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[ldog]

Wow what a lot of useless correlation==causation pyschobabble.
It doesn't for anyone wondering.
OP must be a politician or a journalist, maybe a lobbyist?
Anyway...yeah menopause...good suggestion...but I want the 15 minutes of my life back wasted reading all the meaningless drivel after that.

[ApatheticExcuse]

1. We don't know anything about dwarf biology. They could very well be completely capable of childbearing from "puberty" (provided that's a thing with dwarves, there's really nothing in the game saying it is or isn't, just that your dwarf has grown to become a pump operator or whatever) to their time of natural death. Placing human assumptions on dwarven physiology doesn't make sense - we're talking about a race of things that don't experience liver failure, amongst other "real world" things that don't apply.

2. Saying that there's no menopause because the devs only focus on what they find fun implies that someone actually thinks menopause is fun. I'm pretty sure no one anywhere ever has thought that. Except for the person who made the above statement, apparently.

3. Personally, I don't care for the suggestion, mostly because there would seem to be much more important things for Toady to focus his efforts on. I don't really WANT my dwarves to waste time in labour, or have another low-use profession. I want to work them into the dirt, have them fight goblins while wielding puppy bone artifact weapons, and generally do other dwarfy things. The suggestion itself is pretty logical and fairly well thought out, but I don't see how the second portion of it would actually improve gameplay any. I think that's really what should be important - in an ideal simulation of the real world, EVERYTHING should certainly be simulated. In a game, the fun stuff should be what's important, and I personally find puppy hammers and the like to be much more entertaining than a true simulation would be.

I also REALLY don't want the game to simulate EVERYTHING. I want it to be able to run reasonably well on my garbage laptop. I'll give up a good chunk of "potential" to keep something like that, personally, and it's the main reason I stuck with .40d until I realized there was a 64-bit DF out now that might run better than early DF2010 did.

4. A gender bias argument here seems a little stupid, honestly. I don't think any of us would care if Toady suddenly decided male dwarves give birth instead of females, or that male dwarves could only be cooks while females could only be soldiers (LP fort idea right there), or whatever. I think alot of people would be happy to see the relationship system be expanded opon further (that being an example that comes to mind of something that's certainly not dude-centric). In the end, I don't believe most of us really overthink a video game that much, or that it's healthy to - we're not all Shakesville alumni, and in the end it's not about bias, it's about what the majority of players find entertaining. In the case of this game, I think a person either enjoys the particular madness it offers up, or doesn't, and gender plays a smaller role in that than just being a dwarf fortress kind of person.

[Forwe]

The SJW's I've interacted with seem unable to comprehend the idea of apathy or neutrality, its always "your either part of the solution or part of the problem" with them and as a relativist who thinks right and wrong are relative values such an absolute statement irritates me, my lack of support for gay rights is not the same thing as opposing gay rights which means I'm neither part of the solution or part of the problem just like Swedens neutrality during WW II did not make them a part of the problem.

I'm also doubting you can be reasoned with as your no doubting if I can be

The fact that you are using a term like SJW automatically disqualifies you from being anything resembling neutral.  That is a hate term, meaning a term that is never used by it's targets to describe themselves but only as a term of abuse. 

I've literally never heard or read the term "SJW" being used by someone who isn't either 12, or an ignorant piece of shit. A meaningless term, spawned from a targeted hate campaign against women, used solely to describe anyone who isn't a white male, or doesn't agree with them completely. Explains a ton about JesterHell; both why he can't seem to grasp the most basic arguments, and how ridiculous and "opinionated" his own responses are.

Anyway, I think the solution to how to implement a creature becoming infertile from age is pretty simple. Just do one of the many suggestions for how tokens specifying it could work, and then use GoblinCookie's suggestion as a default. Though I'm not really in favor of it being added because I feel like it's just the kind of thing Dwarf Fortress shouldn't simulate. Like how it doesn't simulate aging other than suddenly dying one day and hair turning white, or how it doesn't simulate sewer systems, or how nutrient value of food affecting health isn't simulated, or how technically siblings could have children but then the children would probably have some problems isn't even considered. It just fits in exactly with the kind of stuff Dwarf Fortress isn't simulating, and that I'm fine with it not simulating.

The thing is many people do want sewers (I do) ,some people do want more detailed aging like attribute decay (I do), I know that at least I want inbreeding to be simulated as that was a problem that nobility did face irl and as nobility is expanded upon it should be simulated imho.

Basically I want DF to simulate everything it can with only the detail's that would cause it to be literally unplayable (like trying to simulate every individual grain of sand) being left out.

