meeting halls, temples, specific furniture or the resources and time to prepare their own furniture, statues of specific gods throughout the fortress, etc.

...

Starting scenarios giving a back story for your fortress, often related to current world situation

...

Ability to attack sites and entity populations with your dwarven armies

I think choice is clear: Scat-jokes come after we are done with actually cool stuff.

[NW_Kohaku]

I have to say, I don't get toady's weird issue with having 'dwarven waste' in the game.  To say it would make people think poorly of the game is a little silly, when you consider stuff that's already in the game:

That's not Toady's objection, that's what most players who object to it object to.

IIRC, Toady's most recent reason for rejecting it was that he didn't want "more breaks", since dwarves already take breaks for eating, sleeping, drinking, partying, and just being lazy. (That led into arguments for how to take breaks more efficiently - with dwarves eating and drinking at the same time, and then going to the restroom right after...)

How would manure be handled though? Would it be an item, or a fluid due to it's affinity with liquid waste?
How would it be processed? How would corpses be processed?

Fluids would cause serious problems since it would require rewriting map code - making it a liquid contaminant something you carry in a bucket like milk already is would be easier.

The traditional way of processing liquid waste into lant (basically, ammonia, which has a surprisingly large number of industrial uses for being essentially month-old-pee) was to just leave large buckets of the stuff out for a few weeks to let bacteria decompose it for you.  We already do the same thing for corpses - we already just leave them to decompose, the change is making them decompose into a fertilizer item as well as bone items.  (Maybe some sort of creature or mushroom/worm patch or something could make decomposing faster/more efficient, but that's not necessary.) All it takes is a place for decomposing waste you can keep sealed in to prevent escaping miasma. 

[LordBaal]

Having running water both for cleaning an waste would be really cool (pipes, not aqueducts which currently are doable). But as pointed out, there's more pressing stuff and it's not like Toady doesn't want to, it's that it might attract the wrong kind of attention. However games like the sims had this as part of the game play without any kind of negative connotation.

Personally it think that in df having actual mechanics of waste and manure production would be as harmless as having yourself sit on the toilet on the sims, but again, more pressing matters and it the end it's all about what the toad feel comfortable with and what he left within the scope of modding.

[Tevish Szat]

While, personally, I support the decision to avoid more detailed bodily functions and more detailed waste than the generic "Grime and filth" material, it would be nice if, on dwarven hygiene and cleanliness, it would be nice to designate a well specifically for cleaning, at which point dwarves would "Clean self" there preferentially and not use the water that was liable to become contaminated/nasty for washing patients or emergency drinking unless no other source was avaliable.  Overseers, naturally, would have ensuring that "Cleaning" wells and "Drinking" wells didn't share a cistern on their own heads.

[PTTG??]

While, personally, I support the decision to avoid more detailed bodily functions and more detailed waste than the generic "Grime and filth" material, it would be nice if, on dwarven hygiene and cleanliness, it would be nice to designate a well specifically for cleaning, at which point dwarves would "Clean self" there preferentially and not use the water that was liable to become contaminated/nasty for washing patients or emergency drinking unless no other source was avaliable.  Overseers, naturally, would have ensuring that "Cleaning" wells and "Drinking" wells didn't share a cistern on their own heads.

See, I like this. Make dwarves "wash" more often- maybe even have them like having private drinking wells/washing wells- and then let it all be abstracted out.