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[Putnam]

It can be annoying in certain scenarios, adding nothing except forcing us to keep extra FPS hogs. Imagine a world in which Armork bless us with 3 pronouns for livestock: male breeder, female breeder and steak.

I imagine that for non-sapient creatures like cows, sexual orientation would be simplified and gender wouldn't exist, only sex would. Basically the same system we have now.

There's already orientation, and that does mean that each of your livestock has a 5% chance to not be breeding.

And yes, it's 5%. This is verifiable, easily verifiable. The wiki has this info. You do not need me to tell you this. Taking 3 males and females each gets you a whopping 0.0025% chance that you will not have breeding due to orientation; either all of your males must have no opposite-sex interest or all of your females do. I have tested this, too, both in earlier version and the latest (via DFHack).

Anyway, game just doesn't have enough in the way of this stuff. Just male and female. That doesn't even match biological sex, much less gender. You can't grab up a handful of dirt without grabbing up a bunch of a species which is 0.1% male and 99.9% hermaphrodite, for example. The game only gets away with slugs/snails by making them vermin, which don't reproduce at all. I want (modded) parthenogenetic dwarves, dammit.

[jipehog]

There's already orientation, and that does mean that each of your livestock has a 5% chance to not be breeding.

Personally, I suspect that was never been the goal but an unexpected positive-ish outcome of Toady detailed models. With orientation, a natural aspect of human model, in turn bleeding into livestock. But realistically orientation is undue for livestock (there many things like age and repeat breeding that play MUCH bigger affect) and serves no real gameplay purpose (you could call it random-failure-chance-use-imagination-factor) but it is already there, so why not use it?! With added bonus of making some people very happy and make the simulation feel deeper.

Hence my suggestion, if the devs ever come around to this (their plate is rathe full atm), then they should focus on greater modablity of castes physical/social which would allow this scenario and sooo much more.

[Thorfinn]

It's only 5%? I'd have sworn it must have been higher. I used to bring one male and 3-6 females of every bird species, and it seemed like every embark would end up with at least one species that would not reproduce. At 5%, that should mean 13 species before you hit a 50% chance of at least one non-reproducing species. Which I should have been hitting once every other embark. Must have been a long string of bad luck. As expected, bringing 2 males pretty much eliminates the problem, appearing maybe 1 in 10 embarks, and gives the butcher something to do.

But dogs! Seriously? They will mount your leg, a couch, an end table, pretty much anything.

It is irritating, though, when I'm playing a dead civ, so will never get replacements, and it turns out I find out why the civ died out. I have enough trouble getting Urist to put his socks on before putting on his shoes. If I knew that was the situation at embark, I'd abort the game and get a new team.

As long as it takes to generate a world, and select a starting location, then get a colony started without getting overrun by lycanthropes or wiped out by rain, seeing it die out from something like that is lame. If Toady gave a slider option, I'd have that puppy slid all the way.

[EDIT]
Re: the suggestion, how would that work? If it's pulling from the raws and generating randomly within those parameters, doesn't that imply that if if rolls a result you don't want, you can't change it? Or something more superficial than that, kind of like renaming the dwarf? Check or uncheck the box and you now have a fertile member of the clan? Well, I guess that's one way you could control the size of the clan without an externally-imposed pop limit.
[/EDIT]

[PetMudstone]

I was indeed aware of the orientation tokens, yes. I can't recall how it works off the top of my head exactly. I just didn't elaborate on it. I do feel like the orientation token stuff that exists currently wouldn't be sufficient for representing how attraction (sexual and romantic) works for humans and presumably other sapients once gender identities and expression become more developed.

It definitely would be cool to have parthenogenesis and hermaphroditism. I've actually thought about the latter before, specifically in regards to sequential hemphroditism. While this wouldn't matter for most of the mundane animals already in the game, it would certainly would present more cool options for both the devs and for modders. Simultaneous hermaphroditism would also be cool.

