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[Meph]

Ok.

At least you now know that people are interested and wait for a release

[Girlinhat]

I've done a lot of thinking on this, and half-assed a mod of them myself (which failed).  I think the best way would be to have them domestic with a very long life and a low or no grazer score.  They are large, slow, and made of solid stone, understandably hard to kill, but also produce materials at a very slow rate.  Certain ones would go faster, like granite might produce a boulder every month or every week, to let you build a fortress in a realistic timespan, though any ore crabs would produce 1 per season or 1 per year, depending on the exact ore.  Gem crabs would have a similarly slow production, with the "good" gems produced 1-2 annually, and "junk" gems produced at double rate.

To me, it would be a safe and infinite source of materials, but with a very slow rate of production.  Common stone crabs and certain ores would be domestic, while most gems and good metals were wild, occurring in the caverns or extremely rarely on the surface.  Candy crabs and certain others would be in the magma sea, making them extremely difficult to obtain due to their tendency to run away.

Due to their slow speed they make poor war beasts, although their sheer size and the fact that their skin is made of skin or metal, makes them very difficult to kill.  You might have luck tossing a candy crab outside to face a siege, and it may route them in order, but that's a big risk.

I'm now also debating vermin.  Gembugs that drop low-value gemstones could be very fun.

[Meph]

I support girlinhats idea on that one. Gemvermin are also a funny idea, one could add them to the lower caverns. Lets see if the cats survive long down there

[hazmatbrigade]

With the whole boil that explodes to create the syndrome... are syndromes creature specific? Wouldn't want your rock crabs exploding orejizz all over your dwarves.

[EmperorJon]

I could make it only affect them using the tags, yes.

Interesting thoughts here GIN, the idea was to have them graze only on underground grass to make them harder to keep alive, and indeed for them to have a long lifespan (possibly infinite), be able to grow huge over time, and to be domestic.

I was thinking all of them could be purchased, for excessive amounts however... having them in the magma sea and caverns causes issue, I'm not sure how common they'll be. The purpose of these creatures is to provide you with things you otherwise wouldn't get... I don't want you to embark, play for a few years, then realised there aren't any around... more thinking is needed.

As for the products, rate was going to scale with the worth or usefulness.

When it comes to fighting, I'd say they aren't trainable simply because they're too stubborn and slow, but throwing them outside could be... interesting. Having them hold their own against enemies might be nice, especially givent he new turtle-retraction raws and similar.

I'll be doing more sciency thoughts.

[Funburns]

The gem vermin idea is great! It reminded me of lac bugs, which produce shellac in the real world. One of the oldest natural plastics used by humans, it has a remarkable list of applications. You may even have (safely) eaten some of it today without knowing. I wonder if shellac will be included in vanilla DF at some point...

"[gem name] scarabs" is my vote for what gembugs could be called. Should they produce fragments of gems at the same rate as spiders lay silk strands, or would they leave whole gems at a much slower rate? Should their corpses be considered gems? I would go with one to two gems per bug's life cycle to create the sense that they're tiny, rare and delicate.

As for the ore crabs, I think preventing people from embarking with them or trading for them would give incentive to explore deeper cavern layers, and it would reduce the urge to create a set-and-forget deathtrap for cavern creatures. The increased rarity would turn capturing one into a prized event, and it would prevent them from being rapidly industrialized in such a way that makes mining and trading pointless.

By the way, horseshoe crabs are today farmed for their blood, an extract of which is used in medical assays. That looks like precedent for "shearing" ore crabs for stones, if that approach was used. If it was possible to have a 15+% mortality rate on shearing, it could even be a balancing factor for making them less rare.

[Girlinhat]

Yeah, part of the reason I want the good crabs to be wild is to force action.  Caverns are generally "bother with them if you want" sort of terrain.  If you're encouraged to industrialize the caverns and perform large scale trap setting, on the scale of Sphalerite's amazing ocean traps, then things are going in the right direction.

[Meph]

On that note: I introduced three kinds of blobs in my mod (small:first cavern, normal:second cavern, big:third cavern) that appear only wild and drop special gems that are needed for magic ammo.

If I can add ore-laying crabs and (normal-)gem dropping vermin as well, together with the special trees and plants I have in the caverns... people should go there more often.

[Meph]

sry for the double post/bump, but what happened to the idea ?