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[caknuck]

# stopped shearing/milking/pasture/cage jobs from fighting with each other

My favorite bug's been fixed? GAH!

Why on earth is that your favourite bug? I liked the one where invaders' mounts claim your nesting boxes much more than animal handlers fighting over a cow.

Because it was the closest thing DF has to dancing dwarves.

As someone originally from Maine and New Hampshire, it still blows my mind that 2 inches of snow can completely shut down this state.

As someone originally from Scotland, that blows my mind .

As someone from Winnipeg, I just laugh.

As someone originally from Winnipeg who just suffered through the iciest Super Bowl week ever, I just facepalm

[Sunday]

Actually, I have a question!

Are you planning on ever implementing browsing animals? Right now all herbivores are grazers, but lots of animals eat basically only shrubs and trees.

I think it would add some interest to biomes, as well—if trees are densely packed enough, then (after multitile trees go in, at least) grasses should be a lot rarer in dense forests, meaning grazers shouldn't be very prevalent. Likewise, if you're on a savanna, there should be very limited numbers of browsers.

[Caldfir]

Are you planning on ever implementing browsing animals? Right now all herbivores are grazers, but lots of animals eat basically only shrubs and trees.

If you read through the raw entries on actual browsing animals (giraffes and the like) there are notes from Toady about browsing.  Presumably this means he wants to include it at some point, but it is unlikely to occur before multi-tile vegetation gets some attention. 

[JohnieRWilkins]

This is a kind of a broad question for the far future, but it's kind of important since it has the potential to change everything. Who needs castles when you own the harbor that's the central hub of trade and world power?

Do you see humans as the seafaring race? Will waterways and trade by ship play a central role to civilizations? Which races will participate in sailing and building ships? How large, in units of men and/or dwarfcube dimensions*, will the larger boats be in the future?

*Does the dwarfcube unit have a name? I'm referring to the smallest unit square tile that fit a dwarf, a cabinet, a door or a wall.

I can't really pictures dwarves sailing around in ships, they might make ships, but not sail in them. Elves likely view boats as massacres of entire forests. Goblins aren't really interested in trade. Kobolds can't even wipe their own behinds, how can they sail or build vessels? So that only leaves humans?

Pirates. Sailing merchants. Navy captain adventurers.

[NW_Kohaku]

*Does the dwarfcube unit have a name? I'm referring to the smallest unit square tile that fit a dwarf, a cabinet, a door or a wall.

A beard score, the distance a beard grows in 20 years.

I can't really pictures dwarves sailing around in ships, they might make ships, but not sail in them. Elves likely view boats as massacres of entire forests. Goblins aren't really interested in trade. Kobolds can't even wipe their own behinds, how can they sail or build vessels? So that only leaves humans?

Dwarves don't sail?  Are you mad?  Just look at how pirates treated their booze, (or the drinking game where the pirate captain shoots wildly into the dark and declares that whoever he happened to shoot must have been a traitor) and tell me those aren't just unusually lanky dwarves!

Furthermore, Vikings.

Clearly, dwarves are viking pirates who prowl the seas with ballista at the ready to slaughter any who dare ply the seas without donating to the dwarves' booze stockpiles!  Besides, how else are you going to capture enough mermaids and sea serpents to stock your fisheries but to go chasing them down?  You don't honestly believe that mere humans are dwarfy enough to trully plunder every natural resource to its stomach-churning limits?

Travelling over the world map by sea would also be a great way to break out of being locked into a single mountain range for all of worldgen.

[Thundercraft]

• stopped dwarves from encrusting honeycombs with jewels etc.

I... kind of want to make that my main export now. But I understand why it must go. Oh, the sacrifices we must make in the pursuit of the glorious version 1.0!

Has anyone seen an artifact bee hive yet? Considering that the hive is made at a craftsdwarf's workshop, I assumed this was possible. I'd like to see that achieved before Toady drastically reduces the value of hives in the next version. If for no other reason than to see how insane the value of the thing can reach. Such a hive would be fit for a Queen bee and royal jelly, at least. 

[jellsprout]

Seafaring dwarves? Are you mad? Real dwarves sail the magma sea.

[JohnieRWilkins]

Dwarves don't sail?  Are you mad?  Just look at how pirates treated their booze, (or the drinking game where the pirate captain shoots wildly into the dark and declares that whoever he happened to shoot must have been a traitor) and tell me those aren't just unusually lanky dwarves!

Furthermore, Vikings.

