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[G-Flex]

Maybe so, but even if our beetle could "only" lift a total of, say, 1000lbs over it's head, that's still a *lot* of strength in a very small package.

Make a beetle too large and it won't be able to raise anything over its head. Or at all.

There's no size you could make a beetle such that it would be able to lift that much weight. They just don't work at such sizes. You might be able to find some beetle size that makes it able to lift a few pounds or something, if you're really lucky, but that's probably it, and it would be a very inefficient size for a beetle and probably wouldn't be able to survive most of the time.

[Silverionmox]

I wonder how the existence of GCS will be justified, if the diminishing strength of carapaces at larger sizes becomes an emergent effect.

[Granite26]

That's kind of how carp and elephants and gcs got their reputations in the first place.  Creatures that happen to have the set of powers that, in the current version, happen to be extremely powerful.

The reverse is with the Megabeasts that have trouble.  Things that you'd THINK would be powerful end up not counting for as much as inteded.

To be honest though, Unless structural elements (skeletons and carapaces) are actually programmed to need to support the weight (rather than being declared necessary for the limb and leaving it at that), I don't REALLY think there'll be a problem.

I almost hope there is, though.

[ZeroGravitas]

That's kind of how carp and elephants and gcs got their reputations in the first place.  Creatures that happen to have the set of powers that, in the current version, happen to be extremely powerful.

The reverse is with the Megabeasts that have trouble.  Things that you'd THINK would be powerful end up not counting for as much as inteded.

To be honest though, Unless structural elements (skeletons and carapaces) are actually programmed to need to support the weight (rather than being declared necessary for the limb and leaving it at that), I don't REALLY think there'll be a problem.

I almost hope there is, though.

The thing to remember about cube/square  law is that while it means that smaller creatures are more powerful RELATIVE to their size, larger creatures are still ABSOLUTELY more powerful.

For example, dwarves should be able to wear armor more easily than humans: as the individual increases in size, the surface area of a body increases faster than the muscle mass to support the armor does.

However, the human  is still going to be stronger than the  dwarf. Cube-square law is only an advantage if the difference in the weight of the armor makes a difference.

In other words:
The dwarf weighs 120 pounds and can bench press 180 pounds. That's 1.5x his body weight!
The human weighs 180 pounds and can bench press 220 pounds. Only 1.22x  his body weight, but it's still  more than 180.

The problem with megabeasts isn't that "size doesn't matter much", the problem is that they're really just not that much bigger than other stuff. Size 20 versus size 5 isn't really much of a gap. Even my size 120 creatures sometimes kill size 200 creatures.

Finally, I think the idea that things like GCS  and giant scorpions will fail because of cube-square is silly. It's fantasy. We have adamantine.  We can just have superior exoskeletons that don't weigh as much.

[Granite26]

Look up emergent behaviour and come back...

[SirHoneyBadger]

Maybe so, but even if our beetle could "only" lift a total of, say, 1000lbs over it's head, that's still a *lot* of strength in a very small package.

Make a beetle too large and it won't be able to raise anything over its head. Or at all.

There's no size you could make a beetle such that it would be able to lift that much weight. They just don't work at such sizes. You might be able to find some beetle size that makes it able to lift a few pounds or something, if you're really lucky, but that's probably it, and it would be a very inefficient size for a beetle and probably wouldn't be able to survive most of the time.

There actually used to be insects a foot and a half long (Meganeura), and other arthropods that got up to 8 feet in length (sea scorpions), in prehistoric times, and there's even an insect living today--the Malaysian Giant Walking Stick--that gets up to 13 inches long, so it's doubtful that a foot long beetle--less than twice the size of the largest known living beetle on Earth (at 6.5 inches), would be all that inefficient, if conditions existed for it to thrive (higher oxygen/temperature levels, etc).

Again, you're talking about the single strongest creature, by weight, living on the planet today. If you make it weigh a single pound (the goliath beetle weighs in at roughly 1.5-2 oz), and only make it 2/3rds as strong, by bodyweight, as some other living beetles, it would still be able to lift 500 lbs over it's head. Even if it can only drag 500 lbs, in a cart, it would still be very useful.

Ofcourse, DF being a fantasy universe, I think it's fairly safe to say that the case has atleast been made that it's not so far-fetched a critter that it can't exist side by side ettins, cyclopes, undead unicorns, and dwarfs.

[mickel]

Indeed. My mod will always have domestic giant bugs. Dwarves with Giant Beetles pulling their wagons is just too cool not to have.

And giant dung beetles for sanitation.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Scarabs are a variety of dung-beetle, so you might get some valuable craft items out of them, too.

They might be an organic "gem" (ala pearls), or they might have their own niche to fill.

By the way, it would be great if we had shellac (an insect derivitive) in the game:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shellac

I've used it before, and it's great stuff. It's also age-appropriate, since it goes back 3000+ years.