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[Putnam]

It's more like 3 meters. 20 meters is a completely nonsensical room height, especially for dwarves. DF worlds have a very thin crust (if you could even call it that.)

Dwarves are actually not as small as you think.  They are actually size 60000, which is merely 10000 less than humans which are size 70000, meaning that dwarves are about 5 feet tall (hate this system, wish humans were 60000 because that way it would translate into feet). 

The main reason it's the way it is is because it actually uses the metric system like any sane computerized system should.

Also, 6/7 of the size means ~95% the size in all dimensions. You need to take the cube root.

[Andeerz]

In this case we are dealing with something else, namely very bad luck.

Not necessarily.  It was a stupid decision, consciously made, and, if we were to represent this situation in the game, it wouldn't have been due to random chance that affects all water sources.  The water tasted about as fresh and pristine as anyone can fathom.  And it was crystal clear.  As such, my sister figured it was safe.  Of course, that very river she drank from passed right through cow pastures.  And there are signs around that river saying "don't drink" (in Spanish, of course) for this very reason.  The resulting parasite she was infected with undoubtedly came from contamination, likely poop, and likely from those very cow pastures.

Making all water sources have a very small chance of carrying water borne diseases is something that would be seperate from the main pooping mechanic. 

I would be against this.  Clean water should be clean (or that chance of having water borne diseases should be VERY small).  What should lead to contamination is either stuff we have been discussing here or improper handling of the water (poor hygiene, contaminants getting into it after actually collecting the water, etc.).  Most of this is stuff that can be discretely modeled like other things easily are in the game.

[Bumber]

It's more like 3 meters. 20 meters is a completely nonsensical room height, especially for dwarves. DF worlds have a very thin crust (if you could even call it that.)

Dragons can fit quite happily in dwarf fortresses, much to the distress of the dwarves living there.  But then again we can fit an infinite amount of items into one square but even so we still cannot place chairs and tables on the same square.

Dwarves are actually not as small as you think.  They are actually size 60000, which is merely 10000 less than humans which are size 70000, meaning that dwarves are about 5 feet tall (hate this system, wish humans were 60000 because that way it would translate into feet).

Don't mistake volume for height. A 2m x 2m x 3m tile has a volume of 12,000,000 cm^3. A full-grown dragon has a volume of 25,000,000 cm^3. Assuming a dragon is flexible and more long than wide*, one could fit quite happily in a dwarf fortress. Likewise, we can't be certain about a dwarf's height with respect to a human, but a 3 meter ceiling (10 feet / almost 1 story) is much more reasonable than 20 meters (66 feet / 6 stories). Don't let placeholder mechanics cloud your perception. Remember multi-tile creatures are planned, and that doesn't make sense with a tile ratio that fits a giant sperm whale in one tile (e.g., 4m x 4m x 20m.)

*Especially if we interpret the lack of wings to mean that DF (non-cave) dragons are serpentine, much like Eastern dragons or earlier Western depictions.

[Urist Tilaturist]

The chance of getting an infection from running spring water should be very small indeed, maybe even absent. The chance only becomes significant once the water is stagnant or polluted.

[GoblinCookie]

Don't mistake volume for height. A 2m x 2m x 3m tile has a volume of 12,000,000 cm^3. A full-grown dragon has a volume of 25,000,000 cm^3. Assuming a dragon is flexible and more long than wide*, one could fit quite happily in a dwarf fortress. Likewise, we can't be certain about a dwarf's height with respect to a human, but a 3 meter ceiling (10 feet / almost 1 story) is much more reasonable than 20 meters (66 feet / 6 stories). Don't let placeholder mechanics cloud your perception. Remember multi-tile creatures are planned, and that doesn't make sense with a tile ratio that fits a giant sperm whale in one tile (e.g., 4m x 4m x 20m.)

*Especially if we interpret the lack of wings to mean that DF (non-cave) dragons are serpentine, much like Eastern dragons or earlier Western depictions.

The height of the ceiling has nothing inherantly to do with the area taken up by each cube in the game.  I know that the present mechanics are placeholders, the lack of multi-tile creatures is one of the more annoying elements of the game and leads to problems like this one. 