Really? You think a game being developed by one person should have "simulate everything" as an actual goal? That nothing can be abstracted away without reducing the quality of the game? Have you ever read a single sentence about game design or development?

I think this is the problem, GoblinCookie discusses his suggestions from the understanding that every feature added to DF comes at the loss of something else, because time is finite and development of DF is extremely slow. JesterHell believes that, 100 years from now in the fantasy future, DF will have everything, so debating in terms of resource allocation and zero-sum are useless.

    Interesting. Based on the fact that he uses a term "SJW", you try to guess that he's a white male that hates everyone that isn't another "white male". Will you call him "Cis-white scum" too? Will you say that all men should be neutered and killed? Cause, y'know, I've seen some people that were called "SJW's" by others that called for such actions. And if THEY aren't SJW's, tell me, how else should I call them? They aren't feminists, and calling them such would be an insult to those women who struggle for the opportunity of equal treatment in countries/areas in which women are still treated as objects to be sold, calling them activists would be like calling someone striving for "death penalty for all Black criminals!(but don't touch Asians, because I'm an Asian too)" an activist.
    Oh, and besides, had you bothered to even read his whole post, you would have noticed that, in fact, he wants to leave out things that would "cause it to be literally unplayable (like trying to simulate every individual grain of sand)(...)"

[Dyret]

Drama aside I like how we've got a thread about the Adams brothers being horrible misogynists for denying women their rightful place as expendable baby factories now.

[GoblinCookie]

Wow what a lot of useless correlation==causation pyschobabble.
It doesn't for anyone wondering.
OP must be a politician or a journalist, maybe a lobbyist?
Anyway...yeah menopause...good suggestion...but I want the 15 minutes of my life back wasted reading all the meaningless drivel after that.

OP is an author.  An author of a fantasy fiction at that, not an aspiring author but the author of an actual full book. 

I am surprised this thread is still on the front page. This thread would not have been successful without Jester Hell and I's little 'debate' that is for sure, one person would say cool idea and then everybody forever that reads the thread would silently agree with them as it sinks downwards would silently agree. 

1. We don't know anything about dwarf biology. They could very well be completely capable of childbearing from "puberty" (provided that's a thing with dwarves, there's really nothing in the game saying it is or isn't, just that your dwarf has grown to become a pump operator or whatever) to their time of natural death. Placing human assumptions on dwarven physiology doesn't make sense - we're talking about a race of things that don't experience liver failure, amongst other "real world" things that don't apply.

2. Saying that there's no menopause because the devs only focus on what they find fun implies that someone actually thinks menopause is fun. I'm pretty sure no one anywhere ever has thought that. Except for the person who made the above statement, apparently.

3. Personally, I don't care for the suggestion, mostly because there would seem to be much more important things for Toady to focus his efforts on. I don't really WANT my dwarves to waste time in labour, or have another low-use profession. I want to work them into the dirt, have them fight goblins while wielding puppy bone artifact weapons, and generally do other dwarfy things. The suggestion itself is pretty logical and fairly well thought out, but I don't see how the second portion of it would actually improve gameplay any. I think that's really what should be important - in an ideal simulation of the real world, EVERYTHING should certainly be simulated. In a game, the fun stuff should be what's important, and I personally find puppy hammers and the like to be much more entertaining than a true simulation would be.

I also REALLY don't want the game to simulate EVERYTHING. I want it to be able to run reasonably well on my garbage laptop. I'll give up a good chunk of "potential" to keep something like that, personally, and it's the main reason I stuck with .40d until I realized there was a 64-bit DF out now that might run better than early DF2010 did.

4. A gender bias argument here seems a little stupid, honestly. I don't think any of us would care if Toady suddenly decided male dwarves give birth instead of females, or that male dwarves could only be cooks while females could only be soldiers (LP fort idea right there), or whatever. I think alot of people would be happy to see the relationship system be expanded opon further (that being an example that comes to mind of something that's certainly not dude-centric). In the end, I don't believe most of us really overthink a video game that much, or that it's healthy to - we're not all Shakesville alumni, and in the end it's not about bias, it's about what the majority of players find entertaining. In the case of this game, I think a person either enjoys the particular madness it offers up, or doesn't, and gender plays a smaller role in that than just being a dwarf fortress kind of person.

1. Correct, it is entirely possible that dwarves do not have menopause at all; however the game world has humans in it as well.  In any case if dwarves age then it would make sense from their fertility to decline and their risks of pregnancy complications to increase even if they are always capable of conceiving children.  To have it otherwise is rather stretching the magical biology license a little thin.  Dwarves do suffer from the negative effects of alcohol at the moment as well, just to a lesser degree than other races of equivalent size; they are biologically resistant to it's effects not magically immune.

