Bay 12 Games Forum

Breeding egg-laying animals is somewhat unintuitive in the current version of the game, especially for new players. To make things flow more naturally, I think nest boxes could use a toggle similar to that found in coffins.

My thought is to have nest boxes have a "Y or N" toggle that reads along the lines of "Harvest eggs automatically", set to Y by default. Setting it to N would make it so dwarves will no longer haul any eggs laid in that specific nest box, avoiding the hassle of having to navigate menus to manually forbid eggs every time you want them to hatch. This streamlines and automates the process for the player, while opening up the possibility of things like planning specific nest boxes specifically for breeding poultry, if they feel the desire to do so.

In order to make good-aligned areas a little more on par with the evil ones, perhaps they could have their own equivalents of evil weather and clouds. The weather would have their own generated names like evil ones do, say for example "blissful mist" or "pleasant water", but I'm sure Toady can come up with something better than these. For good rain, it could be made out of strange water, say water that radiates a rainbow color or is sugary in texture. There could also perhaps be rains made out of the tears of civilized beings, like how evil biomes have rains made of blood.

As for good clouds, they would be manifested by a force (you know, the elf equivalent of gods) and display a message like "A cloud of fey energies has drifted nearby!". It would be harmless to animals (perhaps it could have a powerful regenerating effect on them, curing syndromes and wounds?) and cause euphoric happy thoughts on creatures who respect or are otherwise not against nature (elves, humans and kobolds) while causing powerful nausea and unhappy thoughts on races who disrespect nature (dwarves and goblins).

In the most !!FUN!! scenarios, however, the force will take over the mind of the affected creature, empowering them with magic and transforming them into a ruthless protector of nature, the good biome's own equivalent of undead thralls. These protectors, perhaps called something along the lines of "Fey Afflicted" or "Enlightened", become unthinking instruments of punishment in the name of the force which generated the cloud, actively hunting down all civilizations who disrespect nature (read: dwarves and gobbos again) as well as those witnessed felling trees in their presence. They'd also be at peace with wildlife in order to stop them from murdering critters accidentally as they try to get into your fort.

This is the first time I suggest anything here but I thought it would be an interesting way to spice good surroundings up a bit. Even if they're good, it doesn't mean they're good for dwarves in specific, right?