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[Lord Dalek]

Hello everyone, I have a suggestion. I often settle my fortresses on islands, or far away from my home civilization, on another continent. I have larger worlds, as you may be able to guess. So this idea came to me, for both fortress mode (in a minor way), and adventure mode (in a somewhat larger way).

Boats! In fortress mode, sometimes trading caravans will come in ships instead of wagons, as long as you are separated by the civilization by water AND are near a river or ocean. So, they would have a minor use in Fortress mode, though one could possibly sink a ship by attacking it with siege engines. Just to provide some fun.

In adventure mode, they have a slightly more than aesthetic purpose, allowing one to quickly travel across oceans, with a potential for fun in the form of pirates on ships, much like kolob squads of the ocean. This also would allow oceanic monsters to come into play, being on a warship (there would be both trading ships and warships), fighting a giant sperm whale.

Sorry the idea is not detailed, I can post a much more detailed version later.   

[pisskop]

One day.  Individual rowboats or fortress boats would require all kind of physics and ai work.

Civilization boats to bring invaders/trader/etc would bemore feasible.

But one day.  Sigh, one day.

[612DwarfAvenue]

Boats have already been suggested many, many times. It's already on the "figure it out if possible" list.

[Dorf and Dumb]

Hmmm, how about just allowing minecarts to float on the water (if light enough) and for dorfs to stand on them (if they don't make them too heavy) and for the carts to move if the water is flowing.

[pisskop]

Hmmm, how about just allowing minecarts to float on the water (if light enough) and for dorfs to stand on them (if they don't make them too heavy) and for the carts to move if the water is flowing.

They skip if you get them fast enough. And they can already ride the carts.

[Skullsploder]

Hmmm, how about just allowing minecarts to float on the water (if light enough) and for dorfs to stand on them (if they don't make them too heavy) and for the carts to move if the water is flowing.

That's actually brilliant. Just take the exact coding of a minecart, stops and all, and apply it to a "boat" which is like a minecart that can path over water like tracks and only has the guide option. Sure, this wouldn't be a perfect solution, but it would certainly allow you to use overcomplicated and rather pointless canals instead of minecart tracks, and hey, who doesn't want to do that?

[Blastbeard]

Floating minecarts as single passenger boats would make for a good stopgap between nothing and something more complex. Making wood float in general would be a good idea and open up some interesting possibilities.
I had an idea a while back of using some kind of rowboat to ferry passenger and cargo between two boathouse buildings over large bodies of water. It would require space for one rower dwarf and at least one passenger or pile of items, so that rowboat would probably be two tiles long at the least. I imagine them traveling in a straight line and being very easy to intercept by predatory fish and pesky arrows.
The only drawback with that system is that you actually have to able to cross the body of water to build the other boathouse, but the ability to cut straight across the water after it's set up would make travel more convenient.

I dream of a day when I can build a massive boat, have my elite wrestler dwarf pen two of every animal I've captured onto it, and have him beat the crap out of every single one.

[Lord Dalek]

I can just imagine on the "Stupid Dwarf Tricks" wiki page.

"Armok's Ark:" Make a massive wooden boat, put two of all animals on it, and have a dwarf beat them all to death.
BONUS: put one male and one female animal on the boat
SUPERBONUS: Flood the map
MEGABONUS: Edit the raws and put two forgotten beasts on the boat. And beat them to death.

[Teldin]

I'd love to be able to build floating fortresses, crude rafts, dwarven steamboats, etc, but yeah. Water-related goodness probably won't happen for a long time.

[Azerty]

I could see the following:

• Rafts and canoes, for animal-men, kobolds and other primitive cultures along with small-time use; useable on rivers and small lakes to transport few people, small animals and a little of goods; for small-scale trade between villages
• Sailing/rowing boats, for a larger use than a raft; can use all lakes; used for transporting greater suantities of goods, people and greater animals in fluvial trade
• Sailing/rowing ships, for larger lakes and oceans; intercontinental trade

We could also introduce the category Sailor and the skills Rower, Pilot and Manoeuver.

I can just imagine on the "Stupid Dwarf Tricks" wiki page.

"Armok's Ark:" Make a massive wooden boat, put two of all animals on it, and have a dwarf beat them all to death.
BONUS: put one male and one female animal on the boat
SUPERBONUS: Flood the map
MEGABONUS: Edit the raws and put two forgotten beasts on the boat. And beat them to death.

MEGADWARFBONUS: Flood with lava.

[Timeless Bob]

Buoyancy is basically the tendency to "fly straight up" when in the water, but not "fly at all" when not in the water.  Whatever gives birds the ability to fly, give to anything made out of wood but only when submersed in water.  In this way, free-floating structures would have to be built on "pontoons" of submerged wooden structures.  Most rivers might be too shallow for something like this, unless the wood floated 1/7 to 3/7 below the surface of the water.

[Dirst]

Buoyancy is basically the tendency to "fly straight up" when in the water, but not "fly at all" when not in the water.  Whatever gives birds the ability to fly, give to anything made out of wood but only when submersed in water.  In this way, free-floating structures would have to be built on "pontoons" of submerged wooden structures.  Most rivers might be too shallow for something like this, unless the wood floated 1/7 to 3/7 below the surface of the water.

It is really easy to calculate if something should float or not: if its mass divided by its volume is less than that of the fluid, then it floats.  Figuring out exactly which part is above or below the surface can be quite complicated, except that nothing in DF has any real concept of "shape" right now and only very bizarre modded creatures would deviate substantially from basically being homogenous density (such as a thingy with an iron head and featherwood feet).  That simplifies things quite a bit.

So submerged volume SV=(volume of object)*(density of object)/(density of fluid) will be below the surface.  Fluid takes up 1,714,286cm^3 per depth layer, so if we make the implausible assumption that all DF objects are 2m*2m rafts, we just need SV<1714286*depth for something to float.  A new tag for objects relating to cross section would make sense... it could even use the combat physics to determine if the object "penetrates" all the way to the bottom of the fluid in a tile (using cross section as the "weapon contact area").

Okay, so we know if something floats.  Now what?  A log sitting on top of a pond isn't any more accessible than one in a pond.  And boats aren't likely before we have moving fortress bits.

Edit: Yes, the numbers above imply that a bucket holds 3780 pounds of water.  Not such a mystery why no one wants to bring water to the wounded now, eh?

[Nopenope]

Boats have been suggested many, many times but I feel they are becoming a more and more pressing matter because they're such an obvious missing feature that's become incredibly crippling in some aspects, especially when compared to other detailed aspects of the game (you can tell everyone about how Dingo attacked you but you still have to swim whenever you want to get to another continent). It's very crippling because it can't be modded in, or even dfhacked in (unlike mounts, for instance).

Toady one said (sometime in 2008, along with the well-considered remark "boats are still far-off") that one of the big obstacles against boats was the fact that they'd have to be multi-tiled; however I don't see why it always must be the case. I think most of us would be fine with coracles, rafts, pirogues, canoes and little embarkations of the sort, and those would realistically be one-tiled.

[dwarf_reform]

I just did an adventurer elf whose civ was isolated on an island four full tiles away from the mainland.. Designed the elf just for swimming to the mainland, stripped naked and did a full-speed running jump into the ocean :> Though it took an age to actually do, the elf did swim through over four tiles of ocean without ever even getting tired.. I was mostly worried about the potential of getting tired and sleeping in the ocean before reaching land

Eventually DF will demand a functional multi-tile creature or vehicle, though.. I'd really like the ability to drag, or somehow move, the starting embark wagon :|

[Chevaleresse]

How about adding boats that simply copy most of the wagon code and path over water?