2. I do not think it occurred to the devs at all, it seems a pretty rudimentary thing to implement though I do not know for sure the details. 

3. Elderly dwarves not being able to have children is a plus if you are not interested in-game children.  The second part is not a question of improving gameplay, it *is* a form of gameplay in itself, that is a potentially deadly situation the player has to deal with; babies replace forgotten beasts as it were as a source of crisis.

4. It is not an argument, it is an observation; making observations is not overthinking anything (not that there is such a thing).  How do the players know what it is entertaining if it is never done, same with the devs, obviously if reproduction, children and childcare mechanics are rudimentary then this tends to make those things boring and attract/condition a player base that does not consider those things interesting but other things that are developed instead of those mechanics interest them.  We also throw in the social aspect of things, people will tend to be interested in what everybody else is interested in because they learn that this is what is supposed to be interesting and do not want to be boring to the other people. 

Dwarf Fortress is unusual in that it attempts to simulate the whole of a game world down to the fundamental physical mechanics underlying events.  This is different from the ordinary game which has a clear focus in story terms on a mere handful of activities, everything else is absent or highly abstracted; this makes sense because of the kind of game it is.  Dwarf Fortress does not do this, it tends to attempt to simulate a whole world and all the various facets/activities of that world.  There are however limited resources, which is why this kind of thing is not normally done, instead a clear target gamer market is identified, often involving gender and an unbalanced world is created to cater to the market's focus.  So we have [Insert Historical Era] Total War on one hand and then we have the Sims on the other hand, the former obsessed with political power and warfare, the latter obsessed with the myopic details of some vaguely middle-class non-entities personal lives.  In both cases we do not have a genuine representation of a world in it's entirety, the other side of the gender coin is basically another game altogether. 

Dwarf Fortress does not do this, it does not have a clear gameplay focus at all.  This means it can never hope to compete by being say a 'fighting game' or a 'building game' and neither can it hope to compete with them since it stretches it's limited resources thin across a large number of areas.  However the law of diminishing returns comes to the rescue here, by developing undeveloped areas of gameplay a small amount you actually accomplish more than by further developing already overdeveloped areas.  It was when I thought about the whole question of menopause that I realized that there was a general imbalance towards traditionally masculine things but without there being any clear focus on any particular thing.  This means there is no strength in the sense of resource focusing but only a weakness since the game can never compete in resource terms anyway and it's strength is balance between areas.

    Interesting. Based on the fact that he uses a term "SJW", you try to guess that he's a white male that hates everyone that isn't another "white male". Will you call him "Cis-white scum" too? Will you say that all men should be neutered and killed? Cause, y'know, I've seen some people that were called "SJW's" by others that called for such actions. And if THEY aren't SJW's, tell me, how else should I call them? They aren't feminists, and calling them such would be an insult to those women who struggle for the opportunity of equal treatment in countries/areas in which women are still treated as objects to be sold, calling them activists would be like calling someone striving for "death penalty for all Black criminals!(but don't touch Asians, because I'm an Asian too)" an activist.
    Oh, and besides, had you bothered to even read his whole post, you would have noticed that, in fact, he wants to leave out things that would "cause it to be literally unplayable (like trying to simulate every individual grain of sand)(...)"

If a name is not the title of a group but is used only by their opponents then the term is nothing but a term of abuse.  If this leaves you with no names to call people you disagree with then that is tough, perhaps you should ask yourself why would need to call people with all?  JesterHell was busy claiming the neutral standpoint but then blew his whole strategy by using a hate-term, neutral analysts only ever use terms that are accepted by the group that is being described and never hate terms for the group used by their opponents.  I specifically bold the crucial point, opponents may very well refuse to call the group by it's proper name but that in no way deprives them of the right to that name. 

We both formerly agreed that resources are finite, I think that more of those resources should be allocated to 'feminine' things while he was trying to claim that somehow being in favor of more 'masculine' things is somehow neutral in relationship to 'feminine' things, which only makes sense if resources are actually infinite. 

[Ribs]

OP is an author.

This thread would not have been successful without Jester Hell and I's little 'debate' that is for sure, one person would say cool idea and then everybody forever that reads the thread would silently agree with them as it sinks downwards would silently agree. 

