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Yes.  They need their own creature

9 (9.9%)

Yes.  But make them rare castes of the already giant creatures

44 (48.4%)

Neutral

9 (9.9%)

No

26 (28.6%)

Other

3 (3.3%)

Total Members Voted: 91

[pisskop]

If you've turned up the savagery in your world, it opens up more places to encounter giant dingoes, which are smaller than polar bears. The wiki is very specific on that last point.

Would you want, enjoy, *and play with* humongous versions of giant creatures?  Would that Giant Giant wolverine be too deadly, and how much bigger should it be?  The current system is a percentage scaled from its base creature, unless specifically changed.

   [CV_NEW_TAG:SELECT_CASTE:ALL]
      [CV_NEW_TAG:CHANGE_BODY_SIZE_PERC:200]
      [CV_NEW_TAG:CHANGE_FREQUENCY_PERC:50]

200% by default, but sperm whales get    [CHANGE_BODY_SIZE_PERC:800] and other critters get as much as 1000% increases



Would you want giant giant monsters, should they be handled as their own creatures or as castes within a creature, and what creatures should they be?

[Dorsidwarf]

Giant Giant creatures as castes of giant creatures please.

[Naryar]

Giant Giant creatures as castes of giant creatures please.

That. We already have so many creatures in the game about half are completely meaningless in gameplay.

[taat]

Giant giant sperm whale? hell yes! (though it will probably just overflow it's weight and become weightless anyways)

[Xantalos]

Will this mean that sperm whales weigh more than a continent or something?

[pisskop]

It means

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Most of their attacks are
1) too weak to pierce the girth of their opponents.
2) have no force for breaking DF's weight limit.
3) Are stong enough to send the relatively weightless monsters flying.  It appears that the weight is calculated per body part?  Their tails do damage.

Its time to do some legendary mermaid vs giant giant sperm whale test.

[pisskop]

Yup.  Giant Giant Sperm Whales, cubed in their giant-ness, in fact weigh less than merpeople.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[GiglameshDespair]

Personally, I'd prefer more and different creatures than further variations of creatures. I already mod out most animal men.

[Urist Da Vinci]

It means
...
Most of their attacks are
1) too weak to pierce the girth of their opponents.
2) have no force for breaking DF's weight limit.
3) Are stong enough to send the relatively weightless monsters flying.  It appears that the weight is calculated per body part?  Their tails do damage.

Its time to do some legendary mermaid vs giant giant sperm whale test.

Yup.  Giant Giant Sperm Whales, cubed in their giant-ness, in fact weigh less than merpeople.
...

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=139411.0 (BODY_SIZE limits thread)
Integer overflow can cause creatures supposedly made "Gianter" to become size 1.

FYI the only real dire animal was the Dire Wolf, an ice age animal. According to Wikipedia, it was at most 79 kg, whereas a polar bear can be 350-700 kg.

If DF had giant wolves larger than wolves by a similar scale to giant dingoes/dingoes, they would be about size 700000, larger than a polar bear but smaller than a water buffalo. This is larger than an actual dire wolf would have been. We just don't have giant wolves right now in vanilla DF.

I would prefer naming the creatures "Giant Giant X" rather than "Dire X".

[Aranador]

According to DnD, if it is bigger than gigantic, it is coloossal

[GiglameshDespair]

Dire seems to be used in fantasy (i.e. d&d) to mean a really big version of an animal anyway, so I don't think it's to big of an issue.

[Loud Whispers]

I would prefer dire creatures to be limited to savage biomes. Dire desert scorpions would be amusing to find, but flocks of dire ravens would be enough to make me lock my Dwarves in a hole in the ground and never ever go back to the surface again.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Dire seems to be used in fantasy (i.e. d&d) to mean a really big version of an animal anyway, so I don't think it's to big of an issue.

According to wikipedia, Canis dirus is latin for "fearsome dog". Dire doesn't imply "bears the size of dump trucks" unless you reference d&d specifically.

Rare miniature animals would be cute. Things like miniature tigers would be silly, as we have matching small animals already (cats). The ideal would be tiny moose, bears, or elephants.

[Miuramir]

According to wikipedia, Canis dirus is latin for "fearsome dog". Dire doesn't imply "bears the size of dump trucks" unless you reference d&d specifically.

Rare miniature animals would be cute. Things like miniature tigers would be silly, as we have matching small animals already (cats). The ideal would be tiny moose, bears, or elephants.

What we are really wanting here is an expansion of the "modifier" system to create more procedural variations.  Currently, we have basically two:
* "Giant X": which makes things significantly larger, and usually deadlier as a result
* "X Man": which makes things "more humanoid", changing their size larger or smaller to be closer to the scale of other humanoids; plus giving them grasping ability and various other changes.

A few other scale modifiers might be:
* "Dire": larger than normal, but smaller than Giant; within rationally plausible scale; say 30% - 50% larger. 
* "Gargantuan": even larger than Giant
* "Dwarf": Rationally smaller than normal, down to half or one-third size perhaps. 
* "Miniature": Dramatically smaller than normal, a tenth size or significantly less.  The webcomic Girl Genius has the "minmoth", which is a roughly rat-sized wooly mammoth; perhaps 1/10,000 stock size. 

Some modifiers other than scale-based that show up a lot in fantasy:
* "Sabertooth": With specifically increased attacks, especially teeth and/or claws.  May include adding them to species that don't have them normally, or not significantly
* "Arctic" / "Polar": Thicker, often white, fur; temperature tolerance; stealth; and omnivores tend toward becoming more carnivorous

Some of these can combine; one eccentric example from reality would be the sabertooth salmon, which was 9 feet (2.7m) long and had fangs.  Considering a modern true salmon maxes out at about 150 cm (0.15m), that's about 18 times the length; so it's had "Giant" and "Sabertooth" applied. 

Many other modifiers are possible, once we have a general system in place. 

[pisskop]

According to wikipedia, Canis dirus is latin for "fearsome dog". Dire doesn't imply "bears the size of dump trucks" unless you reference d&d specifically.

Rare miniature animals would be cute. Things like miniature tigers would be silly, as we have matching small animals already (cats). The ideal would be tiny moose, bears, or elephants.

What we are really wanting here is an expansion of the "modifier" system to create more procedural variations.  Currently, we have basically two:
* "Giant X": which makes things significantly larger, and usually deadlier as a result
* "X Man": which makes things "more humanoid", changing their size larger or smaller to be closer to the scale of other humanoids; plus giving them grasping ability and various other changes.

A few other scale modifiers might be:
* "Dire": larger than normal, but smaller than Giant; within rationally plausible scale; say 30% - 50% larger. 
* "Gargantuan": even larger than Giant
* "Dwarf": Rationally smaller than normal, down to half or one-third size perhaps. 
* "Miniature": Dramatically smaller than normal, a tenth size or significantly less.  The webcomic Girl Genius has the "minmoth", which is a roughly rat-sized wooly mammoth; perhaps 1/10,000 stock size. 

Some modifiers other than scale-based that show up a lot in fantasy:
* "Sabertooth": With specifically increased attacks, especially teeth and/or claws.  May include adding them to species that don't have them normally, or not significantly
* "Arctic" / "Polar": Thicker, often white, fur; temperature tolerance; stealth; and omnivores tend toward becoming more carnivorous

Some of these can combine; one eccentric example from reality would be the sabertooth salmon, which was 9 feet (2.7m) long and had fangs.  Considering a modern true salmon maxes out at about 150 cm (0.15m), that's about 18 times the length; so it's had "Giant" and "Sabertooth" applied. 

Many other modifiers are possible, once we have a general system in place. 

Those are all possible now, with effort.