EDIT: And even with violence Toady has his limits, as demonstrated by the mermaid bone-farming debacle.
I do not see the connection to this discussion. Because of the violence? Because mermaids are sapient? There are other things players can do in DF that are just as violent and cruel.
AFAIK, the main reason that mermaid bone-farming was fixed was because it was very clearly a money exploit. From what I remember, the profit potential was huge. That, and it probably did not match what was intended. I can see how it could seem silly if mermaid farms became a
typical feature of forts near the ocean rather than a rare oddity.
There's nothing preventing you from farming mermaids for fun.
Sure. But, without a money incentive, it seems pointless.
I suppose there's nothing stopping someone from modding mermaids to once again have a real incentive. However, as I pointed out, the same can not be said for modding in genitalia. Yes, we can mod them in. But without a connection to gelding/sterility... It would be weird if a creature still ended up fathering children after castration.
Yall can just add your favorite bodyparts and functions yourselves anyway. It wouldnt even be that difficult.
"Difficult" is a relative term. I'm not talking about modding gender-specific parts onto just dwarves, I'm talking about adding them to all civilized races and most mammals. That's a lot of raws, esp. to keep them all maintained between updates.
As far as I can tell, Genesis Mod was the only mod to do genitalia. And it was dropped a long time ago. Not even TomiTapio's OldGenesis has them. If it was "easy", wouldn't there have been others?
But, you're right: Modding in gender-specific parts is not hard. (Just a little tedious.) Though, as I said, it seems impossible to connect modded parts to gelding and sterility. And it seems weird and somewhat pointless without that.
I'm against that, because it would literally add nothing and Toady's time is best spent on other things.
I can't help but smile at this.
You see, the same argument was used against adding in sexual preferences. I even think I said the same myself, almost word for word. It seemed pointless to me and I also thought Toady's time was better spent on other things. But there was quite a debate about this topic and, sure enough, it got added anyway.