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[Serefan]

I just thought of something, and I haven't seen this question yet I think.
If newbie woodcutters cut wood, it just takes a long time. But what happens with newbie surgeons? If nobody ever did anything surgical before they can't just take long to amputate something. So here my question:

Are dwarves going to be able to die in the hospital due to incompetence of surgeons?

[Footkerchief]

Are dwarves going to be able to die in the hospital due to incompetence of surgeons?

Dev log from a couple days ago makes it sound likely:

09/04/2009: [...] I've been working on hospital building handling and then into setting bones for simple fractures, traction for difficult overlapping fractures and surgery for disgusting compound fractures. All of that's done now aside from some final tests to make sure the hospital works in an orderly fashion, which I'll probably put off until I've finished the other things I need to do there. Although it should really be like this for almost every skill, I've made surgery a bit more of a task for people that don't know what they are doing. If you ask some random dwarf to perform surgery, patients beware!

This got me wondering whether incisions etc. are actually considered wounds in their own right.  If so, it should totally show up in the new fortress mode combat log, so that we can get a report on how the new surgeon screwed up by nicking an artery or whatever.

[DG]

Urist McSurgeon creates incision on left upper chest with his ☼iron scalpel☼
It is cut!
Urist McSurgeon creates incision on left upper chest with his ☼iron scalpel☼
It is cut!
Urist McPatient is unable to break the grip of Urist McNurse on His right upper arm!
Urist McSurgeon creates incision on left upper chest with his ☼iron scalpel☼
It is run through!
Urist McPatient has been struck down.               
Urist McPatient has been cured of chest cold.

[Neonivek]

That Doctor is a Genius! The patient died but it shouldn't have worked.

[LumenPlacidum]

I haven't read much about the caste system, can you explain, or provide a link?

Castes (or morphs, as Toady was calling them at one point) are subtypes of a creature.  Most creatures just have a male and female caste, but others, like antmen, will have queens, workers, drones and so on, with different bodies and behaviors (and profession names, and ASCII tiles, etc.).  Reproduction can occur between any two castes marked MALE and FEMALE, and the caste of any resulting offspring is determined solely by the creature's caste ratios, not by the castes of the parents.

Actually, from what I recall, an important thing that this is NOT doing at this stage is allowing different bodies between castes.  Different proportions, different attacks, etc.  But different bodies is not happening.  Of course, you could have lots of body features and just size them to 0 on certain castes...

[Chris Haldor]

Hooray! A medical centre! Now people will be healed instead of lying in bed for 5 years with people occasionally bringing them water 

[Sunday]

It would be good if a well functioning justice system acted as a deterrant, so the Hammerer's random bone smashing attacks wouldn't be for naught.

Not to sidetrack the discussion, but that's an interesting issue.  Unlike, say medicine, where there's a clearly defined goal (make the patient better!), there are a lot of different jurisprudential issues as to what the goal of a justice system is, and a lot of people disagree as to what the goal of the justice system should be.  One of them, yes, is a generally (though not always) economic concern about deterrence (in negligence cases, for example, putting liability for the damage on the person that can spend the least amount of money in the future to avoid said damage).  But there are also other economic concerns (redistribution of wealth, for example).  As more heady, philosophical moral issues about correcting 'moral imbalances' between two (or more) parties - the corrective justice approach is possibly the most common one.

Basically, I'd like it if Toady thought a bit about what the goals of dwarven justice should be, before moving forward with it.  Is it to deter crime, or to punish the criminal/defendant, or correct the wrong done to the victim/plaintiff, or just generally make dwarven society run smoothly?  For all we know, it could just be a system to keep the nobles in power - in which case, random, horrific attacks on dwarves that probably don't deserve it might serve a purpose (keeping them terrified and unorganized).

I'm not turning that green because it's a rhetorical question.  Sorry about the possible derailment. 

[Neonivek]

There are Four main pillars of justice in terms of criminal law as far as I am aware (which I am not very aware. In fact I am sure there is more.)

-Restitution: Reimbersing the victim
-Retribution: Punishing the criminal
-Recuperation: Stopping the Criminal from commiting crimes
-Prevention: Stopping others from commiting crimes

In the case of Tantrums. No punishment should prevent them since they demonstrate the total absense of the ability to control thyself.

-------------

As for Toady, I see you found out that Cats love to eat flowers the hard way.

They also like to chew on loose plastic from wrapping.

[Dakk]

Zach and I brought Scamps over to visit our parents, and after an evening of play he chewed a few of the pitchers off of my mother's pitcher plant. She doesn't know that yet, because she had just gone to bed when the mayhem started. I noticed the trouble when he carried one of the pitchers over to me and dropped it for fetch. After a few tosses, I rescued the remainder of the plant. The bad kitty will have to make amends later.

Toady One cancels dump object: Attending a meeting.

Hey, at least he fixed the cat bug, IRL.

[Footkerchief]

I haven't read much about the caste system, can you explain, or provide a link?