If this leaves you with no names to call people you disagree with then that is tough, perhaps you should ask yourself why would need to call people with all?  JesterHell was busy claiming the neutral standpoint but then blew his whole strategy by using a hate-term, neutral analysts only ever use terms that are accepted by the group that is being described and never hate terms for the group used by their opponents.  I specifically bold the crucial point, opponents may very well refuse to call the group by it's proper name but that in no way deprives them of the right to that name. 

That is some impressive authoring right there.

Also, you imply that people who use the term "SJW" are bigots but at the same time you try to debate the existence of feminine vs masculine activities. You're literally making no friends here as people on all possible sides probably hate you, which is hilarious.

Regarding your topic: aging effects will probably be added eventually and menopause could be a thing. I think it makes sense that animals that live very long (like humans, dwarves and whales) lose fertility over the years. That also applies to males to an extent, as andropause is a thing. The main question is whether secondary physical consequences of menopause (basically, making the female weaker) should be added. Considering that Toady seems to be consciously refraining from making any significant physical differences between males and females (like in most big name RPGs), the answer to that is probably no.

[Vattic]

Toady definitely intends to update ageing.

Capntastic:   Aqizzar asks: [7]'Considering other changes in the ways bodies work, will creatures age and will that affect their abilities?'

Toady:   Creatures age now in a few ways. They age numerically and then they die of old age if they in fact have an old age parameter, and the first thing we've done that isn't just a number - or a single number representative of their age, anyway - is wrinkles, hair greying, and stuff like that. As for actual, say your attributes fading and eventually accumulating illnesses and so on, I think that stuff should definitely go in the game. I think that adds a lot of - aside from just being a simulation, when you look at the storylines of a bunch of fantasies and myths and so on, having an infirm character or a character suffering some kind of disability or so on as they get older - it can add a lot to a story. So I think that kind of thing, just putting it in the game would lead to a lot of positive aspects in terms of storytelling and so on, so I'm definitely all for that. It's just a matter of doing it, I don't think it's that difficult to do. When we get to things like diseases and so on we have fair game for even getting rid of ... Right now there's just this silly 'you die at this time', it's like every character, say the dwarf - I don't remember what the numbers are anymore - but for a human I think it's from sixty to one [hundred] twenty in the game, so it just picks a number right at the beginning of the game when the creature is created, it says 'you're going to live to be eighty seven years old' and it looks at another creature and is like 'you're going to be sixty three when you die' and so you've got this death clock hanging over each of the characters, and it would be the ideal situation I think is to just rather use our overall health variables, and maybe their previous injuries and all that kind of thing - whatever factors figure in to diseases - and use that to come up with a more realistic aging system to that they ... In a sense it's going to be kind of depressing if you have a fortress that runs for a long time and you can see these diseases accumulating and so on, but I think it would be a good change overall and we're definitely going to do that sometime.

Menopause would fit right in.

[Ribs]

Toady definitely intends to update ageing.

quote from DF talk

Menopause would fit right in.

I was thinking of this exact same quote, too. I actually didn't use it because, as previous experiences inform me, quoting DF talk is a big no-no when arguing with GoblinCookie.

Oh, and just to add to the drama, here's a funny thing I noticed: the poster angus_burger, who chivalrously defended the OP against JesterHell in this thread, also defended him in one of their previous altercations. I only realise this because he only has 4 posts to his name, and the previous one was familiar to me

Holy crap!

I've got to say GoblinCookie, this is the one of the most informative threads I've ever read on the internet. Seriously, I'm sending this link to people who don't even play dwarf fortress. I loved the way you slowly break down opposing arguments; explaining why surplus labor is nonsensical in an ant-person based society, how bandits, a world that requires adventurers, and several other added features creates Anachronism, and the difference between a massive organization that absorbs surplus (Rome) versus one that creates it (a Fortress).

I don't know how much got through to Jester (you really did need to repeat that last point excessively for him, and his insistence on "starving peasants" and "dark tones" and "what Toady wants" indicated his maturity very well), but I've learned a ton about economics from you. Thanks for taking the time to write this all out, and arguing so patiently with someone much younger than you. You'd be crazy to report this thread, GoblinCookie even took the time to explain the fallacy behind forcing the coin based economy. Imagine how much time could have been saved if the devs took this into account initially!

This suggestion went from sounding somewhat interesting to being a totally impractical fantasy solely because of how you broke down every counterargument. Of course an adventurer would never have anything to offer to guards that a fortress wouldn't, without simply creating a fortress site himself! The thread does seem to be heartily derailed now, but it was amazing while it lasted.

Really makes you think

[GoblinCookie]

That is some impressive authoring right there.

Also, you imply that people who use the term "SJW" are bigots but at the same time you try to debate the existence of feminine vs masculine activities. You're literally making no friends here as people on all possible sides probably hate you, which is hilarious.