Clearly, dwarves are viking pirates who prowl the seas with ballista at the ready to slaughter any who dare ply the seas without donating to the dwarves' booze stockpiles!  Besides, how else are you going to capture enough mermaids and sea serpents to stock your fisheries but to go chasing them down?  You don't honestly believe that mere humans are dwarfy enough to trully plunder every natural resource to its stomach-churning limits?

Travelling over the world map by sea would also be a great way to break out of being locked into a single mountain range for all of worldgen.

(The humans undoubtedly like booze just as much as the dwarves)

Viking, to me, is synonymous with giant mountain of a man with pale skin and blonde hair. The exact opposite of the image of dwarf I'm getting. They probably wouldn't be able to tolerate all that sun bearing down on them. Besides, dwarves too short to row galleys.

Although chaining merfolk to the bow of the ship on short lengths of chain... in front of giant spikes is totally dwarf. That'd be like the dwarven secret to super fast ships. Ya gotta have the mermaids drag the ship by chains.

What would you call the time when the mermaids get tired of dragging? Dinner.

[Areyar]

Dwarves are Vikings cut off at the knees and the feet reattached.
In the world were Toady writes DF, Vikings called their dwarves trolls IIRC. :p
Calling a dwarf troll: a good way to get your knees capped.

[NW_Kohaku]

I rather like the notion that the mermaid on the bow of a dwarven ship isn't just a figurehead, but an actual (temporarily) live mermaid lashed to the bow as a warning to other mermaids of just who they're dealing with.

Anyway, it wouldn't be hard to "dwarfify" vikings.  They don't all look like Thor, and look fairly dwarfy to me already in popular culture.

The longship has a sail, and uses oars to sail against the wind or upriver.  Oars are all about leverage, anyway, so being stronger and having a better fulcrum point should make up for shorter arms. 

Besides, I'm not saying we have to make dwarves into vikings, just that vikings and viking ways (and pirates) are a good model for how dwarves can take to the sea:  A short, sturdy creature fond of drink and industry plunder.

There are two ways to go, really... Vikings were so successful because they had shallow draft ships that let them sail upriver to attack inland. 

The other way to go is to make bigger ships the way that the ancient Greeks and Egyptians made theirs. Dwarves might make bigger ships than humans do, with "forecastles" and "aftcastles" that are literal stone battlements and stack marksdwarves and catapults and ballistas on them.  The Archimedes Screw, the basis of the screw pump, was actually devised to keep pumping the water that filled up ships like this out of the holds of these ships, since they tended to be cumbersome and less-than-watertight behemoths.  These sorts of ships require dedicated ports to land upon, although dinghys could certainly be launched.  These are also the ships of major traders on the open seas who don't give a damn about how they are chopping down their entire nation's forests to make these sorts of ships (leading to Greece's decline as they completely deforested their country, and that led to soil erosion and a drop in the ability to feed their people and armies).

The longship fought by just boarding the enemy and fighting hand-to-hand between the ships.  The giant ancient ships fought by ramming or using the catapults and ballistas to sink the opposing ships, and hand-to-hand combat was more rare.

Big flavor difference, but both are the sorts of extremes of medieval naval combat.  Honestly, I can see dwarves doing either one, but I think vikings and hand-to-hand warfare are more dwarfy than the Egyptians.

[KillerClowns]

...Honestly, I can see dwarves doing either one, but I think vikings and hand-to-hand warfare are more dwarfy than the Egyptians.

Au contraire.  Gigantic ships mounted with catapults, ballistae, and even more complicated machinery are far more dwarfy than Viking style raiding galleys.  The latter seems like it should be a goblin specialty.

[Areyar]

hehehe, just a mermaid figurehead?
I'd expect the entire dwarven hull be crafted out of mermaid bone.

[Knight Otu]

hehehe, just a mermaid figurehead?
I'd expect the entire dwarven hull be crafted out of mermaid bone.

Mermaid bone? Mermaid bone?!

Seriously?



You're supposed to use mermaid fingernail.

[Footkerchief]

Do you see humans as the seafaring race? Will waterways and trade by ship play a central role to civilizations? Which races will participate in sailing and building ships? How large, in units of men and/or dwarfcube dimensions*, will the larger boats be in the future?

This is the first of several posts from Toady in a topic about ships and boats:

I had an email discussion about this recently and I didn't see any posts of mine in the threads Footkerchief linked (though I've said it elsewhere), so I figured I'd say it again.  We'd like to have larger ships, something 16x5 with a 3 tile wide deck and multiple z levels would be fine.  And yeah, there are a few problems.

