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[Red Diamond]

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?

You are pretty sure that your personal anecdotal experience is definite.

Most of the male animals get eaten, only a small proportion are kept for breeding purposes.  Since the majority will reproduce, the odds of selecting one unable/unwilling to reproduce at all are not good sinceyou are selecting only a tiny number out of the total population.

On top of that, I think most people rent their bulls rather than owning them outright.  If the bulls the owner rent out don't reproduce, they simply get eaten and a new bull is saved from being eaten, so people have a limited experience with unproductive bulls because it is bad business to rent one out.  To sum up, those that are allowed to live are those who will reliably reproduce, therefore we end up with limited experience with those who do not.

The main reason to think that livestock do not always reliably choose to reproduce is the existence of Artificial Insemination; if all livestock creatures were constantly 'trying to reproduce' (in Rimworld fashion), there would be no gains to be had in doing this.

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

Quite the reverse.  Evolution would drive extinct any creature that mindlessly reproduced to the maximum extent of it's ability, because raw ability to reproduce is exponential and the carrying capacity of the environment is not going to go up in a similar fashion to accomadate them.  Actually it has a tendency to actually go down when there are more creatures than resources......

In games, framerate has a similar function.   

[jipehog]

Not sure what you are trying to prove (lets not get sidetracked too much from the topic of improving gameplay) but his experience seem to match your conclusion that orientation is a rounding error among current decision making regarding reproduction, and the emphasis on outcomes match my experience as player.

I don't care about underlying reasons*. I don't want pointless RNG death that I can't affect, wonder what secret rule I might have stumbled over (like with cages) that prevent creature from procreating, nor play peeping tom farm simulator. All of the above can be solved with simple 'infertile' note in health tab (gelded automatically infertile)

* btw Quick google suggest that USA male infertility rate is between 4.5% - 6% and I am certain that age and multiple pregnancies play a MUCH bigger factor in breeding.

[Thorfinn]

If I want realism, I'd go outside for a walk. I would not expect to find realism in the eponymous Dwarf Fortress, any more than I'd expect to see it in Hogwart's.

Orientation doesn't affect egg fertility AFAIK.

Oh? Is that new? Or have I been wasting my time the last few years? Many's the hen that went in the pot after two consecutive clutches that would not hatch.

Getting back to the original idea, I find it interesting, depending on how it is implemented. So long as I am not playing a dead civ, I could not care less whether they all are non-marrying. At least some of the migrants are working age adults, many with useful skills here and now, while none of the infants are. Non-marrying individuals are often better for sending on dangerous missions, allowing those with close friendships to stay relatively safe at home. Migration is just a quicker way of filling jobs without bearing the overhead of non-working kids.

If it is more like changing the character's hair color or his preferences, that can be "gamed", tweaked as the fort needs. It's not exactly the same as other games where you select the protagonist's preference and the player chooses whether to romance Elliot or Jodi, in that you have little to no say in who takes a liking to whom, if any. That is, unless you are willing to lock them together in the same room until a relationship takes or it does not. Which isn't exactly what I'd call "romance".

I get that the OP has a vision of a game where there are other like-minded individuals. I just don't see how it works in this kind of a simulation without ending up with ham-handed things like bashing your sweetheart over the head and dragging him home by the hair.

Now if preferences were expanded upon, say, if one had a fondness for wren eggs, and chose that from the barrel of biscuits, or the guy who likes apple wood trades out his bed and chair for applewood furniture, great. There's potential for the game itself to accommodate orientations in a PC-friendly manner. Is that anywhere close to happening?

[Mohreb el Yasim]

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.

i would love new biological types , even more if Putnam is suggesting it also orientation/ pop ratios expanded a bit too to make ant-like societies more viable (at the moment if you bump up drone casts there won't be enough breeding pair kings/queens to support a race of antman for example)
the pronoun parts is the least interesting to me, as i don't care even irl (as i always miss-use she/he already in any language) but of course i don't mind per say ..

[Eric Blank]

A hermaphrodite sex flag would be ideal for giant snails and such for sure. Maybe just allowing male and female flags to coexist and function in the same caste/creature. Parthenogenetic/asexual reproduction would also be neat to see (where the child can be different from the parent in attributes/traits/caste), including cloning (where the child is always identical to the parent in terms of attributes/traits/caste). You can simulate those via summoning interactions currently tho.

