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[JAL28]

Oceans are pretty sad right now. They are mostly just large, shallow bodies of water with absolutely no plant life at all, as well has having the very detrimental and unscientific fact of freezing over entirely when winter comes/when it’s cold enough. Enough of that. Hopefully with the stuff mentioned here it would be at least somewhat more interesting and maybe useful.

First off, oceans would be really deep. Like, REALLY deep. Possibly extending down to the second cavern layer or more, though never beyond the third. There would be a variety of special plants and tree-like organisms, like corals, sea grass and kelp, etc etc. Deeper layers(at cavern level) would have more fanciful and supernatural flora and fauna, while upper layers would retain the mundane animals that currently populate oceans. Caverns interrupted by the oceans would likely end if they had no area to expand to, and dwarves with swimming abilities can go swim into the ocean and do things like diving to grab some of them nice seaplants.

Also, when a large body of water freezes up(lakes or oceans), only the first(or a few) layers of water freeze over, and will thaw back when temperatures rise enough. This way, it may be possible to prevent total wildlife extinctions from freezing seas and loss of prime vermin fishing areas.

Unrelated, but some way to train swimming in fortress mode would be nice. Maybe a swimming pool-like workshop? Maybe even be able to fill it up with booze for inebriation thoughts.

[BlueManedHawk]

I just want to see pearls and coral get implemented (and also amber, I guess, but that's not directly relevant).

[Azerty]

Ocean will sure need revalping whe navigation will be added in, since it would mean people will have to interact more with the sea.

For exemple, some places might sent fishing boats to the ocean, and on the coasts some might harvest shells, coral and amber.

And the fantastical side should not be forgotten: sea monsters would win to be more diverse (prodecural generation of some, like with forgotten beasts), and some necromancers might work on the ocean, attracting ships to their death and using these wrecks as source of fresh bodies.

And how about ambhibious civilizations, who would work partly under the waters (for exemple, some might evolve to be able to work below - just imagine some leading their flocks to  pastures of algaes under the sea) or even totally oceanic civilizations living exclusively under the sea?

[JAL28]

To add to my initial suggestion:

Oceanic Civilizations

They would be somewhat similar to underground animal people civs, but actually civilized and having sites beyond campfires, probably platforms for farming/domes for living, etc. These would probably me more adventurer-mode based as vanilla fortress mode won’t let you see them(being found in deep oceans, not coastlines). They would probably include aquatic animal people and mermen.

Oceanic Horrors

Essentially the ocean equivalent of FBs and Titans. Using fish/aquatic bodies and special features that distinguish them from land beasts. For example:

“A towering one-eyed tilapia. It has four fins and a straight horn. Beware it’s poisonous bite!”

“A great three-eyed eel. It has two wing-like fins and it undulates rythmically. Beware it’s electricity!”

“A giant chitinous leech. It has four straight tusks and two wings. Beware it’s noxious secretions!”

“A great spiny shark. It has 2 curving horns and it swims erratically. Beware it’s poisonous vapors!”

They would not need to breathe and hence could come on land, but usually tend to prefer staying in the water, killing anything in it. They can do this like drag dwarves into the water with wrestling, meaning you would have to stay away from all water sources.

[NW_Kohaku]

Oceanic civilizations are a fine idea, but they probably aren't in the game already for the same reason there are no civilized fliers, which is that it would take a rewrite of the dreaded pathfinding code to be able to account for 3-dimensional movement through any method other than flood-filling.

Seaweed, kelp, and sure, some oysters with pearls (plus hopefully, their subterranean/abyssal equivalents, such as thermal vent life) being added would be relatively easy, and I think their main reason not to exist already is simply the assumption that most players aren't the sorts to section off and drain large chunks of the sea so as to exploit the ocean floor, as dwarves are notoriously bad swimmers.  (That said, just decorating the ocean floor with them, even if you don't expect players to use them has some good value.)