Regarding your topic: aging effects will probably be added eventually and menopause could be a thing. I think it makes sense that animals that live very long (like humans, dwarves and whales) lose fertility over the years. That also applies to males to an extent, as andropause is a thing. The main question is whether secondary physical consequences of menopause (basically, making the female weaker) should be added. Considering that Toady seems to be consciously refraining from making any significant physical differences between males and females (like in most big name RPGs), the answer to that is probably no.

I am not trying to make friends, I am trying to be correct; perhaps there is some way to accomplish both but I have yet to figure out how.  The day I manage to figure it all out is the day I take over the world I guess.   

Feminism is not going to be upset by me talking about masculine things and feminine things, because Feminist theory is largely based upon those conceptions.  What feminism is jittery about is when people claim that those things are inherent rather than socially constructed for the simple reason that whenever someone says that something is inherent they are saying that regardless of your opinion of the matter there is nothing that can fundamentally be done to change it.  There however some accepted biological differences that are accepted by everybody as inherently masculine or feminine, indeed logically there has to be since there must be some initial differences prior to the patriarchal system coming into existence in order for it to come into existence in the first place. 

Adding physical differences is difficult because nobody quite knows what those differences actually are for sure and to what extent they are the result of the performance of masculinity or femininity in a given society. Accepting that males are inherently stronger than females to a certain degree, determining that degree is difficult because conflict and exertion are part of the performance of masculinity, assuming the body would likely develop physical strength according to the perceived likelihood of physical of physical confrontation then those who are socialized into a hostile behavior pattern would end up being stronger regardless of their biological sex.  The inability to isolate variables reduces the ability to put a precise number on the differences, even if we can agree that they exist. 

What makes it even worse is that all the secondary sexual characteristics are the result of hormones and the hormones do not work in a linear fashion but on trigger points.  It is not that a given amount of a hormone results in an effect that is more or less proportional, instead all the cells react in unison to detecting a predefined amount of a given hormone in a certain manner, 'scripted' into that cell; the cells also do not know what sex the person they are part of is, meaning that it is not possible for a trigger to be absent in one sex but present in the other sex nor for the trigger point to be different.  Secondary sexual characteristics are therefore not tied to the sexes inherently, they merely appear to be because normally the levels of certain sex hormones for one sex do not rise high enough to trigger the secondary sexual characteristics of the other sex; what is more the effects are not mutually exclusive so it is possible to have both male and female secondary sexual characteristics triggered at the same time.

Let us say that a strength bonus is triggered at 82 testosterone points in your creature, males have a base level of testosterone of 80 points while females have a base level of 8 points, while males have 10X more testosterone (like RL essentially) both sexes are equally strong because neither of them has reached the trigger point.  If increased conflict in the environment causes the testosterone level to go up by 2 points for everyone, this causes the males to reach 82 testosterone points and the females to reach 10 points.  The males have hit the trigger point and get the strength bonus but the females remain unchanged since they only have 10 points.  There are good reasons why a creature would work this way, in a peaceful environment being stronger merely means that you eat more food but in a violent environment being stronger is a matter of survival itself; the male base testosterone level is kept slightly below the level needed to manifest the strength bonus so that if the increasing conflict level raises the testosterone the 'military strength' of the population will increase without the same strength bonus being a burden in more peaceful times.

So there we have it, a situation based upon how the biology actually works by which things are both inherent and societal at the same time; now everybody will be upset.

Toady definitely intends to update ageing.

Capntastic:   Aqizzar asks: [7]'Considering other changes in the ways bodies work, will creatures age and will that affect their abilities?'

Toady:   Creatures age now in a few ways. They age numerically and then they die of old age if they in fact have an old age parameter, and the first thing we've done that isn't just a number - or a single number representative of their age, anyway - is wrinkles, hair greying, and stuff like that. As for actual, say your attributes fading and eventually accumulating illnesses and so on, I think that stuff should definitely go in the game. I think that adds a lot of - aside from just being a simulation, when you look at the storylines of a bunch of fantasies and myths and so on, having an infirm character or a character suffering some kind of disability or so on as they get older - it can add a lot to a story. So I think that kind of thing, just putting it in the game would lead to a lot of positive aspects in terms of storytelling and so on, so I'm definitely all for that. It's just a matter of doing it, I don't think it's that difficult to do. When we get to things like diseases and so on we have fair game for even getting rid of ... Right now there's just this silly 'you die at this time', it's like every character, say the dwarf - I don't remember what the numbers are anymore - but for a human I think it's from sixty to one [hundred] twenty in the game, so it just picks a number right at the beginning of the game when the creature is created, it says 'you're going to live to be eighty seven years old' and it looks at another creature and is like 'you're going to be sixty three when you die' and so you've got this death clock hanging over each of the characters, and it would be the ideal situation I think is to just rather use our overall health variables, and maybe their previous injuries and all that kind of thing - whatever factors figure in to diseases - and use that to come up with a more realistic aging system to that they ... In a sense it's going to be kind of depressing if you have a fortress that runs for a long time and you can see these diseases accumulating and so on, but I think it would be a good change overall and we're definitely going to do that sometime.

