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[EmperorJon]

Anyone interested in a mod where big cave crab things lay ores, gems, and stones, but in a balanced manner? I have half of one here...

[Meph]

Sure.

Would make embarking on worlds without certain metals a lot easier, as long as they truly are balanced.  Have no iron ? Order/Buy (expensive) iron crabs from the mountainhomes. Sounds good.

Maybe giving them a low maxage, so they die easily of old age. This way people cant stock up on hundrets of them.
EDIT: A very high grazer value would work as well. Egg-layers starve themselves to death, without leaving the nestbox. You could abuse this, and give them a grazer value that starves them within 1-2 years. Same effect as the maxage.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

It's shell can be sheared for rock, which that sheared rock can be processed into boulders.
The crab would a have ore and gem layers they progressly took longer to regrow,

Stone fastest
Ore medium
Gem slowest

Allow it to lay eggs/ give live birth normally. But restrict it to one child at a time, and a short lifespan?

Damnit ninja'd by Meph

[EmperorJon]

The idea was actually to have it lay the rocks, and eggs, but hardly ever lay eggs. They're more expensive the more useful/valuable their product is, so you can't embark with loads of useful ones, and they're also a lower pop.ratio too so when mating you'll get mostly, you know, Diorite Crab.
Not only that, they're prone to being a bit grumpy, dangerous when they get angry, quite messy (secreting general rock waste and stuff, maybe with a few syndromes) , etc. for balancing.

The idea is you could mine every ore and stone, and then breed hundreds of these things to keep getting it, but in a balanced way. There'll even be an Adamantine Crab, but it'll be... ahem, rare.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

The idea was actually to have it lay the rocks, and eggs, but hardly ever lay eggs. They're more expensive the more useful/valuable their product is, so you can't embark with loads of useful ones, and they're also a lower pop.ratio too so when mating you'll get mostly, you know, Diorite Crab.
Not only that, they're prone to being a bit grumpy, dangerous when they get angry, quite messy (secreting general rock waste and stuff, maybe with a few syndromes) , etc. for balancing.

The idea is you could mine every ore and stone, and then breed hundreds of these things to keep getting it, but in a balanced way. There'll even be an Adamantine Crab, but it'll be... ahem, rare.

Cotten candy should only be made from 500 crab hearts

[Meph]

Again, I like they idea.

I would make a different creature for each material though. No sense in Diorite crabs giving birth to gneiss crabs. I would limit it to metals anyway.

Or, to be more precise: I would only use them the way I described it in my Mod How you set them up here is up to you.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

it should be a mix of generic materials and new creature.

Have all of them point there soft tissues/materials point to a generic crab base creature.

This will keep clutter out of the stockpile screen so not to have "Crab 1" "crab 2" etc in the list

Meph can explain better

[EmperorJon]

I was intending them to be castes of the same creature... I'm not sure. Is there any way for are a creature to change material as it grows? There's not is there. Having Diorite Crabs laying Gneiss Crab eggs would be "normal" assuming the crab was simply a "baby crab", it appears to gain its actual material as it grows. Or something. It'd be possible by making the child name not include the mineral, then the only way you'd know the mineral before it grew (and became useful) would be if it was butchered for its shell or something.

But yeah, there's be rock crabs, clay crabs, ore crabs and gem crabs. Maybe not exactly the same, maybe the gem crabs would be smaller or something. I'll keep brainstorming ideas.

Note, a friend is also learning DF modding so this is going to provide a platform for some of his ideas too. When done, it will hopefully be like the Caramel mod but really intended to be a subsitute for the standard creatures, or indeed Dwarf Caramel. It's going to be its own thing.

Possible inclusions:
Rock Crabs - Lays minerals, quite bulky, slow.
Magmaworm - Hive vermin?
Longfang Spider - Some sort of cave spider inbetween the normal and giant sized. Imagine generic fantasy spiderling sized, used in war to incapacitate enemies.

[Di]

I was intending them to be castes of the same creature... I'm not sure. Is there any way for are a creature to change material as it grows?

You could fiddle with syndromes to change their castes with the time passing. Getting the syndromes on them however...

[CheatingChicken]

I was intending them to be castes of the same creature... I'm not sure. Is there any way for are a creature to change material as it grows?

You could fiddle with syndromes to change their castes with the time passing. Getting the syndromes on them however...

That's something I was wondering about: Is it possible to make a creature have a body part which instantly boils to apply syndromes as soon as it grows/regrows?

[EmperorJon]

Yes, it is damn it! I've got it!

Secretion which secretes a contact syndrome material! To the science mobile!

[BigD145]

Sand or clay vomit would be hilarious and useful.

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, rather than making them domesticated, I think it might be more fun leaving them as wild animals. 

I think some sort of "magma crab" whose shell hardens with metals and gemstones that is a pain to try to catch, but profitable, that lives in the magma sea would be an amusing and Fun type of creature.

Of course, if you guys want to run with that, I guess I can always just mod some up, myself.

[Meph]

One thing you have to consider: There are no caste specific graphics. If you make it a caste system, they will all look the same. (or you have to use caste tiles, these you can color)

If you want custom sprites, you have to make them seperate creatures.

[EmperorJon]

Custom sprites will be a no-no. I'm still thinking through exactly how I want this to work. I think domesticated work best...