With the improved sieges (sometime soon after this release, likely) will come a different and more properly supported notion of a moving vehicle (say, a siege tower), likely as a set of tiles handled something like constructions, but with the ability to move as a unit (along with any creatures or items in their tiles).

Now, boats can move along any heading in a near perfect approximation (over over up over over up etc., maybe using the guts of the standard line drawing algorithm, etc.) but the main issue is displayed facing.  There are issues with any rotation idea I've heard of that does more than 4 directions.  The shearing row by row idea in alfie's post for example has issues with flows coming in along the diagonals (especially in a multi-story ship), and that there's still going to be a fundamental flip once you hit 45 degrees anyway.  The flows might be plugged up with temporary tiles along the new diagonals or something, but that might lead to temporary floors for items that then disappear or something.  There are a lot of issues.

There's also the idea of just using 4 directions for the boat (it can move in many more directions, but it can actually only sit in 4 directions).  This leads to teleportation and displacement problems, but these aren't necessarily deal breakers, especially if you add a requirement that the ship must have a free space underneath any tile (so water critters and swimmers can just be pushed down a tile instead of teleported across the ship, which isn't so different from what would happen if you get run over).  You can also deal with the ship flipping back and forth between two directions by instituting some buffer versus the actual facing, so that crossing from 30 degrees to 45 doesn't change you from east to north, but you have to actually get to 60 or so first.  Then once your ship shoots up to north, you have to go all the way back to 30 to get it back to east, which gives you a 30 degree difference so you can't just flip back and forth.  Flips need to be minimized not only because they are ugly, but especially with issues like wrestling and stuck-ins, they can be fundamentally messy and game-breaking (say a guy on deck is holding a crew member who is dangling overboard while a sea serpent is chomping on the dangling guy's leg and then the boat turns, and the sea serpent is hooked to a post underwater, etc. -- you'd probably want to break the chain of creatures and buildings at the weakest link, but it might be a net not a chain, etc etc etc).

Anyway, things are possible in dwarf mode, but the idea here was more for adventure mode and the necessity of boats there.  If boats never make it into dwarf mode it wouldn't particularly bother me, since we are talking about dwarves, but I wouldn't rule anything out.  I'm starting from an adv mode perspective here though, since it would obviously be a lot of fun to do things like epic voyages and piracy.

It's also mentioned on the development page:

Adventurer Role: Explorer
    * Mapping and obstacles
          o Ferries
          o Ports and boats (even if they are just used to teleport to other ports at first)

Military
    * Improved sieges
          o Siege engine improvements depend on state of boats, lifts/moving fortress sections, since these should all use the same framework

*Does the dwarfcube unit have a name? I'm referring to the smallest unit square tile that fit a dwarf, a cabinet, a door or a wall.

No official name.  "Tile" is typically used but it's ambiguous since larger groupings of tiles (48x48 blocks and so on) are also referred to as "world tiles" etc.

[LunatictheInvincible]

Do you see humans as the seafaring race? Will waterways and trade by ship play a central role to civilizations? Which races will participate in sailing and building ships? How large, in units of men and/or dwarfcube dimensions*, will the larger boats be in the future?

Personally, I see all races as having some manner of sea/river travel ability possible in the future. First question: Yes. Second question: Chances are good, possibly hopefully randomly determined for each world. Third question: Already answered/will be answered.

(All measurements in length by width by height and in dwarfcubes)

Humans: Yes: fishing boats (smaller, maybe 5-7x3-5x2-3 dwarfcubes in size), galleys along the line of ancient greeks/romans/egyptians (i.e. ramming, boarding, ballistas, catapults).
Elves: Yes: Canoes or hollowed logs, perhaps some manner of specially cultivated tree (2-20x1-3x1-2) with the larger measurements being for the massive trees. Alternatively, give them boats similar to the humans made entirely out of sentient corpses.
Kobolds: Yes: More by accident than anything else, but they can travel by fallen tree express (1-3x1x1).
Goblins: Yes: They are intelligent enough for the smelting of metals, so they should have sailing capabilities, probably something along the lines of the viking raider/pirate style that I believe has been mentioned previously.
Forgotten Beasts/Titan: They walk.

Dwarves: Most certainly yes. I support the previously mentioned designs, all of them. Also, just because they are dwarves, I see them sailing in massive vessels composed of anything from wood to stone to bones to bones/flesh to ice. These massive vessels would possess extensive fortifications and excessive quanitites of weapons, not to mention the onboard plump helmet farms and the endless supply of booze.

Speaking of booze, does dwarven wine really fit for dwarves? Perhaps it could be named whiskey or something similarly more liver terrifying.