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[roflgar]

... we're discussing df's dwarves, and their observable biology makes it impractical for single and married females to be professional soldiers. widows without children are fine, though.

how is it impractical for a female to be a soldier if she doesn't have a suckling babe (and even then there are uses for the babe as a shield since enemies will attack it)?

It's not the end of the world if a soldier dies in battle and had a family.  The soldier hopefully died so that civilian casualties were kept to a minimum preventing a tantrum spiral.

Personally I like sacrificing children for the same reason I assign war animals then butcher them.  I do this to make tougher soldiers who won't go berserk and kill half the bloody fortress.  This makes breeding mothers perfect candidates.  As a bonus, some of the other family members will become hardened individuals or at least start getting used to tragedy.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

how is it impractical for a female to be a soldier if she doesn't have a suckling babe

the observable fact is that females have suckling babes all the time in df, any female that hasn't married yet will soon, and from then on will continue to pop out children until her husband dies.
the rest of your post sums everything that is wrong about the df community. memetical exploitation of quirks and bugs, and the notion that that's the "true" way of playing dwarf fortress

[astaldaran]

Personally I like sacrificing children for the same reason I assign war animals then butcher them.  I do this to make tougher soldiers who won't go berserk and kill half the bloody fortress.  This makes breeding mothers perfect candidates.  As a bonus, some of the other family members will become hardened individuals or at least start getting used to tragedy.

This really reminds me of something out of the Dune Saga.


To me there are multiple ways to play (society's are different) and that is a harsh one.. and one that seems cruel in our culture but this is fantasy and it is an interesting concept.

[Wimopy]

I agree that injureede babies are a poor sight, and should be taken care of, however, if you were a workaholic drunken dwarf with a beard that covers most of your sight from chin-down, would you notice a baby at your feet? Then there's the noise going around from all the workshops and mining.

Also, I know some people would be horrified by it and would just hurry on like they saw nothing. This is where empathy could come in though, the higher your empathy, the more chance you would help the poor thing... or notice it at all.

And yes, this is a sick community, but better do it here than in real life, right?

Actually as I remember, In most all mythology dwarves have greater fammily ties than humans. Losing a relative was a terribly sad event to them.

You may remember right, but those dwarves generally only had one or two children, check Legends and you'll see 4-5 sons and 4-5 (Roughly) daughters per mature dwarf (these seem like the average values if the civ doesn't starve)
I've seen a dwarf with 9 of both sons and daughters, sure if they only had 1-2 they'd easily care for eachother, but when every generation in a single family has 10^x members in it, with x as the number of the generation in the family, I doubt you can care for every single dwarf.

[zarokima]

I didn't read past the first page, so if this was suggested earlier disregard this post.

While we're on the topic of children, I'd also like to see improvement in the birthing process. Rather than plopping out their crotch-dropping wherever they happen to be, the mother goes into labor and runs to the hospital (or a bed, or somewhere else determined as "a good place to give birth") and then gives birth there.

Although I'll admit I laughed heartily upon seeing an Axedwarf give birth while in the danger room only for the baby's head to be pierced by a wooden training spear the very next step.

[Forumite]

I have two or three families of dwarves in my current fort, and after 20 years they´ve spawned a lot of young dwarves, about 20 of my 60 dwarves are children, the biggest family gets one each year, give or take. If they have a stable fort to grow up, some dwarves create families that eventually spawn huge clans, while most never marry. That´s part of dwarven birth control, most dwarves don´t settle down with a family, and I think dwarven children are killed or stolen by goblins much more often in the usual dwarven mountainhomes, judging from the number of snatchers. In forts when I ever let mothers with children outside, some or several die. Families with 10 children can quickly loose more than half of them to a single ambush, and an unfortunate accident killing either parent prevent the surviving parent from remarrying. Dwarves get many children, but they rarely marry, and if they do and get children, then they loose many of them. It´s dangerous being a dwarf.

[MasterMorality]

Wow, this suggestion spawned quite the debate.
I certainly agree that the implementation of a crèche and a school would help things a lot.
I also agree that it would be cool to see a dwarf go into labour and either run to or, more realistically, be hauled to a hospital.

Anybody notice that a lot of your best warriors are female?

I think mainly that this suggestion is fairly fluff-based, but character is always good in a game, and if there were a way to implement some of the weird Dwarven psychology into it, the better, although a lot of Dwarf characteristics at this point are due to a lack of code, than anything else.

[TBeholder]

Here's a thought.
Suppose here would be a job "Toying with <item>". And a creature could have "toy" tags with probability and item, making it randomly pop up when the creature decides what to do and has access to one of its toy items (either lies around or in the inventory), unless there's something of a greater priority, like hunger, of course. Possibly "dodging" around sometimes if it can.

 "CASTE" system obviously can ensure that babies most of the time play with toys if were given any, children sometimes play with toys if found or were given any... while adults usually wouldn't.
...also, cats could at least sometimes play with dead mice or, y'know, yarn, instead of using up all their ticks to either crystal-eyeball a butterfly on the other end of the map and ram any closed door on the way or run away to catch butterflies or reproduce if the door is left open. 

[peskyninja]

Holy Magma Carp! Why the heck do you post on a 2 months old dead thread?

[Silverionmox]

Holy Magma Carp! Why the heck do you post on a 2 months old dead thread?

Why not?