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[FallingWhale]

Then, I can't find any references to species where the sperm or eggs actually travel macro-scale distances to get to the other, which is what "spore breeding" entails. It just doesn't happen like that, as far as I can tell, in any species.

Even plants which breed at a distance do it through the vector of insects.

Let me know if I'm missing something.

Barnacles, sponges, most ferns, coral, tubeworms, some trees, and an unnerving amount of minor invertebrate groups.

[Reelya]

This says immobile animals do use that, but most barnacles do not. Though recently they found at least one species of barnacle that does (the article states "recently" as of july 2014), just to prove the "barnacles don't do that" bit wrong. Though in that case the barnacle in question has extremely low population densities, so penis mating is impossible for that species.

http://www.wired.com/2014/07/how-do-barnacles-mate/

Most sessile animals (organisms that spend their lives anchored to something else) simply shoot their sperm and eggs into the water and hope for the best. Barnacles, however, actually copulate with each other. They manage this feat with an amazing penis that is capable of seeking out partners and mating with them.

So it's down to at least one rare barnacle species, sponges, coral, underwater tube worms, some plants. These all have something in common, which is not being able to move around. This suggests that spore mating is the absolute method of last resort for real world organisms, and normally only works underwater to carry the spores.

[GavJ]

Anybody with pollen allergies would beg to differ about spore breeding being extremely rare in plants.

As for animals, you guys are looking up examples of things that breed by spores at INDEFINITE DISTANCES.  That is not what the suggestion is mainly about, though. The suggestion was to be able to put a distance modifier on a species. So even if something uses area-effect sperm within a range of only 10 feet, then that would warrant using this tag and typing in a range of "2" tiles.

To some extent, it would even make sense to use this simply for large enough creatures, for people who wanted to partially simulate multi-tile sizes, etc. Like a sperm whale might be allowed to reproduce at a range of 4 or 5 tiles just to simulate the actual body size even though they mate touching.

[Magistrum]

I also think that breeding through distance was a bug more than anything else, but the implementation of other mating methods besides contact for the proper creatures would be nice. I think it's good as it is for now.

[Gashcozokon]

Also, just to add a note. Not saying it couldn't be done, but from a programming stand point Line-Of-Sight calculations eat more CPU cycles than straight distance calculations. 
Since GavJ actually mentioned the other side of the coin (source changes)

The actual change to the COMPUTER CODE on Toady's end is exactly identical in both of the usages you described above -- the suggestion is merely to add the tags for players to choose to add as they see fit.

I thought I would provide an example.
There are 4 cases of breeding under discussion [The original, the current, proposed x range, x range + los/wall detection]

The first being the easiest:

Code: (original method) [Select]

IF map.unitList contains validMate THEN pregnant = true;followed closely by:

Code: (current method) [Select]

IF map.unitList contains validMate AND distance <= 1 THEN humpaHumpa = true;just adding a Raw_tag:

Code: (range x by tag) [Select]

IF map.unitList contains validMate AND distance <= distanceTagValue THEN getDownTonight = true;finally:

Code: (wall detection) [Select]

IF map.unitList contains validMate AND distance <= distanceTagValue THEN
src = getPosition(unit)
des = getPosition(target)
distanceX = des.x - src.x
distanceZ = des.z - src.z
distanceY = des.y - src.y
floorMatrix = array()
foreach(x in distanceX)
  foreach(z in distanceZ)
    foreach(y in distanceY){
      floorMatrix[x][z][y] = isWalkable(x,z,y) // true/false
    }
foundPath = computePath( floorMatrix ) // run each combination of values looking for a valid path
IF foundPath = true THEN notTonightDearIHaveAHeadache = true
This is all just short hand pseudo code, I'm generalizing and simplifying of course the first 3 probably require more than 1 line of code each, but they reasonably could be single statements. But to have every animal on the map check for walls each mating cycle, easily double or triple my example in lines of real code, and potentially hundreds of iterations for each loop.

Heh, ok this really turned out longer than intended, please don't take it as a rant I'm just demonstrating what the different styles of breeding code might look like.

[GavJ]

Pathing makes more sense than line of sight, and is something Toady routinely slaps into the game in 18 bazillion different places already. But line of sight is fine too, whatever. Those are good stipulations.

[Bohandas]

Then, I can't find any references to species where the sperm or eggs actually travel macro-scale distances to get to the other, which is what "spore breeding" entails. It just doesn't happen like that, as far as I can tell, in any species.

So it's down to at least one rare barnacle species, sponges, coral, underwater tube worms, some plants. These all have something in common, which is not being able to move around.

Also, from a relativistic 4-dimensional standpoint, a fish fertilizing eggs an hour after they were laid is equivalent to the mates being on opposite ends of the solar system.

EDIT:
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/41352/what-is-the-length-of-1-second-in-meters
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special_Relativity/Spacetime