It's for the same reason that I think there aren't ocean-titans already - the game notoriously made dwarves incapable of dealing with the implacable threat that was the deadly and bloodthirsty carp for many years, so having something actually meant to be a threat from the ground up as a swimmer was put on the back burner.

As for the depth of the oceans, the thing is that you generally only see the coasts because there is no method outside of being a really good swimmer in Adventure Mode or modding of seeing most of the ocean.  Elevations in this game are also handled by a noisemap, with elevations from 0-100 being ocean, 101-200 being standard land, and 201-400 being mountains.  Hence, the oceans have a set depth of up to 100 z-layers below sea level.

Cavern layers also have a depth set by the land above them.  (It's part of worldgen, in fact - the first cavern is 5 z-levels below the lowest elevation point in a map region by default.)  Every cavern is self-contained to the map region tile, so a cavern layer under an ocean doesn't get flooded, it just gets moved lower down than the cavern layers under solid land.

Ice not being an instant death trap would hopefully already be on the list sometime down the line, it's just something that would take a lot of thought and work put into making a system that is more realistic.  The current model is just a placeholder.

Also, you can currently train swimming in the fortress, although it takes some exploitation.  You just need to get dwarves to ride in minecarts through 4/7 water or train in areas with a ramp and screw pump in a 4/7 depth chamber.

[Maximum Spin]

(and also amber, I guess, but that's not directly relevant).

Amber actually is traditionally an ocean product. In ancient times it was mainly collected from beaches in the Baltic sea; this is just because it erodes out of the ancient seafloor there, but people used to think it came from the sea itself in various ways.

[Azerty]

(and also amber, I guess, but that's not directly relevant).

Amber actually is traditionally an ocean product. In ancient times it was mainly collected from beaches in the Baltic sea; this is just because it erodes out of the ancient seafloor there, but people used to think it came from the sea itself in various ways.

Amber can also be found in land; it's just that the Baltic amber is the most famous source.

As for the prodédural generation of amber, maybe we should reuse the one for coal, since it's mostly the same source (trees).

[NW_Kohaku]

As for the prodédural generation of amber, maybe we should reuse the one for coal, since it's mostly the same source (trees).

Coal is just randomly found in sedimentary layers, though.

[FantasticDorf]

I would like better swimming controls to compliment a better ocean before dwarves could be tasked to do important things like collect sea-shells from the prettier and less barren sea floor like a herbalist and build those important swimmer skills up. Some guild learning of the swimming skill simultaenously connected to whatever salvaging job would be excellent if a bit visually jarring think of dwarves pretending to air-doggy paddle.

Unless dwarves have the means to mechanically or magically allow breathing, just holding their breath is enough along with complaints about the cold water (that's a point, cold water exasperation could be deadly). The map-rewrite would have to handle the drop in latitude to accomodate a ocean that deep though unless it has some pre-set terrain features as to not accidentally pressure flood your entire subterrean bottom up.

[NW_Kohaku]

I think 100 z-levels of ocean is plenty.  That's about as much as you normally have between the surface and the magma sea overland.  The problem is more that the noisemap height of the ocean floor isn't built like the real-world ocean, which has sandbars and shoals near the coast, a shelf out to a few miles of land, and a steep drop to a depth of a couple thousand feet that most of the ocean floor is relatively level over.

It's worth noting that the ocean is a desert everywhere but the shallows in real life.  When light can't reach the ocean floor, there can be no seaweed or other sealife along the bottom except in the form of scavengers.  On the surface, you can have kelp and the like that feed off of dissolved minerals and sunlight on the surface, but dissolved minerals have to come from somewhere and that somewhere tends to be land, so even kelp tends to be near the coasts.  The deep oceans tend to have extremely sparse life.

[Pillbo]

True, but real cave life is extremely sparse and doesn't have plants either.

[Orange-of-Cthulhu]

I think it would take a really big effort to make oceans realistic.

- how long can you hold your breath

- does underwater pressure exist so you cannot just dive straight to the bottom of the ocean?