The tunnel cannot take up the whole cube because some of it must be taken up by the floor/ceiling.  It all gets confusing when you consider that the total size in all dimensions is what is meant by creature size rather the total size in each dimension.  Even though most megabeasts are unbelievably huge, so huge that realistically they should all collapse under their own weight. 

[Iamblichos]

Also, not all poop is brown.

All healthy poop is.  If it some other colour go see a doctor.

Ah, but the Blind Cave Ogre, in one of Nature's little ironies, actually poops a luminous sparkly green substance.  Quite pretty, really, and such a shame that everything else in the caverns can see it except its originator.  It even smells like limes.  For this reason, adventurers seeking the deep places of the world could do worse than to paint themselves in citrus juice when going below.  They will smell good to themselves, and all non-sight-based attackers will assume that they are ambulatory piles of ogre poo and avoid them.

[Bumber]

Don't mistake volume for height. A 2m x 2m x 3m tile has a volume of 12,000,000 cm^3. A full-grown dragon has a volume of 25,000,000 cm^3. Assuming a dragon is flexible and more long than wide*, one could fit quite happily in a dwarf fortress. Likewise, we can't be certain about a dwarf's height with respect to a human, but a 3 meter ceiling (10 feet / almost 1 story) is much more reasonable than 20 meters (66 feet / 6 stories). Don't let placeholder mechanics cloud your perception. Remember multi-tile creatures are planned, and that doesn't make sense with a tile ratio that fits a giant sperm whale in one tile (e.g., 4m x 4m x 20m.)

*Especially if we interpret the lack of wings to mean that DF (non-cave) dragons are serpentine, much like Eastern dragons or earlier Western depictions.

The height of the ceiling has nothing inherantly to do with the area taken up by each cube in the game.  I know that the present mechanics are placeholders, the lack of multi-tile creatures is one of the more annoying elements of the game and leads to problems like this one. 

The tunnel cannot take up the whole cube because some of it must be taken up by the floor/ceiling.  It all gets confusing when you consider that the total size in all dimensions is what is meant by creature size rather the total size in each dimension.  Even though most megabeasts are unbelievably huge, so huge that realistically they should all collapse under their own weight.

The ceilings can't be too thick if cave-ins are to occur. I'd say they're no more than an extra meter of rock.

Megabeasts pretty much have to be magic. I'm not sure what gravitational constant would allow a bird the size of 4 elephants take flight.

[Naryar]

Don't mistake volume for height. A 2m x 2m x 3m tile has a volume of 12,000,000 cm^3. A full-grown dragon has a volume of 25,000,000 cm^3. Assuming a dragon is flexible and more long than wide*, one could fit quite happily in a dwarf fortress. Likewise, we can't be certain about a dwarf's height with respect to a human, but a 3 meter ceiling (10 feet / almost 1 story) is much more reasonable than 20 meters (66 feet / 6 stories). Don't let placeholder mechanics cloud your perception. Remember multi-tile creatures are planned, and that doesn't make sense with a tile ratio that fits a giant sperm whale in one tile (e.g., 4m x 4m x 20m.)

*Especially if we interpret the lack of wings to mean that DF (non-cave) dragons are serpentine, much like Eastern dragons or earlier Western depictions.

The height of the ceiling has nothing inherantly to do with the area taken up by each cube in the game.  I know that the present mechanics are placeholders, the lack of multi-tile creatures is one of the more annoying elements of the game and leads to problems like this one. 

The tunnel cannot take up the whole cube because some of it must be taken up by the floor/ceiling.  It all gets confusing when you consider that the total size in all dimensions is what is meant by creature size rather the total size in each dimension.  Even though most megabeasts are unbelievably huge, so huge that realistically they should all collapse under their own weight.

The ceilings can't be too thick if cave-ins are to occur. I'd say they're no more than an extra meter of rock.

Megabeasts pretty much have to be magic. I'm not sure what gravitational constant would allow a bird the size of 4 elephants take flight.

Well... extra-tough organic materials and muscles increasing exponentially in efficiency when size augments ?

Don't see how we would do treat this realistically though. Dragon is definitely magical with superheated solar plasma breath.

