I understand we're human and all, but come on, we can learn how to do crap! And we have the dwarves, again, who can show us how to do this in a sort-of right way.
We're adaptable, toolmaking, above average sized monkeies goddamnit! You saying the majority of us are incapable of learning anything? besides, who said anything we humies do had to be fancy? Even I could make a chair with enough nails and vaugly shaped pieces of wood; whatever was too long, saw. too short.... nail a smaller bit on the bottom! This is coming from a person with only limited carpentry skills (I used to help my dad with stuff requiring more than 2 hands.)
Wouldn't exactly be comfortable, but it'd be better than standing. And probably look like a bunch of scrap wood bits glued together.... Bet making spikes would be a bitch for us though.
I would imagine anything we did try to do would end badly the first few times though at least. very badly. And result in dwarves laughing at us for our ineptitude with wood and stone. masonry and most forms of metalworking I could totally understand damn near none of us knowing how to do, cause I'm not even sure what all of the tools for those are.
But it still seems like an unecessarily imposed challenge, since we humans are intelligent and quite capable of learning new things sort of quickly. Not like dwarves, but still.
No, think about it. Dwarves can build perfectly functioning cages, doors, stairs, statues - even crossbows and magma pumps -
anything the first time through. We can't. We wouldn't have the slightest idea how, for most of it. Unfortunately, Dwarf Fortress can't simulate the learning process. Rather than give everyone jobs they didn't specify, I limited myself to only giving them the jobs they said they'd be capable of. While this keeps anyone from learning anything new, it also keeps people like KodKod from being upset that I gave them cleaning duty, or sent them to work in the mines. It helps preserve the characters that people laid out for themselves in this thread. If it was completely realistic, we'd all learn to do the jobs that needed done. Anyone can chop a tree, right? But who among us do I assign the task?
Stil was a lucky find. He said he'd do anything. lol Therefore, he was the one to step up to chop down the forest - and he ended up doing a pretty damn good job of it, too. The second time through I was able to add Oliolli to woodcutting duty, and it got done twice as fast.
Plus, if I just gave anyone what jobs I wanted, that would be entirely too easy, and hardly worth a playthrough.
Even
with the lack of food.
On the topic of sky whalesfirst test, they mercilessly killed everything. So I created an avatar of Dwarfkind to see if that balanced things a bit.
Cue arena mode testing:
I spawned one of them against 43 grand master (everything) Dwarf axelords in full kit (cloaks, mail shirts, breastplates - the full deal). By the end of the ordeal it had no arms or legs, and all of its facial features were broken, and it still killed them all.
Naturally, I'm going to make it so that both the sky-whales and these things attack your fort. Splendid!
Epic. This reminds me of the time that I modded dragons so that they could fly, learn and open doors, and then created a civilization for them. Those were the worst sieges I've ever experienced... but they were fun.