Wow. Lots more activity than there had been the last few days.
First to GavJ, about quotes. Please include links with them. It's politeness to other people reading what you wrote. My one exception to this advice was because I didn't know how, and that one has since been fixed.
When drafting a reply, I use the right click "open link in new tab" option, leaving direct access to the rest of the thread. Each post I want to quote from also gets opened in a new tab, and I copy-paste from it. Each time, I also copy the "quote author" tag that gets auto-inserted at the top.
Aether
Read the thread first! Nearly all of your comments about Aether were already made by either me or NW_Kohaku. I referrred to your "Aether" with the phrase "xenosynthesis energy," and mentioned modifying the "Apply Creature Variation" tag for effect similar to the mutation system you describe. A lot of the remainder about Aether I disagree with. I will give more details once I am no longer in the middle of a debate with GavJ.
I don't think we really need to worry about thermodynamics or energy sources so much as what would make a good story.
I WAS working on a presentation about the ecology of magical plants, focusing on the magic-producing ones, and the various ways their ecological niche could affect the magic-consuming (xenosynthetic) ones. Then GavJ derailed me.
Edit:
Well, if we're going to insist on the logic behind underground energy sources... has anyone given any consideration to the 'eerie glowing pits' in the underworld? What is causing them to glow? (. . .) I'd say that of all the energy sources that could be sustaining underground life, that seems like the most plausible.
You have a point, but I see the glowing pits as one source (sphere) of magic energy among many. It works through the standard magic field system. Surface plants give a lot more variety, and synchronize better with a stated goal by Toady One to have sphere-based surroundings.
Maybe magic is seasonal. Sweet Pods only grow in the Spring and Summer because that's the only time when the whatever sphere is in its waxing period.
I can easily concoct a way for mana from surface plants to be seasonal. Eerie glowing pits? Not so much.
/Edit
If you have a perpetual motion machine, you've just utterly changed everything in a society, in a way more fundamental than electricity. In its most mundane form, cars never need more gas. The entire energy segment of the economy gets transformed into something that's weirder than we can possibly imagine.
In other words, a break to Thermodynamics will not result in a comprehensible world. It is too fundamental; too much else is based on it.
I want to keep it (Thermodynamics) fully intact and unmodified at all costs.
On that note, I have not yet located a comment from GavJ that addresses this issue. I am using xenosynthesis and the rest specifically to avoid a break to thermodynamics, and this seems to have been ignored.
Perhaps more concretely, we have 3 options here being discussed:
1) ((magic cave creatures, consistent with:) (cave plants based on that same magic)) (other plants and non magical stuff)
2) (magic cave creatures) ((non magical cave plants consistent with:) (other plants and non magical stuff))
3) ((non magic cave creatures, consistent with:) (non magic cave plants, also consistent with:) (non magic other plants and stuff))
We agreed that using option 3 would alienate me (and, by implication, a faction of the player base with similar inclinations), then you said 1 and 2 are equally logical. I appealed to thermodynamics to justify favoring option 1.
So is this pile of skeletons over yet?
Not even close. Undead and the breaks in logic they involve have become a major part of my argument.
As far as my biologic knowledge goes chemosyntesis are not the best source of energy for any kind of bigger creatures.
1) Why not? If you simply had more of them than on earth.
Have you looked up
primary production for chemosynthesis? (I tried and failed.) One of my starting assumptions in that presentation on magical plants was that the cavern primary production was at least 10% of the surface, probably more like 100%. I don't think chemosynthesis is capable of that level of ecological productivity, even with the boosts you describe.
My complaint about thermosynthesis is essentially the same as what I understand of your complaint about xenosynthesis. I see it as unnecessary and creating more problems than it solves. I followed your link about it, which indicated the process to be purely theoretical. With that established, I don't see its advantages over xeno.
The oxygen is must-have and deep in caverns the air isn't the most clean thing.
Earth caves, the air isn't great.
DF caves, full of plants, the air could be wonderful. Plants recycle out breathable oxygen, remember. A sufficiently large, plant-filled cave is not particularly different than the aboveground atmosphere and ecosystem.
How, exactly? Xenosynthesis is explicitly stated to be essentially "photosynthesis, except using magic," so it will work this way. Chemosynthesis won't work this way. Thermosynthesis may or may not produce oxygen, depending. Precedent:
purple sulfur bacteria that use light but don't produce oxygen.
Can you give me a list [of miracles]? It would make reducing the number a lot easier.
1) Basic geology - nonsensically thin world that doesn't make any sense with our universe's geological workings, etc. (This is the miracle that already exists and that mainly allows for more chemosynthesis than on Earth, and thermal gradients, and also allows for the size of caverns and their water flow, etc.).
1.5) Slade and SMR may or may not be included with #1 (for instance SMR eats infinite amounts of things falling onto it)
2) Some animals move without any observable cause - undead, bronze collosus, etc.
3) Many organisms are immortal as in don't die of old age. FB's and goblins for instance. As well as presumably trees and things if you don't cut them down.
4) Everything about the circus
4.5) Adamantine, sort of maybe. Also might be grouped with #4.
5) Plants grow without sunlight or any other observable means of energy.
6) Ways of permanently destroying matter - Atom smashers and obsidian casting and stuff burning in magma and leaving no trace, etc. The burning is maybe fine "abstract gas is just not modeled" but not the first two.
7) TARDIS-tiles. Time/space work differently in DF. 800 dragons in 3x3x8 feet areas, yet traversing the space takes a fixed time, etc.
I may be missing others.
Okay, here we go.
1. Dwarf Fortress has a severe case of
units not to scale. A dwarf takes up one tile. A turkey takes up one tile. A cavy takes up one tile. An alligator takes up one tile. A giant sperm whale takes up one tile. Thin planetary crust is essentially the same issue: the size of tiles is extremely vague, and available information seems contradictory.
2. I addressed this earlier as "Magic fields miracle 4."
As I am describing it, "Magic fields" involve four distinct "miracles." These combine into a single mostly coherent system.
1. The magic field itself, which serves as both wireless power transmission and energy storage. It probably represents a new field within physics.
2. An energy receiver, in the form of a biochemical pathway (xenosynthesis). In other words, a tweak within biochemistry.
3. An energy producer and transmitter, in the form of another biochemical pathway (call it "alchemical plants" for now). In other words, another tweak within biochemistry, closely related to the previous one.
4. A different receiver, exploited by non-biological "creatures" such as undead, amethyst men, and blizzard men. I'm not sure where this one lands.
3. This is called
negligible senescence. It is rare in real life, but not rare enough that I consider similar creatures in Dwarf Fortress to be a problem.
4. I can probably fold clowns into miracle 4. Other aspects of the circus may end up as a fifth miracle: an inorganic mana transmitter (joined to miracle 3 the same way 4 is joined to 2).
5. This was magic fields miracle 2.
6. I'll listen if you think I'm wrong, but I understood stuff disappearing during obsidian casting to be an implication that it got destroyed by the magma. I don't know what to say about atom smashers.
7. As described above, this and 1 are different effects of the same issue.