Castes (or morphs, as Toady was calling them at one point) are subtypes of a creature.  Most creatures just have a male and female caste, but others, like antmen, will have queens, workers, drones and so on, with different bodies and behaviors (and profession names, and ASCII tiles, etc.).  Reproduction can occur between any two castes marked MALE and FEMALE, and the caste of any resulting offspring is determined solely by the creature's caste ratios, not by the castes of the parents.

Actually, from what I recall, an important thing that this is NOT doing at this stage is allowing different bodies between castes.  Different proportions, different attacks, etc.  But different bodies is not happening.  Of course, you could have lots of body features and just size them to 0 on certain castes...

It's possible you're correct that castes can only have different body detail plans, and not different bodies.  There's definitely some degree of anatomical variation allowed, and "creature polymorphism" and "caste bodies" were emphasized pretty heavily earlier in this release cycle, so I don't know.  The one thing that's definitely out is an individual creature changing castes over its lifetime.

[Leafsnail]

-Restitution: Reimbersing the victim
-Retribution: Punishing the criminal
-Recuperation: Stopping the Criminal from commiting crimes
-Prevention: Stopping others from commiting crimes

Well, "Reimbursing the victim" obviously isn't going to happen, and isn't likely to be too useful from our point of view.  "Retribution" is similar - I don't really care if my legendary stonemason attacked someone, I still don't want the hammerer to smash his bones!  "Recuperation" is the only one that currently works, as being in jail helps boost moral (if you do it right) and they can't cause any damage in there.  "Prevention" is one that could be added in - perhaps a well oiled justice system would cause dwarves to think twice before throwing a tantrum?

[Granite26]

I haven't read much about the caste system, can you explain, or provide a link?

Castes (or morphs, as Toady was calling them at one point) are subtypes of a creature.  Most creatures just have a male and female caste, but others, like antmen, will have queens, workers, drones and so on, with different bodies and behaviors (and profession names, and ASCII tiles, etc.).  Reproduction can occur between any two castes marked MALE and FEMALE, and the caste of any resulting offspring is determined solely by the creature's caste ratios, not by the castes of the parents.

Actually, from what I recall, an important thing that this is NOT doing at this stage is allowing different bodies between castes.  Different proportions, different attacks, etc.  But different bodies is not happening.  Of course, you could have lots of body features and just size them to 0 on certain castes...

It's possible you're correct that castes can only have different body detail plans, and not different bodies.  There's definitely some degree of anatomical variation allowed, and "creature polymorphism" and "caste bodies" were emphasized pretty heavily earlier in this release cycle, so I don't know.  The one thing that's definitely out is an individual creature changing castes over its lifetime.

I haven't seen anything about the detail plans, but am too lazy to confirm nothing was said.  He hasn't said facehuggers and xenos can't be in the same caste though, so there's hope

[Sunday]

-Restitution: Reimbersing the victim
-Retribution: Punishing the criminal
-Recuperation: Stopping the Criminal from commiting crimes
-Prevention: Stopping others from commiting crimes

Well, "Reimbursing the victim" obviously isn't going to happen, and isn't likely to be too useful from our point of view.  "Retribution" is similar - I don't really care if my legendary stonemason attacked someone, I still don't want the hammerer to smash his bones!  "Recuperation" is the only one that currently works, as being in jail helps boost moral (if you do it right) and they can't cause any damage in there.  "Prevention" is one that could be added in - perhaps a well oiled justice system would cause dwarves to think twice before throwing a tantrum?

See, your talk about 'retribution' starts to bring in economic considerations - your legendary stonemason is more valuable to you than random cheesemaker #23.  Should that matter in dwarven justice?  It starts to bring in class considerations.  Much of modern law is concerned similar issues.

I'd be totally down with a legendary stonemason getting away (literally) with murder - either because of his economic worth or his connections with the fortress leader - but then having vengeance meted out by family or friends of the deceased.  Or possibly a representative 'judge' noble from the mountainhomes coming to your fort if too many cases are being decided apart from traditional dwarven notions of justice, and your dwarves are complaining.

Also, dwarven justice seems to occupy a strange midpoint between civil and criminal law.  The civil part being the whole failed-mandates punishment thing.  Though the punishments even on that scale seem more criminal than civil.

But the civil-criminal split is relatively recent, in some ways.  Back in medieval times many 'civil' crimes (debt, certain batteries, lying about products, etc.) were punishable by jail time or public humiliation.  And some borderline civil/criminal cases (assault, battery) were merely punished by damages.  Frex, there's an assault case from the 1350s where the defendant was ordered to pay damages - no fines or jailtime sentenced.

All that said, I'd be totally down to start a thread on this in suggestions, though it might not technically belong there.

[Granite26]

Sounds like there's enough interest and information to start working out a proposed system.

Honestly, I have a lot of fun working on/ reading those, and don't care if they fit DF or not.

[Leafsnail]

Sounds good.  The other problem with retribution is from our point of view - I mean, while it may have sucked that Floor Carver #11 severely injured Legendary Miner #2, the Hammerer killing/ maiming Floor Carver #11 won't help anything, and tends to make a bad situation worse.  Perhaps it would be worth it if the friends/ family of Legendary Miner #2 would take some consolation from the fact that justice had been served, or if your dwarves became uneasy if criminal actions were going unpunished.