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[Kay]

Now, I'm a little curious if it's possible with the new version (I have .12) to make an all-female race? And is there a way to make them not die out after world-gen? I'm sure this is a relatively simple, newbie question, but I still have to ask here.

(There'll be more specific race details I'll likely need help with later, as well - like making them about size of elves, giving them horns and claws, but making their facial features generally pretty. I want to also make them generally tan-skinned with golden eyes and dark hair. They also had fawn-like goat ears when I originally made them, and little lion tails. They're a personal race of mine.)

[darkflagrance]

You pretty much have to give them an unlimited life span and a high starting population if you want them to last beyond 60 or so years.

But it is possible to make a single-gender or genderless race.

As for facial features, it might be better to simply not include traits for nose lengths, eyebrow width, and so on, and instead make the race's beauty part of their flavor text.

[krenshala]

Can't you mix tags around to make an asexual race?  You know, children via buds, or ripping off their own arms or something.

NOTE: I've never even looked at the raws for the races, so I don't know whats required to indicate reproduction, so my apologies if these are silly questions.

[Organum]

Creating an all female race would be easy. The sexes are currently individual castes. In fact, sexual dimorphism is the only vanilla use of castes. There are [MALE] and [FEMALE] tags that determine which sex, if any, a caste is. That would be your route if you want a female only race. My advice if you want the race to survive would be to  copy the race info and paste it once again in the raw file, this time replacing [FEMALE] with [MALE]. The flavor text and all the info would be the same for both males and females, making them effectively the same. Some negative parts to this idea is that the males would be referred to as such in regards to pronouns, and you would also end up with pseudo-lesbian pairings. Whether that last one is really so bad is entirely up to you.

Another idea that might work for a sustainable "female only" race would be a male caste that differs entirely from the females, being there only to reproduce in world gen. You could say that these males were mysterious creatures that the race kept around, that no one knows what they really are, and that some rumors speculate that these strange beings are actually the male counterparts to the beautiful monstrosities.

Just some ideas and advice from the ever friendly Organum.

[krenshala]

Am I correct in assuming the game looks for a Male/Female pair when determining reproduction?

[3]

Yes. So long as a creature has at least one caste with the FEMALE tag and one with the MALE tag, it'll reproduce properly. If it lacks either of those tags, it won't reproduce at all.

[Shoku]

Would making males show up 1 time out of 1000 be tolerable? Well at that rate they might still die out...

[jaxad0127]

Maybe try making the male cast imobile or too small to see or something.

[Ieb]

Make them vermin.
Check if it works.

If it does, do a hilarious stand-up routine at the next DF meeting based on the occasion.

Alternative: Would it work reproductive-wise, if you added the DOES_NOT_EXIST tag to the male counterpart? I assume no, but it still occurred as an idea. Hell, I'll check right now.

EDIT: Seems that it doesn't work. Males still spawned during worldgen. Alternative solutions should be pursued. I would suggest making them rare, along the lines of POP_RATIO 100 for females, 1 for males. I have no idea how well that works during worldgen however. I'll check that too right now.

EDIT2: Well at least with a Small test world, the species was still able to spread out. I guess it's thanks to the people generated who aren't a part of history-notion. Most of the people in Legends were female too, with a few rare males. Maybe there would be some funky change if the males were given pet tags...

EDIT3: Worldgen shows that with pet and trainable tags, the genders showed up equally again, which isn't really a surprise. There might be possibility within this if you were to add the POP_RATIO solution alongside the pet&trainable tags, so you could buy your males from traders. I'm pretty sure if there's no biome mention for the creature the entity picks up, they wouldn't show up as trade items for races which like to sell every creature there is, too. I guess I'll check that now, then I go do some real work. OH THE THINGS I DO FOR SCIENCE

Failure has been met once again. The males aren't showing up as buyable creatures during embark. They should, so I don't know what's up besides "it doesn't work like that". For now, POP_RATIO meddlings seem the best option for making an exclusive-female race. The vermin option still might work though, you should test that.

In case that doesn't work properly, or something goes horribly wrong, perhaps you could just make the males of the species completely different from the females. Like, double the max_age part so they'd outlive their counterparts, which probably maximises the number of kids they sire during worldgen. Then again, without max_age meddling, a male was able to have 10 kids during my testing so eh, it doesn't matter that much. Remarrying species don't work either, sadly. ...unless the PET thing does work but only in fort mode, and having a single male around would have it impregnating your females by spores. With a CAN_LEARN tag, it might work. Would probably help against socializing behavior which leads to coupling and marriage, assuming the PET tag wouldn't remove such a thing by itself.

Does the NO_THOUGHT tag make the creature incapable of socializing? Maybe throw in UTTERANCES too to maximise the alien nature of the males of the species too. Maaaaaan, this is going further and further down some funky fetish-fuel fantasy world brainstorming. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

[Akjosch]

Well, parthenogenesis simply doesn't work right now. I added the issue as a feature request to the tracker, #3419, so it doesn't get forgotten.

[Knight Otu]

Simply giving the male caste a pop ratio of 0 appears to work wonders. I'll do some more checks.

Well, parthenogenesis simply doesn't work right now. I added the issue as a feature request to the tracker, #3419, so it doesn't get forgotten.

Feature requests go in the Suggestions forum. The bug tracker is for bugs.

[Akjosch]

Well, parthenogenesis simply doesn't work right now. I added the issue as a feature request to the tracker, #3419, so it doesn't get forgotten.

Feature requests go in the Suggestions forum. The bug tracker is for bugs.

It has a "feature" severity level (which is below "minor") ... why then, exactly?

[Knight Otu]

Because Toady and the managers of the trackers haven't removed that particular severity (and probably can't remove it - it's not their software).