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[therahedwig]

In adventure mode, will creatures raised using necromancer abilities be treated as pets? Perhaps even making them mountable?

I think it was mentioned in a previous FotF answer post that undead horses were out because they don't have a soul and the current instruction system relies on the recipient having a soul.

Will we be able to ride animated undead animals, even if they haven't been tamed?

I don't think undead mounts will work currently.  Soulless creatures cannot accept commands, even without the issue of non-tame creatures not being mountable.  It'll require a better understanding of magic to get that sort of thing working when it should.
[...]

2. Will the ability to command allies extend to zombies created with Necromancy?

2. It isn't part of the spell, no, and souls are currently required.

WordsandChaos, silly question, do you mean that the groups themselves feel inconsistent in their goals or that figures with fake identities do weird stuff when the leader of a group they're part of dies?

[FantasticDorf]

For religions in the world, how expansive will the framework for that be? Will it draw a distinction between a dominant/origin/umbrella faith and religious branches/subgroups/sects/cults? Or is the plan to treat everything as an entirely seperate group?
Is there any plans to change how groups currently handle identity change? They currently seem to reinvent themselves anytime someone in charge kicks the bucket and is succeded by another member, which inadvertantly stops them from gaining a recognisable presence or legacy in the world due to the rate of turnover.

A. We dont know anything yet, but organisations like the trade outposts influencing the world under a entity may yet help define the different moving parts of a religion, as to religion itself it is sphere based and hence sometimes dieties take up multiple causes or you have two dieties attached to the same related thing, that line of thought would be greater expanded in the magic arc for more defined diety roles as well as a narrated creation story.

B. This is because entity is a framework upon the singular individuals who are sometimes different.

Demons are cruel by nature, as are goblins, but if you put a non-goblin with non-goblin values in charge the civilisation will not change but the leadership choice may cause them attack less or different targets, humans on the other hand when lead by extreme value and violent leaders are the type to start wars .

Villian plots may shake this up by adding more rungs of government, to ensure that a villian through a elaborate conspiracy can nominate themselves or the next best candidate to the leadership and seize power by having the people in charge in pocket. Maybe to earn enough power to win back a heirloom etc or settle a grudge though at the minute, succession is random or very one dimensional.

[WordsandChaos]

WordsandChaos, silly question, do you mean that the groups themselves feel inconsistent in their goals or that figures with fake identities do weird stuff when the leader of a group they're part of dies?

No, problem. I meant like a criminal group will start out as the Blue Underpants, and then the leader gets killed and someone takes over and they instantly reform as the Magenta Ring Finger, and if they die two days later, whoever succeeds them will instantly reform the group as the Reclusive Bumblebee. Seems like the successor should just take over as the leader of the Blue Underpants. The idea of reforming under a new name or organisational schisms and so on is really cool, but the way it works now is a little "identity crisis" and inadvertantly detracts from the emergent story aspect of Dwarf Fortress. 

I guess, as FantasticDorf pointed out, it depends on whether the group framework is tied to the individual characters and so can't exist without them, or is rather a seperate framework in itself with slots that can be filled and emptied by characters, without needing an group member to invent an entire new group (not something I'd considered previously).

[Random_Dragon]

Naming continuity is something that'd be interesting to see, true. Some entities in the code retain a continuous name (like country names), while others are in flux.

If anything, it'd be neat if nations could change names after major upheaval, while stuff like criminal gangs stay static barring much greater turmoil. Groups that count as holding power in a city or country likely could remain as they are, as they SEEM to remain static so long as the current dynasty or power structure is still in place. Which means that if criminal gangs aren't adhering to the same standard (and I'm remembering right and dynasties DO preserve the name better than criminal gangs), it wouldn't be hard to make one consistent with the other.

That said, changing country names would ideally need some way to cite the prior name and only change it a bit, either only by a single-step change, or by having a preference towards always retaining a single central element of the name. For example Regnum Francorum, Francia occidentalis, etc (one that eventually demonstrates a shift in the preferred language used in its terminology if you follow it far enough, and one that starts early on with one entity becoming two, two things that can't yet happen in DF).

The example of deriving a name from a preceding name could also be adapted to handling family names. In the event that an entity doesn't just use a modern surname convention, this can be used to inject things like patronyms, matronyms, even compound surnames based off both parents. Though, now that I think about it...

What are your thoughts on the in-universe way the current placeholder for surnames is handled? My guess is that it's instead essentially a second given name, presumably chosen by whichever parent didn't decide their first name, or possibly a compound surname influenced by both parents in some way that doesn't yet reliably produce results logical to an outside observer, which would work very well for adapting into a proper compound surname via changing how the compound is generated.

[FantasticDorf]

I guess, as FantasticDorf pointed out, it depends on whether the group framework is tied to the individual characters and so can't exist without them, or is rather a seperate framework in itself with slots that can be filled and emptied by characters, without needing an group member to invent an entire new group (not something I'd considered previously).

