Bay 12 Games Forum

So...what's going on here?

Excellent. I'd advise posting this on modding--Toady's more likely to let the bug stand until he fixes the underlying issues.

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on August 11, 2012, 11:23:49 pm

Terrans put a high value on ethics. We need to at least TRY to act like nice people, or else they'll decide that our necrotic-poison-spewing kajju and weird surgically-photosynthetic beards and arguments as to if we should drop colonies or asteroids onto Earth* prove that we're evil. In that case, they'd keep sending would-be heroes to blow up our bases, which would be bad. Even on the off chance that none succeeded and the military stayed out, they'd cause a TON of damage.

*BTW, asteroids are much more cost-effective, less likely to make us look like monsters, make for easier comparisons to such things as the K-T event, and just as effective.

About that, we've settled on middle-finger shaped asteroids filled with magma. It's called operation OPERATION METEOR (Obscene and Provocative Earth Restructuring Attack That Involves Orbiting Non-nuclear Meteors Evicted Towards the Earth. Obviously. Really.)

A bit extravagant and needlessly provocative, not to mention wasteful of good magma, but I know where to cut my losses. Good idea, the magma's a nice touch. Let's make it big enough that we only need one.

Send your thanks to the Ministry of Extra Terrestrial Affairs.

I will, when they come up with a better acronym.

Locate both and give them [PET] and [COMMON_DOMESTIC].

I guess I'll take another turn (eventually). I'd really like to finish a succession game turn one of these years...

Maybe both ought to use the same designation system with the best elements of both (add a "flow out" option to burrow painting and use that interface for both burrows and rooms, for example.).

I like this idea far more than zone-style designation.

Quote from: Starver on August 11, 2012, 06:04:13 pm

So, I can see merit to setting a bedroom as a zone, and then placing one more more bed-building designations in there, and you've got a bedroom.  Even before the bed's available, thus making the bed an upgrade.  Which can be easily upgraded by placing a better bed somewhere else in the zone and then removing the old one (if you aren't making it a dormitory by being multi-bedded permanently).

We can go even farther and have the owner of a room check for him-/herself what furniture is needed and pick it up from a stockpile
This would, however, require Dorfs to to have wants and needs like nobles, though be far less demand-y.

I like this idea. If nothing else, it will mesh well with the future economy.

And we'll also run the risk of having a fort full of batman villains, with every Dorf having his/her own little themed lair.

I doubt it, unless you try REALLY hard.

I can also see shelves carved into rock or whatever.

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I'm not sure what all of those are. There are probably exceptions, but given the definition of a species they're very, very rare.

I've always considered dwarves and orcs or elves and humands to be separate races, not species. more like  the difference between a terrier and a rottweiler than the difference between a lion and a tiger.

We can all have our separate opinions on this issue. It's kinda pointless to argue about reproductive barriers between elves and dwarves, ya know?

I'd prefer it if half of the raws of each parent were randomly chosen for each child than a new one is created for each half race. it would take a lot more work to figure out but it would be a lot more flexible. not everything should randomly chosen, it should be based on logic, and there should be some raws controlling what could mate with what and how often it happens. maybe each tag could have a separate percentage on how often its chosen. so immortality would be rare but pointed ears would be common if you're dealing with half elves. maybe be considered similar to dominant and reccessive genes. though a bit simplified.

Ugh, the way you described it sounds horrible. You'd have things like dwarf/elves that aren't alcoholic or nature-loving, or cat/people that can only be quadruped or humanoid, or wingless-but-flying birdman/people. Oy vey.
The way I see it, the hybrids should be randomly generated creatures based on the two parents, AND you could define a specific one in the raws (e.g, cross a lion and an eagle to get a griffon). There would probably be some definites that might not make sense IRL, like when an aquatic species mates with an air-breather the child is amphibious.
 

So, yes, after a while the world would be made up entirely of hybrids, but whats the difference between a human and a human who likes fighting. the fighting tag/gene could come from an orc or whatever, but after ten generations they'd look like humans and have the stats of humans, it'd just be a random genetic trait.

Even assuming that dwarves and humans COULD interbreed freely and produce 100% fertile young, you're taking some liberties.
1. Not all human civs will let any large numbe of dwarves into it, and vise versa.
2. Not many dwarves would like to go live in towns, and not many humans would like to go live in mountainhomes.
3. Not all dwarves would get into a relationship with humans--the two should stay reproductively isolated for the most part by choice, except in rare circumstances. This goes several times as much if the races in question have massive physical differances.
4. Not all couples have kids, IRL at least. Especially if they're shunned from the community, they might decide they have enough problems without adding another mouth to feed.
5. As noted, hybrids between different species are typically infertile to some extent or another...if they survive. This may or may not matter for human/dwarven relations, but in any hybrid with big physical differences (one of the four "main" races crossed with a kobold, troll, or animalperson, for instance), this is a serious concern. Especially if the mother is much smaller than the father.
6. The hybrid kids might also be shunned, whether because they are ybrids or because their parents' features do not mix prettily.
7. If the kids are notably grotesque, or are hybridized with a disliked minority race, or are a cross between two races that don't get along; and they either commit a crime, are suspected of a crime, or do something less than perfectly nice; they might well face a lynch mob. A dwarf/goblin cross would likely become very skilled at lynch-mob-avoiding (assuming they survive the first few), between the hatred between his parents' race, the likely status of one as a lower-class citizen, and goblins' tendency towards evil.
8. The hybrid kids might not get married, and if they do, they might not have kids (here, I mean voluntarily--involuntarily is covered in #5).

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on August 11, 2012, 10:28:17 pm

I'm not sure what all of those are.

Cattle + Buffalo
Rainbow trout + cutthroat trout
False killer whale + dolphin
[canids]
A flower of some sort

Thank you.

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There are probably exceptions, but given the definition of a species they're very, very rare.

True, they are, and can be safely ignored in simulations.

Excellent. So we only need to define inter-species hybrids and figure out if the main races (here defined as dwarves, elves, humans, and goblins) are one highly-differentiated species (like domestic dogs), four species (there are separate species MUCH more similar than elves and dwarves), or what.