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[Craftsdwarf boi]

Did you mean !!FUN!! or !!SCIENCE!!?

[bwbill]

So, it's been more-or-less proven conclusively earlier in this thread that it can't be necro'd. A new post would be EWWW. This is the topic. Chasing the elusive Mermaid.

But.....what if I wanted to use dfhack's make-citizen to enlist mermaids as underwater citizens? Could I build a fort with all they need and then flood it for them to live in? Would they use submerged workshops? Would anything work, for that matter? Has this been tried? Are there other aquatic or amphibeous creatures or animal people that could work, if this would work?

EDIT: Also, apparently (!) some dwarves like mermen for their wangly danglers, but I can assure you that this is misguided, as I have it first hand that they spawn like fish. That, or she was just brushing me off that fateful day at the coast...I've still gone out and chummed for her now and then, just in case.

[thegoatgod_pan]

I think the big issue with underwater forts, is that labor breaks, because tasks are interrupted when there is too much water in the way--it breaks pathing.

[Mohreb el Yasim]

Yep for the moment, aquatic, amphibious and flying fortresses don't work well. (the patching and job possibility is hard code tailored for terrestrial life)
Even some other tags end up funky :
Egglaying, no sleep, no emotion creatures each have they quirks as a civilization...

[FantasticDorf]

Amphibious nations with nautical flavor* work fine, if you look over at Naga's featured in Mephs masterwork mod for example, a sea and lake-faring race that isn't prohibited by land but is nigh on impossible to actually conquer because armies can't path to them without being aquatic themselves or capable of flight is a classic blueprint to continually harass player forts without just getting squashed by potentially much stronger opponents.

Reactions and materials are sea themed, some of the creatures for accessibility are also [AMPHIBIOUS] as to be mounts for them to bring along and they harvest central sea species and animals, but by no means aren't terrestrial. Except maybe the boon that you can flood a room without causing many ill effects such as fighting disadvantaged foes until they can get onto dry land if they arent killed by crushing water pressure impact, vampires and were's are similar.

Naga settlements are typically buildings poking over the top of the oceans surface, only maybe dwarven detailed caves might be actually submerged in a way that is water-tight, or the half sunk depths of a dark-tower. There are no caves in the ocean for oceanic megabeasts or naga's to inhabit in a kobold-like fashion.

Vengeful merpeople could well be a thing with some user input, and a potentially powerful unreachable enemy least until Toady adds flying and swimming dwarf mounts or boats to enable our raids to travel to new lands and conquer exotic peoples.

[DiscoUrist]

I (sorta) got it to work. As an adventurer necromancer, if you can get your hands on a mermaid corpse and take it back to a fort, you can resurrect it as an intelligent undead. You can then retire the adventurer and unretire the fort.

The mermaid will show up as a "current resident" that is not aggressive. Build a tanner or butcher shop next to her, and wall/lock her in. Demolish all other tanner/butcher workshops. Unleash misery upon your dwarves, and trigger a fell mood.

After the dwarf claims the workshop, lock him in there with the mermaid. He'll use her to make some type of artifact. I haven't gotten a weapon, but I'm pretty sure it's possible.

A similar method allows you to get artifacts that are otherwise impossible, using certain conquered sites or compelled creatures. Some things I've seen so are a morion helm, vomit leggings, a vomit figurine, a vomit gauntlet. Lots of things made of vomit, for reasons. I *think* you might be able to make things out of water, snow, and fire, but I can't find any appropriate creatures.

[Laterigrade]

This is what got DF put on the no-no lists, don’t start this back up again.

[FantasticDorf]

This is what got DF put on the no-no lists, don’t start this back up again.

Im of the opposite persuasion, if players continue to push the envelope, it'll show that Toady will more than likely have to find another way to make players disengage from that kind of activity (keeping in mind the system that was meant to make it togglable is actually bugged to never turn on without DFhack script to apply the boolean properly)

Toady could then put in seperate countermeasures, like killing the sacred animals/peoples relevant to cults of the sea to bring diplomatic reprecussions to your fortress, and draw ire from the god of the sea themselves. A big siege of possessed water sphere animals coming out of the wilderness to attack your fortress, probably crabs & angelic warriors of that god riding upon them or titans being driven into the path of your fort guided by divine power may be enough to try and preserve the sanctity of the merpeople.

It all couples in with the way that toady is already thinking about how to make sieges more devious for the army arc, and some development  goals about sacred animals in a generic context.

[HmH]

This is what got DF put on the no-no lists, don’t start this back up again.

