Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[tuypo1]

i think that with dwarves planes would no longer be the safest way to travel

[Larix]

I imagine a dwarven airport would just be a battery of long-range catapults. Dwarven innovation has always struck me as just improving an existing trick to do a job instead of coming up with something new, and with that mindset why would someone build a flying machine when they can just amp up the range on a good old fashioned stone lobber?

That'd be innovation - catapults can only hurl rocks, they'd need to have their basic workings changed to move people.

More to the point: there's already a means that can move dwarfs through the air and is only mildly hazardous: ballistic minecarts. At maximum ramp speed, a cart allows a hop of ~150 tiles in length (and 26 z high), and will only bash the dwarf once, upon landing. Last time i tried, that collision was also relatively mild. Even at drops of 80+ z-levels, it'd only simulate a low-velocity hit from the cart itself, which with wooden carts gave results ranging from bruised muscle to bruised organs to broken bones, no worse.

And with supersonic carts, range increases massively (but precludes moving anything but the cart itself). On a very rough estimate, i think jumps 2000 z-levels high and 6000 tiles (~8 complete embark areas) long would be mathematically possible.

[tuypo1]

Let us not forget, of course, that like the noble Wagon race, æroplanes would naturally be sapient beings with families, thoughts, hopes, dreams and aspirations, held in thrall by selfish, hypocritical dwarves who won't admit this violates their anti-slavery ethic because the planes and wagons aren't remotely humanoid.

Also, they would probably be pulled by geese.

what the dwarves treat the wagons as slaves this atrocity will not stand i must speak to the king

[rawrcakes]

I imagine a dwarven airport would just be a battery of long-range catapults. Dwarven innovation has always struck me as just improving an existing trick to do a job instead of coming up with something new, and with that mindset why would someone build a flying machine when they can just amp up the range on a good old fashioned stone lobber?

As for the safety and liability issues of mass transit via high velocity artillery transfer with no safe landing, I'm sure the dwarves would begrudgingly implement the joint human-elf suggestion/demand for mandatory parachutes after enough splatter-induced tantrum spirals, wars instigated by deaths of foreign nationals, and the inevitable ghost influx outpacing memorial slab production.

Naturally, once the basis of a global catapult network is established, more ambitious projects can be pursued. I'm talking about setting up a hot date between 7 dwarves, a wagon full of ale and cats, and the moon. With a catapult. It is made of cheese after all, and it's high time somebody found out which kind.
Ah, the march of progress.

I am oddly reminded of Secret of Mana right now. The cannon transportation network across the globe.

Honestly, if there ever was a dwarven way of aerial travel, this would be it.