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[Neonivek]

I loved the old "Ghostly Mason has organized party" 'bug'. I was hoping it wouldn't be removed

If it has it needs to come back in officially/intentionally so it works the way you would expect it. A totally creepy room with stuff flying around. OoOOooOoooo

[jellsprout]

Mead, hive splitting and stinging bees? My first fort in the next version is going to be a pure bee industry fort. Honey roasts for food, mead for booze and the entrance surrounded with many hives linked to a single lever for fortress defense.

[Flaede]

Mead, hive splitting and stinging bees? My first fort in the next version is going to be a pure bee industry fort. Honey roasts for food, mead for booze and the entrance surrounded with many hives linked to a single lever for fortress defense.

We need giant bee FBs.

[drvoke]

I'm having a tiny bit of trouble parsing this sentence, but it could just be because of my ignorance of the whole beekeeping process:

if you are collecting half of your hives and then splitting the other half back into those hives over and over I wouldn't be surprised.

Does this basically mean even with a max number of hives on the map, beekeeping will basically be "renewable" within that limit as long as you keep unharvested ones to split into your bee farm?

I guess that question can be answered by anyone who knows about beekeeping (which seems to be a surprising/alarming number of people) on this forum.

[Mephansteras]

Stinging. Hmmm. Are we going to get people who are deathly allergic to bee stings and can die from it?

[zwei]

I'm having a tiny bit of trouble parsing this sentence, but it could just be because of my ignorance of the whole beekeeping process:

if you are collecting half of your hives and then splitting the other half back into those hives over and over I wouldn't be surprised.

Does this basically mean even with a max number of hives on the map, beekeeping will basically be "renewable" within that limit as long as you keep unharvested ones to split into your bee farm?

I guess that question can be answered by anyone who knows about beekeeping (which seems to be a surprising/alarming number of people) on this forum.

Mechanically, you ought to me able havest max/2 hives in regular intervals.

As someone who knows a bit about RL beekeeping, yeah, it is pretty damn renewable with a bit care (for example, if you havest too much honey, you have to feed bees with sugar solution; if you take away honeycombs, you should replace them with frames filled with sheet of wax with hexagon pattern...).

[NW_Kohaku]

I'm not sure whether or not to make it a green highlighted question, since I don't want to ask too many questions all at once, but I'm wondering how (player) manually intensive beekeeping might be...

If it's like ranching is currently, where you have to manually mark every cow for slaughter, I think I'll stick with farming, which runs more-or-less automatically.  The automated slaughterhouses (where cows fall through trapdoors to their death on the butcher's block) made automated ranching automated, if elaborate to set up, but I don't foresee us being able to perform large mechanical solutions to something as delicate as splitting a beehive.

[Areyar]

Those sheets are not neccesary and a very recent refinement.
They just encourage the beez to create their new cells on the panels that the keeper provides, which are easilly removed and of standardized form and size.
without them the bees will create new combs in a chaotic ordered fashion, still roughly parrallel, yet the edges will grow organically also they will be solidly attached to the inside of the hivebox/basket/hollow, making harvesting only a part of the hive more difficult.
IIRC there is also an order in which cells are used, with older cells being used for storing pollen. With the modern prefabricated panels, combs that are mainly honey can be harvested preferably to those that contain mostly larvae. Also phased replacement allows for more homogenous use of combs.

[Rockphed]

I'm not sure whether or not to make it a green highlighted question, since I don't want to ask too many questions all at once, but I'm wondering how (player) manually intensive beekeeping might be...

If it's like ranching is currently, where you have to manually mark every cow for slaughter, I think I'll stick with farming, which runs more-or-less automatically.  The automated slaughterhouses (where cows fall through trapdoors to their death on the butcher's block) made automated ranching automated, if elaborate to set up, but I don't foresee us being able to perform large mechanical solutions to something as delicate as splitting a beehive.

I suspect that we will be able to go into the manager and say something like "Harvest Hives 5" followed by "Split Hives 5" or "Collect Hives 5" and get the desired result that the dwarves go turn 5 hives into the appropriate resource and then go get 5 more.  Hopefully, the beekeeper's workshop is different from the clay hive thing, because otherwise things will go screwy.

[Jiri Petru]

I wonder, with so many new industries going in, if there is some thought given to controls/interface that will make controlling the game easier? Each new industry adds new layers of micromanagement, and both bees and ceramics sound more complicated than the usual industries in game. (With bees you have to gather them in the wild, create the hives, manage splitting into new colonies, count the right number of hives to "kill"... with ceramics you not only have to gather the raw materials, you also have glazes to care about, and then baking it in a kiln). I know there is the "standing production orders" eternal suggestion - does this mean anything for it's priority? Alternatively, is there some kind of automation planned, so I can for example say "make 5 ceramic jugs" while the dwarves will handle resource gathering, glaze selection, baking etc. themselves?

EDIT: Hehe, I've only now read the above post and notices people are asking exactly the same, just not in green.

[Areyar]

it doesnt seem much more complicated than capturing and taming other small animals or producing glassware.

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, thinking about eggs recently, I can't help but make another green question...

When catching up on the previous FOTF answer sessions, I saw something about imprinting creatures born from eggs, and I was going through the wiki later, and glossed over the article on harpies again, and an idea started to germinate...

Do eggs open the door for Parthenogenesis, the act of a female fertilizing her own eggs?  (Most commonly occuring in "simpler" lifeforms like insects, but which also occurs in some reptile and even bird species.)  Harpies as a species would make much more sense with parthenogenesis, excepting they become some sort of always-recurring night creature that has spouse converting qualities.  It would also raise some potential for stealing harpy eggs, and raising them to be trained harpy watchdogs that prowl the sky. 

Which leads to the next... Stealing the eggs of lizardpeople or some other sentient creature wouldn't necessarily need an "imprinting" to convince a lizardboy that you were his father or mother, and he probably wouldn't be that stupid, anyway.  But if it's the only society they've ever known, wouldn't they feel some sort of loyalty to it, anyway, letting us players have some of that "Tigerman slave" stuff back that we enjoyed earlier?  Basically, can we eventually adopt children of other races into our own "protective custody as a superior culture", and integrate them into our society?

This also makes me ask another question... 

Is your dwarf racist?
Yes.  Yes, he or she is.

Dwarves right now won't even speak to, much less form relationships with any species that is not a dwarf caste right now.  I'm sure this has something to do with the fact that interspecies romance is utterly unsupported (which is yet more proof of dwarven racism!), but since we are supposedly moving towards having cultures where races mingle instead of being "racially pure nations" bent upon genocidal warfare, I have to wonder, what sort of interspecies friendship will we be able to achieve later on in development?

I know that interspecies breeding will eventually be possible, making for something like half-elves as well as just mules, but that's just being put off for now, but it's a little odd that dwarves and humans can't even be friends, much less dwarves and some of the cool hybrid critterpeoples like sharkmen.  Likewise, humans or other people who somehow become part of dwarven society can't be assigned labors or assigned rooms without hacks.

I'm sure we won't have full interspecies breeding capabilities, although give me half a chance, and I'm interbreeding dwarves with GCS in a heartbeat.

[thvaz]

NW_Kohaku and his question spam are back.

And these aren't questions, they are veiled suggestions.

[NW_Kohaku]

Nice to see you again, too.

I am trying to limit myself to only three questions at most per session out of politeness, but if politeness is not reciprocated, then what is the point?

Also, I can assure you I am using the suggestions forum for what are real suggestions.

[Kesc]

Is there going to be labors in adventurer mode?That would be very interesting.