Exactly, if you're playing a game with a dead dwarf civilisation, often one of your dwarves on site will be nominated to be the new ruler unless someone else has the claim elsewhere in the wilderness of the world. Game saw a empty slot, had nobody to fill it so picked out one of your dwarves because typically some criteria was met irregardless of other personal factors like whether they'd be legally able or related by bloodlines well enough to take over the monarchy.

Naming continuity is something that'd be interesting to see, true. Some entities in the code retain a continuous name (like country names), while others are in flux.

If anything, it'd be neat if nations could change names after major upheaval, while stuff like criminal gangs stay static barring much greater turmoil. Groups that count as holding power in a city or country likely could remain as they are, as they SEEM to remain static so long as the current dynasty or power structure is still in place. Which means that if criminal gangs aren't adhering to the same standard (and I'm remembering right and dynasties DO preserve the name better than criminal gangs), it wouldn't be hard to make one consistent with the other.

If anything it'd be a lot like Genghis Khan, a adventurer with a inbuilt set of advantages of the player's ability takes on numerous beasts, monsters and foes and conquers a large empire before retiring it, leaving it to his children within the simulation, but soon without the adventurer's leadership the whole mighty empire falls apart quickly into a set of autonomous quarrelling states and civs like normal.

[Random_Dragon]

If anything it'd be a lot like Genghis Khan, a adventurer with a inbuilt set of advantages of the player's ability takes on numerous beasts, monsters and foes and conquers a large empire before retiring it, leaving it to his children within the simulation, but soon without the adventurer's leadership the whole mighty empire falls apart quickly into a set of autonomous quarrelling states and civs like normal.

That'd be a neat take, and probably the most common cause of entity splits would be division between successors, crumbling in the absence of an effective successor, etc. The example I cited would be another such instance of that happening.

[Real_bang]

Whats your plans after the villain update hit the mark? Will you take more time improving sieges or go straight into myth and magic. Cause iirc you said that you might hold off with sieges if villains take too much time

[Shonai_Dweller]

Whats your plans after the villain update hit the mark? Will you take more time improving sieges or go straight into myth and magic. Cause iirc you said that you might hold off with sieges if villains take too much time

There's a lot of bug fixing and issues with the stress and relationship systems to fix yet, so it won't be straight into Mythgen. Probably won't know for sure until that's all finished. But yeah, would be interesting to know current thoughts on how much more of the pre-mythgen candidates are likely to happen.

[Urist Mcpiromano]

I try to follow development as close as possible, but think I've missed some major news. What is this Big Wait everyone keeps talking about? And when is supossed to happen?

[scourge728]

The big wait is the term for the next wait in between update cycles, coming whenever the development on mythgen and magic starts

[Shonai_Dweller]

I try to follow development as close as possible, but think I've missed some major news. What is this Big Wait everyone keeps talking about? And when is supossed to happen?

Latest comment is "not the beginning of 2019" as the current stuff (villains, stress fixes, other pre-mythgen updates if they happen including Better Sieges and Off-Site army raising/management) is due to take longer than expected.

[Rose]

With dwarfs stealing money, does that bring us at all closer to having an economy back?

[Shonai_Dweller]

With dwarfs stealing money, does that bring us at all closer to having an economy back?

I don't think that's likely. A living world economy is a Big Wait all in itself. However...With people suffering from gambling problems now, does that mean you might just tackle the tavern games without having to wait for the economy to be reintroduced?

[PatrikLundell]

I try to follow development as close as possible, but think I've missed some major news. What is this Big Wait everyone keeps talking about? And when is supossed to happen?

The Big Wait is the period after the end of the current development arc (the villain additions ending development of significant new stuff, followed by bug fixing and balancing). During the Big Wait Toady will redesign a number of framework components (collecting a number of game save compatibility breaking changes in one go) and then build the framework for Myth & Magic (with some things using the framework, so there will be some myth and some magic, but definitely not all of it: just the beginning). There will be no DF releases during the Big Wait (unless there's an emergency release to fix some game breaking bug). At the end of the Big Wait a new DF release will be made, marking the beginning of the (first) Myth & Magic arc. This kind of long periods without and DF releases during which new functionality is developed is "normal" for DF, but what is unusual this time is that it's expected to take longer than usual (about 1-2 years) due to the volume of work to be performed. Something that's normal for a new arc is a first release that contains a lot of bugs and balancing issues, typically followed by a rapid sequence of game break correction releases followed by balancing/major issues fixing. When DF is back to sort of playable, development of new stuff (Myth and Magic contents, in this case) will take place, together with fixing of medium bugs and balancing.

[GoblinCookie]

With dwarfs stealing money, does that bring us at all closer to having an economy back?

No because the money they are stealing does not actually exist except in World-Gen.