Actually I think dragonfire should be blue. Or maybe white. I don't remember exactly the temperature/star color chart.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Does the roc have the mass of 4 elephants, or just the size? Wingspan would make a huge amount of its surface area. I imagined rocs as being huge, but not especially heavy, like pterosaurs.

[GoblinCookie]

Does the roc have the mass of 4 elephants, or just the size? Wingspan would make a huge amount of its surface area. I imagined rocs as being huge, but not especially heavy, like pterosaurs.

The size I think determines the creature's weight directly, taking into account materials the creature is made of.  It also determines the creatures actual strength and toughness, bigger creatures are stronger and tougher than smaller one's. 

The ceilings can't be too thick if cave-ins are to occur. I'd say they're no more than an extra meter of rock.

Megabeasts pretty much have to be magic. I'm not sure what gravitational constant would allow a bird the size of 4 elephants take flight.

That we manage to carve out vast halls underground without needing support beams rather suggests that the ceilings are pretty thick. 

It is quite possible for a bird the size of 4 elephants to take flight, the trouble is *only* finding a suitably size runway and being able to reach a sufficiant takeoff velocity.  The former problem is a problem in everything except desert areas which would not be able to support so large a creature anyway, the latter problem is built into the nature of avian physiology; basically their humanoid build keeps them from obtaining a takeoff velocity sufficiant to allow very large birds to fly. 

There have been truly massive fliers in reality before, such as certain pterodactlys and these solved the humanoid problem by actually having feet at the joints of their wings so that when they ran along the runway they would be temporarily become quadrapeds and thus they could reach a sufficiant takeoff speed.  Rocs would probably solve the problem in the same manner, they would have wing-feet. 

[Andeerz]

Those pterodactyls you are referring to... the likely weights of the largest ones were in the several hundreds of pounds (maybe above 500 according to at least one study.  This is a far cry from the weight of a single elephant (which can reach several tons).  AND these large pterosaurs may likely have not even been able to fly in the first place.  It is formally possible, but the evolutionary constraints would be massive.  In any case, the largest known possibly flying animals were nowhere near the mass of a single elephant.

Aren't things getting a bit off topic? 

[Urist Tilaturist]

With the mass of an elephant, it cannot fly, but size does not equal mass. The bone density of pterosaurs and birds was/is far lower than that of an elephant.

[Andeerz]

Regardless of how this game models physics, I will always be cool with impossibly flying creatures in the settings the game currently generates.  Also, the size of individual tiles has not been defined, but it has been clearly indicated here that this is something that Toady will revisit.  We all have indicated our individual assumptions about tile size for the purposes of our respective suggestions when relevant, I think.  So, let's get back to poop, shall we?

[YAHG]

Those pterodactyls you are referring to... the likely weights of the largest ones were in the several hundreds of pounds (maybe above 500 according to at least one study.  This is a far cry from the weight of a single elephant (which can reach several tons).  AND these large pterosaurs may likely have not even been able to fly in the first place.  It is formally possible, but the evolutionary constraints would be massive.  In any case, the largest known possibly flying animals were nowhere near the mass of a single elephant.

Aren't things getting a bit off topic?

Yeah, Roc poop probably can also fly firstly be because it is that much lighter and since it is mostly launched from higher z-levels.

Anyways having to clean the Roc droppings off your giant statues of Elf Kings sounds pretty funny to me. 

[Bumber]

Does the roc have the mass of 4 elephants, or just the size? Wingspan would make a huge amount of its surface area. I imagined rocs as being huge, but not especially heavy, like pterosaurs.

Size, but the more of that volume you put in the wings the more ridiculous the wingspan gets. The longer the wingspan the more air resistance, the more muscles needed to flap the wings. The more muscles the more weight. No matter which way you look at it it's ridiculous, unless they can only glide.

Barring magic, they must use jet engine farts for sustained flight.

That we manage to carve out vast halls underground without needing support beams rather suggests that the ceilings are pretty thick.

Yet a single tree collapsing on the surface above can cause the whole thing to give. Structural integrity is planned for revamp (i.e., you will need supports.)