Menopause would fit right in.

As I said earlier, I simply think it did not occur to the devs to add it in when they initially added in death from old age, the possible result of the general unconscious gender bias in terms of the development of different features.  This is pretty easy for them to add, they can simply add it in pretty much immediately between releases in the same manner that they added in gelding for certain male creatures, since it is a simple binary reproduce/not reproduce it will likely even improve performance by cutting down the list of females that the game has to calculate whether they will have a baby on a given year. 

The general fertility decline which also applies to males would be harder to implement I would imagine since it has to constantly keep track of the constantly adjusting probabilities of conception of each couple in the game and store all that data as well.  This it would make sense to leave until the general old age maluses are introduced since it kind of the same thing, variables being changed in the files for characters as a result of their age.

[Wolzly]

This thread is infuriating and I'm not entirely sure why.

[GoblinCookie]

This thread is infuriating and I'm not entirely sure why.

Because of the way the argument degenerated into a flamewar because I noticed certain things about the game that are best left unnoticed?

[ldog]

Tell it to the whales...
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37025092

[Severedicks]

Because of the way the argument degenerated into a flamewar because I noticed certain things about the game that are best left unnoticed?

I'll go ahead and break my lurking habit to say, GoblinCookie, you sound like a very smart and interesting person based on the posts I've read from you, but I fail to see the point in persistently engaging in lengthy politically loaded discussions with people from the suggestions forums, especially when taking into account the demographics of the bay12 forums (or practically any anglophone 'nerdy' internet community for that matter) and thus knowing their most likely stance on gender issues and/or economics and the consequences (in terms of time spent arguing) of stating at length your own diverging opinions. I see where you're coming and you raise a lot of valid points, but these should have been detailed in the OP rather than thrown in '90s Usenet-style line-by-line type of replies that are excessively unpleasant to follow for anyone except the arguing parties.

And frankly, menopause isn't the best angle to tackle the question of gendered development bias because it really is a trivial and unimportant matter. Humans already have a random, fixed lifespan of 60-120 (I believe) and the process of aging is virtually nonexistent, all of which is unrealistic and makes the whole concept of aging quite abstract in game (in other words, it's hard to be shocked by a woman having kids at 100 when you can get beaten down by 115 year old warlords, male or female, with the same vigor as when they were 20 or even 12). Adding an arbitrary reproduction limit for women doesn't really help. Adding a whole specific tag would look artificial especially when considering humans are an exception and menopause isn't really a thing among most animals. Menopause is therefore a non-issue, or at least the context in which it could be inscribed to be raised as an issue doesn't exist yet. It will certainly get addressed when Toady implements age-related issues (Toady reads the first post of every suggestion thread, so if it wasn't on their list it is now) and until now I guess we'll have to stick with the placeholder system. I essentially agree with the rest of what you've said (and should really have been the central point), that is, features related to culturally "feminine" aspects of simulation gaming (childcare, education, romance and so on) have been underdeveloped and like you I believe the game would be enriched if these were to be fleshed out. (There are notable exceptions, such as detailed aspects of pregnancy like miscarriage, or the very detailed personality/emotion system). However, while I'm sure the Adams brothers are planning to expand on them, their answer is likely to be the same as that of nearly all feature suggestions: Sounds Good, No Timeline.

[GoblinCookie]

Tell it to the whales...
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37025092

This article is less than impressive, as it consists of people asserting a non-problem and then setting out on a long scientific journey to solve the non-problem.

The menopause is a puzzle for biologists. Why would the female of a species cease to reproduce half way through her life, when natural selection favours characteristics that help an individual's genes survive? A study of killer whales - one of only two mammals apart from humans to undergo the menopause - is providing clues.

