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[smjjames]

The new ones, no.

While its pretty universal that dragons have long lifespans (on the order of millenia), I don't think everybody is in agreement on how fast they would grow up.

It can also depend on whether they grow like mammals or more like reptiles. If like reptiles, they could take a few centuries to reach near full size, if like mammals, then within a few decades.

Edit: If we are talking about bigger than the largest living thing ever to exist, the above would make sense, but something the size of one of the more average sauropods (or a whale shark) would be a decade or so if mammal style, and up to a century if reptillian style.

[Outcast Orange]

I think some creatures should get a random "huge" mutation, and become mega beasts.
That would be a good way to keep them coming back,
 so the world didn't get boring after a while.

[jokermatt999]

Correct me if I wrong (I think I may be), but don't castes mean we could have a creature grow into a megabeast? From my understanding, creatures can grow into castes...but I'm going to relisten to that tags podcast again to check.

[Neonivek]

Megabeasts arn't simply large creatures. Id think that creature would need something extra before it was a full blown megabeast

[Footkerchief]

Megabeasts arn't simply large creatures. Id think that creature would need something extra before it was a full blown megabeast

Well yeah, the MEGABEAST tag.

Correct me if I wrong (I think I may be), but don't castes mean we could have a creature grow into a megabeast? From my understanding, creatures can grow into castes...but I'm going to relisten to that tags podcast again to check.

Nope.  Creatures can't transition from one caste to another -- they're stuck with whatever they're born with.  It does look like you can have megabeast and non-megabeast castes within a creature, though:

The number of tokens that are creature rather than caste specific is very small.  Creatures handle the overall name, biome, whether the creature is considered fanciful/doesn't exist (for art), vermin information (so, no, Fault, sorry!... too much depends on that right now), whether groups hang together closely, whether it is mundane (from real Earth for age name purposes), population information including good/evil/savage, if it is equipment, sphere information (not sure how long that'll last, but there were annoyances), and that looks like it (they also have some general categories that have caste overrides, like child names and speeches for adv mode).  Everything else, including body information, is held in the castes.

[Shoku]

Well for example Livers, Kidneys, and stomachs Don't actually DO anything other then causing unrelated problems if they are damaged, serving as "Hit here for extra damage" locations.

For some reason, this makes me think of giant enemy crabs, which I think DF lacks.

In next version people should be able to mod them in with big exposed eyeball and everything.

I think it's more to see exactly how the game uses size in combat, and in what way it derives the value for size - whether for instance that value is dependent on the final size for all members of the race/caste, or whether development and growth are also taken into account in worldgen as additional size modifiers.

It's not going to be like this in the next version but if your opponent is bigger than you you get 0 extra damage but if you are bigger than them you get that many more points of damage for that step of the calculation.

Based on how world gen treats dwarves it shouldn't have any problem doing this as it goes along.

I think some creatures should get a random "huge" mutation, and become mega beasts.
That would be a good way to keep them coming back,
 so the world didn't get boring after a while.

The could reasonably become the work of wizards.

[madjoe5]

Some caste questions:

Is inter-caste breeding possible/likely/rare/inevitable/preventable?

It can be used for a multitude of things, so can I, say, create a white tiger, which is virtually identical to the tiger, but is white, more valuable, more rare, and easily distinguishable from the orange and black kin?

Things like different dog breeds: Will it be a possibility to have several different types of dogs, all of which are linked to the creature "dog", but vary in size, attack power, [trAINABLE] tag, value, ability to be liked/detested, color, presence of tail, etc etc?

How will castes within your own fort come into play? I think I have seen the separation between male and female castes, but is it possible to make things like noble castes (parents were noble, now they will be), miner castes (parents were miners, must be a miner, but born with novice lever miner or something)?

Finally, will castes be part of a creatures description or something? In other words, can I just press "v" and be able to tell its caste from another?

[darkflagrance]

Some caste questions:

Is inter-caste breeding possible/likely/rare/inevitable/preventable?

It can be used for a multitude of things, so can I, say, create a white tiger, which is virtually identical to the tiger, but is white, more valuable, more rare, and easily distinguishable from the orange and black kin?

Things like different dog breeds: Will it be a possibility to have several different types of dogs, all of which are linked to the creature "dog", but vary in size, attack power, [trAINABLE] tag, value, ability to be liked/detested, color, presence of tail, etc etc?

How will castes within your own fort come into play? I think I have seen the separation between male and female castes, but is it possible to make things like noble castes (parents were noble, now they will be), miner castes (parents were miners, must be a miner, but born with novice lever miner or something)?

Finally, will castes be part of a creatures description or something? In other words, can I just press "v" and be able to tell its caste from another?

I know that castes will be able to intermarry without prejudice, and caste probability is not hereditary but determined by the race the creature belongs to.

[sproingie]

I can see it now: Fluffy Wambler Megabeast legends in worldgen.

[smjjames]

Wasn't there a discussion relating to white tigers and breeding and/or castes a while back? It was at least a month ago I think.

The castes are closer to biological castes (ants, termites) than social or cultural castes.

[G-Flex]

Some caste questions:

Is inter-caste breeding possible/likely/rare/inevitable/preventable?

It can be used for a multitude of things, so can I, say, create a white tiger, which is virtually identical to the tiger, but is white, more valuable, more rare, and easily distinguishable from the orange and black kin?

Things like different dog breeds: Will it be a possibility to have several different types of dogs, all of which are linked to the creature "dog", but vary in size, attack power, [trAINABLE] tag, value, ability to be liked/detested, color, presence of tail, etc etc?

