Print

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

[judegraves7]

So there I was, trying to get the newly-arrived king to court the attractive young manager to produce an heir to the throne (dwarf office romance). Out of nowhere, Forgotten Beast Shato Nubpomete Sotaost, an enormous humanoid composed of solid salt shows up in the caverns. At first I thought, "Okay, he's gonna need to be dealt with, but for now he's on the other side of the cavern's lake." However, he proceeds to swim across the lake and emerges unscathed. The guy is made of salt, and isn't salt supposed to dissolve in water? Maybe I'm just splitting beard-hairs here, but it would have been fun if I could have destroyed this guy by luring him under a pit/pond zone, then having Urist McHauler dump a bucket of river water on him, dissolving his head. In short, maybe salt could be more than just a random Forgotten Beast component and actually affect gameplay.

[Putnam]

You should make the topic more like a suggestion, honestly, but yes, I agree. Water should act as a realistic solvent to minerals that happen to solute in it, so that we can actually say "water may be the universal solvent, but magma is the universal solution!"

[Stormcloudy]

You're going to melt several tons of rock salt with a bucket of water?

Or a quick dip for that matter? Please.

[judegraves7]

I'll admit, the bucket thing is a little far-fetched. But like Putnam said, water should be given the properties of a solvent.

Stormcloudy, since I'd rather have you as a friend than an enemy, I'll offer a new idea. This perhaps will be a more realistic way of dealing with a salty foe.

---S--------
----DS----------
------SD--------------------------
------S-------------------------------- GROUND LEVEL
------S--------------------------------
----DDSDDD----------------------------
------SDDD-----------------------------
------S-----D---------------------------
------S-------D--------------------------
---    S          ---D---------------------- 2nd CAVERN
--     S            F  DDD---------------------
--     S            ---------------------------
---SSSSSSSSSS----------------------------
----------------------------------------------

- = layers
S = water
D = Dwarf-occupied space
F = Forgotten Beast of Saline Horror

Here we have a basic diagram of the situation. At the fortress in question, I have dug a shaft from a mountain-top brook to the 2nd cavern, which has a few switchbacks I use to power waterwheels and provide water for hospitals. At this point in my fortress's history, I have begun to notice that the water levels in the 2nd cavern are rising, which may eventually flood the caverns. Enter Salt-Monster. If I were to cut off access from the 2nd cavern to the rest of my fortress, the 2nd cavern would eventually fill up with water. The Salty Foe would be trapped in an ever-filling water chamber, and would undoubtedly dissolve over time. Since the brook provides infinite water, I can sit back and watch the Forgotten Beast dissolve. IF, that is, the game were to be changed to make water react as a solvent to certain minerals.

And another thing: what if water could cause rust? Enormous iron corkscrews in your pump stacks and such would need to be replaced often.

[Stormcloudy]

Now that I can get behind. Though still, dissolving rock salt takes rather a long time. Without a strong current I would say days or weeks to melt a fist-sized chunk, so I don't know about dissolving living beings made of salt. Moreover, their "tissues" should heal if they are organic and not magical in origin, so I would think it's more a battle of attrition at that point.

Rusting iron would be interesting, but I would HATE to see tattered masterwork screw pump dissolve and have my person tantrum, because I used a reactive metal. Plus, I feel as though it would be a lot to calculate, but could quite obviously be wrong.

I feel as though this would be about as much fun as water seeping through my above-ground walls, freezing, thawing, and bursting chunks of walls if I choose an appropriately varied climate. Cool, but very not fun. Fun, I guess.

[judegraves7]

True, I'm not sure how the healing rate would compare to the dissolving rate. But there could be all sorts of fun from water dissolving minerals, rusting metals, et cetera et cetera. And what's more fun than rusty pipes? 

[GreatWyrmGold]

Fire men should be destroyed by water rather than the other way around.

Maybe a "dissolves" tag on creature tissues,which makes them take damage if immersed, and one on inorganics, which both causes damage to an object immersed in water and carries over to creature tissues.

[judegraves7]

The problem with fire men is that I don't know how hot they are. A hot enough fire would boil water before it even touched it. Considering that a fire man is a sentient being with the ability to assault dwarven settlements, I would assume that they require massive amounts of energy to fuel their bodies and minds, so I'd think they'd be pretty high-temperature beings. But in general I agree. Specific materials should damage/erode/dissolve others. Iron animal traps should kill fairies. Total immersion in deep water (maybe at least 5/7) should hurt fire men and dissolve certain minerals. THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN, AND WE WANT A "DISSOLVES" TAG!!

[smasher89]

i know that dwarf fortress physics are really developed, but it wouldn´t hurt to work on chemistry aspects of the game, tought, i readed in the wiki that some megabeast and demons, no matter if they are made of logs, vomit or some type of soil, they will not get hurt by sustances or elements that should destroy the matterial from what they are made, like fire=wood, vomit or soil=water, respectively... at least talking in some logic way... but creatures like bronze colossus and such things are already a "magic" thing in dwarf fortress, so both chemistry and magic in the dwarf fortress universe should be worked a bit more to have more sense... or at least stand without one ruining the other.

[IT 000]

I think demons should keep their immunity for the sake of Fun.