[Putnam]

It's only 5%? I'd have sworn it must have been higher. I used to bring one male and 3-6 females of every bird species, and it seemed like every embark would end up with at least one species that would not reproduce. At 5%, that should mean 13 species before you hit a 50% chance of at least one non-reproducing species. Which I should have been hitting once every other embark. Must have been a long string of bad luck. As expected, bringing 2 males pretty much eliminates the problem, appearing maybe 1 in 10 embarks, and gives the butcher something to do.

It was 30% for a while, which still isn't terribly likely; 3 of each would get you a 50% chance at 13 species like that, even with 3 males. Bringing two males nowadays gets you a 0.0025% chance that both are incompatible, while back then it would get you a 9% chance, which squares with your "maybe 1 in 10" statistic.

[Red Diamond]

There's already orientation, and that does mean that each of your livestock has a 5% chance to not be breeding.

Personally, I suspect that was never been the goal but an unexpected positive-ish outcome of Toady detailed models. With orientation, a natural aspect of human model, in turn bleeding into livestock. But realistically orientation is undue for livestock (there many things like age and repeat breeding that play MUCH bigger affect) and serves no real gameplay purpose (you could call it random-failure-chance-use-imagination-factor) but it is already there, so why not use it?! With added bonus of making some people very happy and make the simulation feel deeper.

Hence my suggestion, if the devs ever come around to this (their plate is rathe full atm), then they should focus on greater modablity of castes physical/social which would allow this scenario and sooo much more.

It is not realistic to have your liverstock always breed, it doesn't matter that the secret reason is because of orientation.

[jipehog]

It definitely would be cool to have parthenogenesis and hermaphroditism. I've actually thought about the latter before, specifically in regards to sequential hemphroditism. While this wouldn't matter for most of the mundane animals already in the game, it would certainly would present more cool options for both the devs and for modders. Simultaneous hermaphroditism would also be cool.

Rimworld recently introduced an elaborate genetic system, that allows anything from "vampires" to fertility and propensity to violence, the sort of thing I suspect got Tarn really excited in the morning (unlike UI stuff). Rimworld system suits well their high tech setting (where you can have gene manipulation and growth vats) and complements well with existing systems, allowing for real impact on gameplay with multi generational colonies a viable option for most.

I doubt that such a system would suit DF well, it would have very little impact on anything except animals (especially with recent adult age change from 12 to 18) even there it adds minutia detail on top of existing things like basic genetics and procedural generated monsters. So personally, I don't see the allure here, this isn't DF forte. But as general rule I welcome greater degree of freedom for modders for others things.

I do wonder what magic might allow todo.

[Thorfinn]

It is not realistic to have your liverstock always breed, it doesn't matter that the secret reason is because of orientation.

I was raised on a ranch, cattle, sheep, pigs and horses. Plus dogs and cats. I've never encountered it. My brother runs 700 head of bison, and has never had to screen to see which to leave as bulls and which to geld.

I'm not saying it couldn't happen. I'm just saying I've never even heard of it around the sale barn. You buy a bull and he performs. Where are you getting your information?

[Starver]

It is not realistic to have your liverstock always breed, it doesn't matter that the secret reason is because of orientation.

I was raised on a ranch, cattle, sheep, pigs and horses. Plus dogs and cats. I've never encountered it. My brother runs 700 head of bison, and has never had to screen to see which to leave as bulls and which to geld.

I'm not saying it couldn't happen. I'm just saying I've never even heard of it around the sale barn. You buy a bull and he performs. Where are you getting your information?

I think the point was that some creatures fire blanks (or don't seem to have a valid target to be shot at), and it doesn't really matter if the bull performs or not, there's no stuffed toy won at the end of the day.

I don't actually know if there's a game mechanic to make a mating potentially fruitless (I'm sure you had your share of those, some just "not caching occasionally", some turning out to be complete duds and went off in a truck to serve the food industry more directly), but if the same effect arises due to what is (or isn't) beteen the ears rather than the legs... Realism by proxy?

[Thorfinn]

I get that, Starver. You can almost always weed out the ones with frozen or unusual testicles by branding time, so well before shooting blanks makes any difference. When in doubt, cut 'em out, because you need so few bulls. You judge performance by results not by attempts. You call in the vet to preg check before it's too late to fix the opens, or you just send the opens to the sale barn. If you turn out to be bad at choosing breeding stock, you go out of business.

