Been a long time since I posted here. I hope someone reads this one; this child forum tends to be overlooked. Please note this is more a suggestion for a modding tool, and not really directed at Toady per se, though he could certainly help!
For the modders: The new bodyparts code seems to me to make modding in unique creatures about ten times more daunting. Now we need to specify more tissue layers, the hardness of those layers, and so on. This ties in to the fact that "game balance" in general in DF is ridiculously hard to achieve.
I'm worried that the new code is going to make things even more strange than they are, when a giant cave spider or something comes along that just happens to have a particularly hard chitin due to a typo disembowels a hero adventurer with a pincher with a particularly hard pincer stiffness, or something.
I have a suggestion for making it all simple. Have each qualitative change to the body makeup of a creature contribute to some kind of simple, quantitative, overall
"power level." Maybe there could be some simple stats that tie into this calculation (defense, attack, intelligence, whatever.) So for example, adding chitinous layers with a hardness of X would boost a creature's overall Defense level by a certain amount; same for the pincers/attackable arms, etc. Then at the end of it all, you could put these numbers into the proposed tool and it would tell you the overall stats of what you just made.
And here's the really cool part. If you wanted to make a creature with a specific power level; or specific sub-stats; you could then begin to use the proposed applet to begin filling out the creature's specific bodypart stuff, ticking off points as you go. Or you could let the program figure it all out for you, if it were made well enough.
For most people, modding in creatures is too daunting to even try, even with the older, simpler code. But maybe this is something that will catch someone's eye.
BTW, If I had some general idea of how to rate these things (defense/attack for bodypart/tissue layers) once that code is finished, I'm sure I could whip up a web based java applet in a few hours.