Inter-caste breeding is not only possible, it's necessary for breeding to work at all, because biological sex is tied to caste; for instance, dwarves have a male and female caste, the most important difference being that one has the [MALE] tag for breeding and one has the [FEMALE] tag.

So basically, sex is linked to castes, and any caste with [MALE] can breed with any caste with [FEMALE].

The caste of the child is chosen randomly as per the set probabilities (some can be more common than others), and has nothing to do with the caste of the parents, so things like dog breeds wouldn't work; you'd wind up with a pitbull and a golden retriever having a kid that's, say, a chihuahua or a great dane or a chocolate lab or whatever else is possible.


Castes CAN vary quite wildly (few things about them can't), though.

[Dante]

Okay, going back to your original question:

Say I create a custom critter (call it a rock golem) which ages basically indefinitely and keeps getting bigger as it ages, to the point where it's eventually of mega-beast proportions. Will this aging, and its effect on the golem's survivability be applied in world gen, and hence the sizes of golem you might encounter in the game world?

The answer is yes, the game will compute the right body size (respecting caste, age, body size nodes, etc.) for your creature in both worldgen and gameplay, and that size will have an impact on combat calculations.  Unless there's a bug, of course, but that disclaimer should hardly need to be stated.

I think what was meant was, in worldgen, will the game just use the size of the creature when it was young (and completely harmless), or when it was old (and completely unstoppable), or will it calculate the birth date and ongoing age of the creature and update its size accordingly for any given year?

[Footkerchief]

Partially beaten by G-Flex, but my answers touch on some different points so I'll post them anyway.

Is inter-caste breeding possible/likely/rare/inevitable/preventable?

All breeding is inter-caste, since males and females are implemented as castes now.  Breeding occurs between any caste with a MALE tag and any caste with a FEMALE tag.  You can't give a caste both the MALE and FEMALE tag (the game ignores it if you try).

It can be used for a multitude of things, so can I, say, create a white tiger, which is virtually identical to the tiger, but is white, more valuable, more rare, and easily distinguishable from the orange and black kin?

Color: you can make the bodies arbitrarily different between castes, so yes.
More valuable: yes, higher petvalue for the caste.
More rare: no, biomes etc. can't be set at the caste level.
Easily distinguishable: I'm not sure what you mean.  You can give each caste its own ASCII tile and creature graphics.

Things like different dog breeds: Will it be a possibility to have several different types of dogs, all of which are linked to the creature "dog", but vary in size, attack power, [trAINABLE] tag, value, ability to be liked/detested, color, presence of tail, etc etc?

You can do all of those except "ability to be detested" -- I think that's only done via VERMIN_HATEABLE, and you can't set vermin info at the caste level.  However, the offspring of two castes does not depend on the castes of the parents, just on birth ratios for the general creature.  The appearance of the castes will be influenced by the appearances of both parents, but you could still have a Doberman and a Great Dane giving birth to a chihuahua.

How will castes within your own fort come into play? I think I have seen the separation between male and female castes, but is it possible to make things like noble castes (parents were noble, now they will be), miner castes (parents were miners, must be a miner, but born with novice lever miner or something)?

Noble caste: you can set up entity positions (e.g. nobility) to only accept certain castes, but as above with dog breeds, you can't ensure that the children of nobility are born with the same caste as their parents.
Miner caste: not sure.  You can't do the inheritance part, as above.  When defining the caste itself, you can only set profession names -- you can't lock them out of professions.  The current version's entity defs have a PERMITTED_JOB tag, but it's unclear whether the next version will allow you to use that on a caste-specific basis, like PERMITTED_JOB:MINER:FEMALE and PERMITTED_JOB:CARPENTER:ALL.

Finally, will castes be part of a creatures description or something? In other words, can I just press "v" and be able to tell its caste from another?

For dwarves, I think it'll show up with a male/female symbol as before.  That's probably a default triggered by the presence of the MALE or FEMALE tag.  You can probably override it with a specific caste symbol.  I'm sure it'll also show up in the creature's descriptive paragraph.

I think what was meant was, in worldgen, will the game just use the size of the creature when it was young (and completely harmless), or when it was old (and completely unstoppable), or will it calculate the birth date and ongoing age of the creature and update its size accordingly for any given year?

Yeah, I understood that was what it meant, and the answer is yes, it will calculate age and the resulting size as you'd expect, unless there's a bug.

[Shoku]

I think what was meant was, in worldgen, will the game just use the size of the creature when it was young (and completely harmless), or when it was old (and completely unstoppable), or will it calculate the birth date and ongoing age of the creature and update its size accordingly for any given year?

Yeah, I understood that was what it meant, and the answer is yes, it will calculate age and the resulting size as you'd expect, unless there's a bug.

Of course, but what about during world gen? Will it regard age based size? :D

I think my sense of humor is getting really bad.

[Aqizzar]

A couple of questions I've thought up recently.  I think I have even asked them before, but since the forum search function can only return one result within a thread, between this and the old New Future of the Fortress it would take days to even look.  I also don't recall Toady ever specifically answering them (hence my curiosity) so I wouldn't be surprised if the great Foot can't find the answers either.

Will the fishing mechanic still only allow dwarves to catch "vermin" type fish, or will they now be able to catch fish with distinct body plans?

If the fortress-playable race includes castes which are wildly different sizes, will the player still be able to make appropriately sized clothing for all of them?  Or is clothing universalized or some other temporary solution?