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[Seryntas]

Right now, my fortress has a huge horse population, somewhere around thirty-five or forty adults, all descended from the original wagon-pullers.  This is very good, as it allows me to create extra meat whenever I need it, as long as a butcher is on hand (I have four butchers and four butcher's shops, so this tends to work out well).  Basically, I've changed to using plants only as the raw materials for alcoholic beverages (the dwarves also seem to really love plump helmet as a snack, though).  However, I think the system could be greatly improved.

1.  Corrals and stables.  Putting horses in cages doesn't seem to make a lot of sense; a simple wooden or stone enclosure we could make would work better.  They also seem to hate being shut up in a crowded room behind a closed door; right after I got every horse into the room (by bringing them to the cage inside and then letting them all out again) and someone came in to butcher one, the entire herd escaped.  There should be a way to make them all stay in one place and out of the way of working dwarves.

2.  A "herder" skill, allowing a dwarf to lead an animal more quickly, and possibly improving other aspects of animal husbandry.

3.  A "livestock" designation for animals, which you can toggle in the same screen you can currently toggle an animal's pet availability and whether they can be butchered.  An animal marked "livestock" is automatically herded to the corral by someone with the Herding skill, and the Butcher's Shop can have a task to slaughter the nearest livestock animal, the keyword being "nearest" (my butchers often walk halfway across the fortress to haul the specific horse I marked for slaughter in the Animals menu).  Livestock cats can never adopt anyone.

4.  Manure, as a fertilizer.

5.  Sheepdogs, or horsedogs, or gorilladogs, or gianttoaddogs, or whatever kind of dogs you'd use to help herd whatever variety of tame beast you're using as livestock.

[Gakidou]

Also: Donkeys. The world is full of Mules, but where are they coming from?

[Captain_Action]

Believe me, guvenor. You don't really want to know!  :eek:

[Toady One]

4. They just drop it everywhere?  Everyone will might be doing it after a while... night soil, and so on.  But it's a dangerous door to open, especially if the room on the other side is full.  If a god turns you into a horse in adventure mode, would you suddenly start dropping the bomb?

5 sounds a bit complicated...  what did you have in mind?  Once they are in an enclosure you don't need the dogs, and before then, I'm not quite sure what the dogs would do in game terms.

[Seryntas]

Well, if you implement grazing (which I believe I read in your future plans), then you'll need a lot of herding to get them from pasture to pasture, and the dogs can help with that if assigned to a herder.  Dunno how much help they'd logically be when you're herding tamed elephants, though.

I don't think a little manure will be much more annoying than any of the million other types of refuse produced in my fortress, such as cat chunks.  At least I could do something with manure.  (Tangent: There should be a use for cat chunks.  You know what I'd like to do with cat chunks?  Pave a road.  One player paves his with rough stone, one player paves his with stone blocks, one player paves his with metal.  Me?  I'd go straight for discarded bits of freshly-butchered cat.)

Also: I don't know anything about adventure mode because the computer was invented to play Dwarf mode.  Not just the game, but the entire concept of the personal computer, and in fact most of human civilization up to this point.

[Draco18s]

quote:Originally posted by Seryntas:
<STRONG>Me?  I'd go straight for discarded bits of freshly-butchered cat.)</STRONG>

ROTFL
(I still can't read what you wrote aloud without cracking up).

<STRONG>Also: I don't know anything about adventure mode because the computer was invented to play Dwarf mode.  Not just the game, but the entire concept of the personal computer, and in fact most of human civilization up to this point.</STRONG>

You mean Dwarven civilization.  

[Quintin Stone]

Manure, instead of dropping everywhere, could build up in the corral/paddocks and be collected there.

[Mud]

Personally, I'm really down on any implementation of poo in DF. There's three main reasons:

1.) Due to the nature of Dwarf Fortress, if we're going to implement poo, it has to meet the same standards of realism and fit into the world the same way anything else in the game does. Poo will have to be disposed of, and if you want to use it for fertilizer you're going to have to process it. I'm honestly not looking forward to some hardcore poo-management ontop of everything I have to do already.

2.) If NPCs, animals and monsters are dropping turds, it only make sense that the player will do so too. Does that mean you're going to have a periodically empty your bowels and bladder whenever you're adventuring? It might be funny to pee on someone's corpse but it's not worth the hassel you'll have to deal with.

3.) What about poo-related side effects? Dwarves can't use anything besides their hands to carry stuff, so does that mean they'll have to wash their hands to avoid getting sick after handling poo? Obviously there will have to be toilets for dwarves, and nobles would probably need one in their room. What about things like incontenance, diarrhea and constipation? If these things aren't included, poo doesn't really make sense.

I really don't want to deal with all that stuff. For a sense of completeness, it makes sense, but scatalogical or sexual situations really shouldn't be present in this game. The only bodily fluid you should be worrying about is blood.

[Gakidou]

quote:Originally posted by Mud:
<STRONG>The only bodily fluid you should be worrying about is blood.</STRONG>

And vomit. And ichor. And whatever that blue stuff that trolls bleed is.

[Old-Man-Gator]

It's ink, trolls are a multi-limbed mollusc after all. Related to squid and octopi.