Wait, DF got put on some no-no lists? I haven't been to the forums since early 2020, what did I miss?

(Also, you've got a quote from one of my Adventure Mode test reports back in 2019. Nice!
I remember that test; it was shocking how quickly a quadriplegic toothless vampire managed to disable my character. There were maybe two, three hundred wrestling moves before one of its pushes broke a bone.)

A big siege of possessed water sphere animals coming out of the wilderness to attack your fortress, probably crabs & angelic warriors of that god riding upon them or titans being driven into the path of your fort guided by divine power may be enough to try and preserve the sanctity of the merpeople.

Hold on. Are you saying that the biggest, coolest, deadliest siege you could get is going to deter DF players from killing mermaid babies?

The same DF players who deliberately place their fortress next to a necromancer tower, simply because regular goblin attacks aren't exciting enough?

The same DF players who dig their way into the Circus just because an army of clowns is the only force great enough to defeat them?

[FantasticDorf]

A big siege of possessed water sphere animals coming out of the wilderness to attack your fortress, probably crabs & angelic warriors of that god riding upon them or titans being driven into the path of your fort guided by divine power may be enough to try and preserve the sanctity of the merpeople.

Hold on. Are you saying that the biggest, coolest, deadliest siege you could get is going to deter DF players from killing mermaid babies?

The same DF players who deliberately place their fortress next to a necromancer tower, simply because regular goblin attacks aren't exciting enough?

The same DF players who dig their way into the Circus just because an army of clowns is the only force great enough to defeat them?

Well, probably no less than trying to prohibit someone making fell mooded gauntlets entirely out of vomit using a deliberately shut-away aspect of the game that lends to capitalistic genocide.

But point taken. 

[Moeteru]

This is what got DF put on the no-no lists, don’t start this back up again.

Where can I find these no-no lists? I need to peruse them for... reasons.

In all seriousness, it's this sort of thing that makes DF great. If you kid-proof a sandbox game so that anything morally objectionable is prohibited then it's not really a sandbox any more. The whole point of a game like DF is to allow the player maximum freedom to create their own stories within a fictional universe.
You might have noticed that nobody repeats stories about that time someone built a nice, peaceful fortress which lived in harmony with its neighbours and produced lots of woollen crafts to sell to the elves. The famous stories are things like boatmurdered where they tried to flood the world with magma and eventually all the dwarves were slaughtered by ferocious elephants.

Coming up with over-engineered methods to farm mermaids for their valuable bones is exactly the sort of emergent gameplay which DF should encourage. The only real issue is that the NPCs don't react appropriately to the atrocities committed by the player. If you want to butcher good-aligned sapients on an industrial scale you should have to carefully select citizens with low empathy and still expect half your dwarves to complain or even openly rebel against you. On the other hand, if you're playing as goblins then farming mermaids seems like a very reasonable course of action.

There are also larger issues about the handling of ethics. It's more than a little silly that dwarves will happily buy and sell dwarf bone amulets or use a pick made from the corpse of their friend, but draw the line at butchering an enemy troll corpse to feed their starving family. Mermaid bones are the sort of thing which should fetch a very high price from an unscrupulous trader but would cause grave offence if you try to sell them to a trader with high empathy. Treating them exactly the same as cow bones is wrong from both perspectives. Hopefully when the world economy gets implemented properly there will be more thought given to things like repugnant transactions and black markets.

[HmH]

If you kid-proof a sandbox game so that anything morally objectionable is prohibited then it's not really a sandbox any more.

Also, it only makes atrocities more challenging, and therefore more interesting, to commit.
Try as you might, you can't stop a sufficiently determined person from doing terrible things to virtual people.
Case in point: Sims.

[Laterigrade]

If you kid-proof a sandbox game so that anything morally objectionable is prohibited then it's not really a sandbox any more.

Also, it only makes atrocities more challenging, and therefore more interesting, to commit.
Try as you might, you can't stop a sufficiently determined person from doing terrible things to virtual people.
Case in point: Sims.

I’m pretty sure Sims was designed for that kind of use, no mattter what the devs say contrary.

[George_Chickens]

This is what got DF put on the no-no lists, don’t start this back up again.

Wait, DF got put on some no-no lists? I haven't been to the forums since early 2020, what did I miss?

It didn't. The reaction to the mermaid farms has been exaggerated through 10 years of Chinese Whispers. In a few years time, people will probably claim that it's why Toady wasn't eligible for his brother's medical insurance.

[Mobbstar]

it's why Toady wasn't eligible for his brother's medical insurance.

Oh wow, the more you know!