Well obviously if traits that make no sense based upon the hypothesis that natural selection favors characteristics that help an individual's genes to survive that is probably because the claim is not true.  If we think of things from the POV of an orca pod then things however then the mystery is not why do creatures have menopause but why do so few creatures have it?  The key is that the number of baby orcas the orca pod can have is determined by their economic surplus, irrespective of which individual has the babies.  In this context economic surplus (or surplus value) means the amount of food and other resources the orca pod can acquire over the amount that the orcas themselves consume.  This creates a hard limit on the amount of babies the orca pod can produce, regardless of how may babies each individual orca female in the pod can physically give birth to.

Now considering that the number of orca babies that the pod can produce is finite then what matters from the point of view of the survival of the orca pod's collective genes is the quality of the baby orcas it produces.  The higher quality of the orca babies are born the less of the economic surplus is wasted in orcas dying in infancy and the greater the prospective success of the pod in the future/future orca pods spawned it.  Since old age does not spare the reproductive organs it follows that the babies of older orcas in the pod are of lower quality than those of younger orcas, but these still take up economic surplus reducing the number of higher quality babies that can be 'made' using that surplus. To return to topic, this all would have to with something that presently does not exist, which is birth disorders. 

I'll go ahead and break my lurking habit to say, GoblinCookie, you sound like a very smart and interesting person based on the posts I've read from you, but I fail to see the point in persistently engaging in lengthy politically loaded discussions with people from the suggestions forums, especially when taking into account the demographics of the bay12 forums (or practically any anglophone 'nerdy' internet community for that matter) and thus knowing their most likely stance on gender issues and/or economics and the consequences (in terms of time spent arguing) of stating at length your own diverging opinions. I see where you're coming and you raise a lot of valid points, but these should have been detailed in the OP rather than thrown in '90s Usenet-style line-by-line type of replies that are excessively unpleasant to follow for anyone except the arguing parties.

So you fail to see the point of me engaging in lengthy political discussions and then you propose that I post politically loaded stuff actually in the OP itself; I fail to see the consistently in the approach here.  The politics came up because I was trying to explain why the problem will not automatically be fixed by observing how the game is biased presumably unconsciously against things that are feminine.  Of course there are the whole legions of Gamergate and Co. waiting to descend upon anyone that observes such things in games and so we end up with a lengthy utterly fruitless political argument that would simply descend into hate, personal abuse and threats of violence if aforesaid people had not learned by now learned how well-regulated this forum is.

The reason I continue is not because I find engaging with such people to be the most entertaining thing in the world; it is because such people aim to silence opposition and dominate the population through fear.  Once dominated opposing voices are silenced on political matters and reduced to lurkers, hence they can now claim to represent the anglophone 'nerdy' internet community as you put them since everybody has learned to agree with them or keep their mouth shut.  Since the devs of any game are going to be looking at what the players are saying, Gamergate can influence the development of video games in the manner that is in accord to their ideals since they have gained control over the "demographic" that buys the games and hence can appear to command the market. 

Of course I have played them rather well, they simply ended up bumping my post up the list.  I knew this political argument was going to break out but I kept the overt politics out of the OP so that there would be some productive discussion before the inevitable descent into chaos.  I think they eventually realized this which is why they have backed off, once they cannot get everyone to flee their efforts have the opposite effect to what is intended, advertising their opponents rather than silencing them.

And frankly, menopause isn't the best angle to tackle the question of gendered development bias because it really is a trivial and unimportant matter. Humans already have a random, fixed lifespan of 60-120 (I believe) and the process of aging is virtually nonexistent, all of which is unrealistic and makes the whole concept of aging quite abstract in game (in other words, it's hard to be shocked by a woman having kids at 100 when you can get beaten down by 115 year old warlords, male or female, with the same vigor as when they were 20 or even 12). Adding an arbitrary reproduction limit for women doesn't really help. Adding a whole specific tag would look artificial especially when considering humans are an exception and menopause isn't really a thing among most animals. Menopause is therefore a non-issue, or at least the context in which it could be inscribed to be raised as an issue doesn't exist yet. It will certainly get addressed when Toady implements age-related issues (Toady reads the first post of every suggestion thread, so if it wasn't on their list it is now) and until now I guess we'll have to stick with the placeholder system. I essentially agree with the rest of what you've said (and should really have been the central point), that is, features related to culturally "feminine" aspects of simulation gaming (childcare, education, romance and so on) have been underdeveloped and like you I believe the game would be enriched if these were to be fleshed out. (There are notable exceptions, such as detailed aspects of pregnancy like miscarriage, or the very detailed personality/emotion system). However, while I'm sure the Adams brothers are planning to expand on them, their answer is likely to be the same as that of nearly all feature suggestions: Sounds Good, No Timeline.