But the whole conversation is irrelevant. This is a game, and for purposes of the game, reproduction is what is defined in the raws, not based on what real world animals. You just learn to deal with the game on its own terms. Bring an extra rooster or two on the embark if it's important. All I was doing was questioning an assertion that the game was sufficiently realistic that it did not matter what the rationale was. If cows really were 5% non-breeders, evolution would have long ago driven them to extinction.

[Starver]

You mirror a comment I made earlier (snipped out of the thread[1]) that it's just a game, and reality is indeed irrelevent as long as gameplay 'works'. I think you both agree on the ends but are only at odds over whether the means are correct (for the game, that is).

But I may also have the wrong ends of the wrong sticks, somehow.

[1] Fallout from a similar Mod decision on what I was replying to, but deliberately not actually quoting, methinks... Which was probably the correct decision.

[Thorfinn]

We aren't even disagreeing on the means. I could not care less whether the raw says they have a lower reproduction rate due to orientation, genetics, environment, stress, lack or excess of minerals, whatever. All that matters is that some animals don't reproduce and you need to come up with a workaround if you want to do some animal husbandry. Orientation is convenient because it's already coded. It's also very easy to deal with -- a hen lays more than a batch or two of infertile eggs, off to the stewpot with her. Unless all the other hens are also laying infertile eggs. It's not like you need to code a mechanism for tracking down whether there's something in the water or figure out whatever else is causing it.

All I was getting at is that an appeal to real life is silly in a world that has re-animating rain, were-creatures, necromancers, dwarves, crundles, etc.

In a way, the OP's suggestion makes things vastly easier. Presumably it was that you could "mod" your dwarves to trans characters, which means you could either adjust the likelihood within the raw or you could change it directly as easily as you can change a name. So move the slider all the way to "None" and you don't have to try to figure out which animals are not reproducers. Or just click the box that says they are reproducers, depending on how it's implemented. If you really enjoy the bit about putting hens and roosters into locked rooms and figure out which are gay, knock yourself out. It's not that I'm repulsed or anything. I just find that tedious rather than an enjoyable part of the game.

[jipehog]

This is a game, and for purposes of the game, reproduction is what is defined in the raws, not based on what real world animals. You just learn to deal with the game on its own terms.

True, gameplay comes first, however, I would add that if the game fails to communicate its rules and player have to learn them from looking up the code that is a bad design. In this case, this situation can be simply solved by adding an 'infertile' tag in the health tag. So in dire situation if one need to cull the herd they can make an informed decision.

Btw, in case it was misunderstood, before I was suggesting that orientation (which is the ~only affect on livestock reproduction) is likely a consequence of good overall creature prototype (rather than conscientious attempt to address it), suggesting that here too we should focus on more versatile prototype which allows for more options rather than put blinders on a specific option.

[Thorfinn]

Agreed. If instead of "hens" and "roosters", we were talking about "hoons" and "resters", not many people would try to compare it to real life animals, any more than they do when talking about crundles or blendecs. It's only when dragging our preconceptions into it that it makes any difference.

I'm also not saying one needs read through the raws. I had not done that when I settled on bringing along at least 3 pairs of each poultry if I wanted a reasonable chance of getting at least one breeding pair. 4M/8F was almost a guarantee. Not based on real life, just my in-game outcomes of several embarks. Anymore, I mostly go with 2/4, 3/8 for "essentials" like turkeys and dogs.

I hope more mechanisms for non-reproduction are not developed. I think that part of the game is dreadfully boring. At the very least, if it's going to be there, it should be rare enough that evolution would not weed out the species, which has a whole lot more evolutionary pressure than the real world. Rarely do giant honey badgers ravage herds in the real world.

[Putnam]

If cows really were 5% non-breeders, evolution would have long ago driven them to extinction.

That's quite an extraordinary claim! And I can find no evidence to back it up!

Orientation doesn't affect egg fertility AFAIK.