Or budding. Where body parts cut off the creature (or the creature splits itself) develop into new creatures after healing over time.) But that would have to be able to break the upper/lowerbody and head flag system, so for those creatures getting bisected or decapitated isn't instantly fatal.

[Egan_BW]

Or budding. Where body parts cut off the creature (or the creature splits itself) develop into new creatures after healing over time.) But that would have to be able to break the upper/lowerbody and head flag system, so for those creatures getting bisected or decapitated isn't instantly fatal.

That would also be appropriate for zombies or various magical constructs, but that's getting quite off topic now. :p

[Mohreb el Yasim]

Nature has so many wonderful examples, herma snail man civilisation and a budding sponge man one would feel quite unique to play in that way.

[Egan_BW]

Playing as creatures which reproduce by fragmentation, using a job at the guillotine workshop to turn into two identical sponge men half the size. :p

[Nordlicht]

Serrated disc traps hate this one simple trick!

[EuchreJack]

Actually, all Dwarves are already Trans. The men wear dresses, the women wear suits (of armor), and you can change names to whatever.

Pronoun editing should be implemented though, if it's not already.

[Iris]

I am afraid I will give myself hypernatremia if I stay in this thread for too long, so I'm just going to share my drive-by opinions.

Going into details of "trans dwarves" is going to cause so, so much contention that I think the best way is to abstract it as far as you can. So, really quickly:

For creatures considered sapient by the game (idk which combination of tags do that), separate "biological sex" (determined by creature raws), "gender identity" (which is cultural and varies based on worldgen) and "gender expression" (which is entirely individual). These are three separate concepts and should be treated as such.

We can get into the weeds about how different things should be treated as gendered or not, which modifies the dwarves' behaviour and appearance and pronouns and whatever (the manifestation of gender identity determined by gender expression preference) but it would not be productive in the slightest because that is itself a point of contention in real life and I play videogames to escape how shitty being trans is. Quite frankly, that should all be based on worldgen anyway, since 99% of what we think of as gendered is cultural and it makes zero sense to hardcode it. Five genders! Skirts and dresses are masculine! It's a fantasy world, why the Hell should our biases affect it?

[Putnam]

The main reason I haven't even given thought to implementation is because the game really doesn't have gender. Gender expression relies on there being things-that-are-gendered, which there aren't right now. Just having some dwarves use opposite pronouns from their caste's sex token would be, like, fine, but it would be a good deal of work that would ideally be torn out of the game when more in-depth cultural stuff happens anyway.

[EuchreJack]

The main reason I haven't even given thought to implementation is because the game really doesn't have gender. Gender expression relies on there being things-that-are-gendered, which there aren't right now. Just having some dwarves use opposite pronouns from their caste's sex token would be, like, fine, but it would be a good deal of work that would ideally be torn out of the game when more in-depth cultural stuff happens anyway.

I was more suggesting gender be treated like names, or nicknames.  You can put in whatever you want into the field.

Then again, the priority should be getting Adventure mode implemented.  Adventure mode allows adventurers to take on whatever identity they choose, regardless of gender or species.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

The main reason I haven't even given thought to implementation is because the game really doesn't have gender. Gender expression relies on there being things-that-are-gendered, which there aren't right now. Just having some dwarves use opposite pronouns from their caste's sex token would be, like, fine, but it would be a good deal of work that would ideally be torn out of the game when more in-depth cultural stuff happens anyway.

I largely agree, which is why I said that I think this suggestion (while a good one) should be an extension of fleshing out gender roles and identities in DF generally rather than an independent change. Given the current state of gender in DF, changing anything substantially right now would probably just cause more confusion than anything else IMO.

[Red Diamond]

I largely agree, which is why I said that I think this suggestion (while a good one) should be an extension of fleshing out gender roles and identities in DF generally rather than an independent change. Given the current state of gender in DF, changing anything substantially right now would probably just cause more confusion than anything else IMO.

I feel the best and least disruptive approach would be to make the basic items as gender-neutral and then have gender 'added' to the items in a similar fashion to how we add for instance gemstones to items.  The 'upgrade' can be proceedurely generated and more specific in it's material requirements than the base items.  Dwarves of a certain gender, over a certain age get a mood penalty for wearing the basic, ungendered items, but not as great as for being naked.  They get a bigger mood penalty from wearing the opposite gender's clothing however than they do for wearing the ungendered base clothing. 

An advantage of this is it drives trade because the player will often need to import the materials to properly gender their clothes, even if they can just make the base items out of pig tail fibre.