The point of this post was never to correct any abstract bias on the devs part, everyone is biased in one way or another; which is why the suggestion forum needs to exist to first place, I am never going to make a completely unbiased dev in every respect so any such crusade would be in vain.  The point of this post was to suggest an improvement to the game and suggest a few more related improvements along the same theme, unconscious bias is my explanation for the lack of those features not something I am on a crusade against.  The key distinction here is not triviality/importance but complexity/dev time, I will explain:

A number of old age functions are rather complex to implement while others are far simpler to implement.  The comparison between the effects of old age in general and menopause is a false one, the reason is that to model the effects of old age in general is highly complex, requiring a whole raft of allied functions to exist in order for it to work out.  Our 115 warlord has to know that he is too old to personally fight in combat but also to fight if he is cornered and has no surviving bodyguards.  There are a whole raft of occupations that elderly people will have to retire from, woodcutters and miners for instance.  The player will have to be prevented from activating the wrong labours on those characters, or be explicitly told that they are too old to effectively do those tasks, this is basically the long awaiting overhaul/replacement of the labour list. 

None of these apply to menopause.  Essentially to implement menopause is the same as implementing death from old age, there is a number that defines when a female creature stops reproducing.  This is on by default for intelligent creatures, off by default for unintelligent creatures with specific raw tokens that allow intelligent creatures to not have menopause and animals to have it.  Unless otherwise specified menopause is set to the youngest possible age to die of old age (so 60 for humans).  This means that immortal intelligent creatures like elves do have menopause unless otherwise specified, the game recognizes that they are intelligent and should have it but since there is no date it never actually triggers.  Other ideas like childbirth, child care, the effects of old age in general, the effects of pregnancy in general are in no way so simple. 

I mean we have already got a mechanism by which certain male animals can lose their 'fertility' and Toady One had to go through the raws for all the creatures in order to manually add a specific token to all the male animals he thought it should apply too; in the case of menopause the whole thing can be implemented without a single token being actually modified in the raw files at all!

[Ribs]

The reason I continue is not because I find engaging with such people to be the most entertaining thing in the world; it is because such people aim to silence opposition and dominate the population through fear.  Once dominated opposing voices are silenced on political matters and reduced to lurkers, hence they can now claim to represent the anglophone 'nerdy' internet community as you put them since everybody has learned to agree with them or keep their mouth shut.  Since the devs of any game are going to be looking at what the players are saying, Gamergate can influence the development of video games in the manner that is in accord to their ideals since they have gained control over the "demographic" that buys the games and hence can appear to command the market. 

So a tankie who hates any economical suggestion to the game that stirs it away half an inch from it becoming the communism simulator he envisions also fancies himself an internet crusader against what he ridiculously perceives as gamergate bullies monopolizing video game online discussion. I am shocked.

Of course I have played them rather well, they simply ended up bumping my post up the list.  I knew this political argument was going to break out but I kept the overt politics out of the OP so that there would be some productive discussion before the inevitable descent into chaos.  I think they eventually realized this which is why they have backed off, once they cannot get everyone to flee their efforts have the opposite effect to what is intended, advertising their opponents rather than silencing them.

Genius. I have never until now realized the extent of the mistake the evil group of organized bigots who have the audacity of disagreeing with you have made in their awful ongoing quest of silencing opposition. In their foul attempt of homogenizing thought through fear I'm sure they have threatened you constantly with subtle implicance of physical retaliation (of which I have failed to notice so far but I'm sure it's there somewhere). But no, not only did they fail to silence you but have indeed only advertized your brilliant, dashing, insightful and even sometimes satirical counter-cultural commentary that undoubtedly left those idiot bullies seathing in impotent anger and impressed sensible bystanders.

These highly moral bystanderswho have so far been hiding their true opinions in fear of being cruelly attacked by gamergate fanatics, content in lurking, silently nodding when exposed to your brave social commentary, are now slowly but surely feeling more confident and coming out; all thanks to you. And you manage to do it all virtually unafraid of the violent contrarians that would surely beat you up if they could, the disgusting savages that they are. Truly, a masteful chess move that could only come from an individual smart enough to be an author.

Checkmate, bigots!

And of course I, in my crude attempt of making fun of you with this post, am in fact only helping you spread your wisdom by bumping your thread one more time. That's because every single intelligent person who happen to lay their eyes upon your flawless logic can't possibly find your arguments contrived and your rethoric tedious, but can only immediately change their mind because your political ramblings are so perfect. Bay12 forums will soon be overrun by the revolutionary vanguard of logic and reason that is to come, catapulted by your valiant efforts and leadership. Foiled again!!!