- how long can you survive in icy/cold/warm water

- how long can you swim before you're so tired you sink to the bottom. Can you conserve energy by just threading water?

- storms, how frequent and which vessels do they make sink

- skills for seamanship in order to ride out storms, quality values for parts of the ship

- skills for navigation at open sea

- drifting around on logs, making makeshift rafts, skills for controlling a raft

- stats for different types of water vessels, canoes, rowing boats, galleys, fisher boats. What happens if you loose the oars on a rowing boat?

- stats for how much you can load a vessel, what makes a vessel sink, what if it catches fire if you meet a dragon that breathes fire on your boat?

- icebergs and iceflakes to sail on

- can a sea monster ram your ship and make it sink?

- can you make vessels sink by smashing them with an ax?

Probably when sea travel comes, there will be weird things like you can cross oceans by swimming all the way or riding a fish, or that a raft made of a log works as good as the best ship the money can buy, or that some leather suit is a perfect diving suit And a lot of drowning probably happens lol.

[NW_Kohaku]

True, but real cave life is extremely sparse and doesn't have plants either.

Caverns existed since the 2d era of DF, and are expected for dwarves to explore.  Dwarves are not expected to strike the sea, and they do not have a good track record of surviving trying.

You absolutely could start arguing for made-up magical ocean life, but then we're talking about adding Atlantis, not pointing out that real oceans have seaweed and don't instantly freeze from top to bottom as soon as the air temperature touches the freezing point, and that's a whole different argument that needs its own justification and requires arguing why your version of Atlantis is going to be better than someone else's version of Atlantis in purely gameplay, emergent storytelling, or myth-recreating terms.

I think it would take a really big effort to make oceans realistic.

- how long can you hold your breath

- does underwater pressure exist so you cannot just dive straight to the bottom of the ocean?

- how long can you survive in icy/cold/warm water

- how long can you swim before you're so tired you sink to the bottom. Can you conserve energy by just threading water?

- storms, how frequent and which vessels do they make sink

- skills for seamanship in order to ride out storms, quality values for parts of the ship

- skills for navigation at open sea

- drifting around on logs, making makeshift rafts, skills for controlling a raft

- stats for different types of water vessels, canoes, rowing boats, galleys, fisher boats. What happens if you loose the oars on a rowing boat?

- stats for how much you can load a vessel, what makes a vessel sink, what if it catches fire if you meet a dragon that breathes fire on your boat?

- icebergs and iceflakes to sail on

- can a sea monster ram your ship and make it sink?

- can you make vessels sink by smashing them with an ax?

Probably when sea travel comes, there will be weird things like you can cross oceans by swimming all the way or riding a fish, or that a raft made of a log works as good as the best ship the money can buy, or that some leather suit is a perfect diving suit And a lot of drowning probably happens lol.

Just pointing out, you already have a duration you can hold your breath (it's closely related to drowning, after all, which is definitely in the game), and all the parts about ships are absolutely things Toady has on his mind for the ships features.  If you wanted to talk about ships, however, it's probably best to split it off into its own thread so as not to get off-topic on this one.

[Pillbo]

Dwarves are not expected to strike the sea

Players aren't expected to only play dwarf mode.

[Thisfox]

Oceanic civilizations are a fine idea, but they probably aren't in the game already for the same reason there are no civilized fliers, which is that it would take a rewrite of the dreaded pathfinding code to be able to account for 3-dimensional movement through any method other than flood-filling.

....Make it a crab civ. They only travel along seafloor etc, and up and down seafloor slopes. Or above a certain water pressure depth which becomes their personal "floor".

Yes, I do realise that crabs can swim and don't stay on the floor of our own oceans (I've seen a swimmer crab swim along the surface of a deep estuary, for example) but it would still be pretty awesome to have an ocean-floor-based crab civilisation. Carcinisation leading to a pretty neat Terry Pratchett reference, and XKCD reference, all in one, among many others.