Print

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

[thegamezbeplayed]

In modding I took to researching a good deal of topics. The existence of titanium ores in the world but no way to make titanium led me towards modding a process to produce titanium. In the end i decided its not only far to complicated (4 steps if you extremely simplify it, for context pearlash is 3 and I never seem to have enough pearlash and it requires a non zero amount of micro managing), but it would also go against the desired set time period/ technology constaint of 1400. Basically most metals that dont exist in DF are likely because it requires some gas or another, which requires electricity to produce. Titanium also must be smelted in a vacuum or a place without oxygen, which in modern day we use an argon chamber.

I digress, DF gets alot right that is often missed by other fantasy settings/ authors. World of Warcraft for example has Titanium and Thorium bars, magic and fantasy can only go so far as a crutch (thorium wouldnt even be good for armor and weapons as its only slightly harder than tin and aluminum)

I recently found that the deeper you dig the hotter it gets. I always knew that of course the planets center is hot and molten, but i also knew that it can get cold underground. I always assumed that the crust was cold but after the mantle the tempature rapidly increases (it does actually rapidly increase as far as human biology is concerned).

DF has deep and shallow metals, I would consider shallow under 1 mile deep which is where i discovered most easy pickings for ore were found early in human history, but we now must go far deeper in search of ore. 1 mile deep would be 75 degrees warmer. So for those of you embarking in scorching regions being underground would actually be worse.

Now most big fantasy settlements that come to mind are actually in cold climates - Ironforge, Moria, etc. So digging and living deep would actually be of benefit and likely desired.

For other projects I am working on I am trying to find a way that dwarves would regulate temperatures throughout a fort. I am merely dabbling chemist so I dont know from experience what would actually happen in context but take a typical dwarven strongold its cavernous vast halls and deep reaching extensions and excavation. Heat rises so as you expand deeper adding layers and carving out work areas and dwellings would the heat largely dissapate into the large volume of air and colder rock layers above? Or is the source so strong that the fortress as a whole would get ever warmer?

Across universes most dwarven design is consistent that Dwarves are masters of stone my head cannon is theres such a way to carve stone and extend halls to make caverns a giant heat spreader. Dwarven dwellings would also very easy be able to produce steam rooms and hotspring/baths. Which gave me another idea and the basic cooling solution of great dwarven engineering, the main halls would have simple plumbing of thin or small pipes. As you go deeper the water would heat up and eventually boil and rise. Again I am unsure in practice how much this would actually cool a cavern but if cold water runs through the walls and hot water is forced up, you essentially would be cooling the underground and heating the upper levels. Maybe even producing hot baths as a biproduct. (not to clear yet on how steam would work). This would work best in cold areas/ mountain ranges. Snow from the mountain would enter into grates or porous stones throughout the outer most layer and enter an input pipe system which would then be fed via gravity throughout the cavern walls down. A cistern would collect all the heating water, so boom you have air conditioning and water treatment.


I am going to continue to research how this would work but posted here in case anyone would know how it would work or how to work it out with science (sorry not !!SCIENCE!!)


Oh the other common concept is magma fueled forges. They dont exist in the modern area despite large concern for the environment and ever increasing expense in energy and heating, somehow the dwarves are more eco friendly?!

Wouldn't most heating via magma basically be a crucible suspended above, or maybe submerged in magma. Or is it more complicated than that?

[Salmeuk]

cool ideas there, and welcome to the forums. my replies come not from a place of knowledge, but simple theory and guesses masquerading as such

Heat rises so as you expand deeper adding layers and carving out work areas and dwellings would the heat largely dissapate into the large volume of air and colder rock layers above? Or is the source so strong that the fortress as a whole would get ever warmer?

this would work. check this article (https://www.hunker.com/13402280/siliceous-vs-carbonate-concrete) for a *ahem* concrete explanation of thermal conductivity. IMO, dwarves would easily dig series of access vents to both the surface and the lower depths. At the surface, air inlets paired with small aqueducts can form extremely effective cooling towers (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher). Conversely, one would expect the lower tunnels to be extremely warm, debilitating even (see https://www.msha.gov/heat-stress), as modern humans experience with deep-drilling and mining operations. even though these typically fail to penetrate farther than %1 of the way through continental crust (though the Mponeng gold mine appears to have reached almost %5).

Arguably the caverns would have wind and weather of their own, allowing for breezes to sweep away excess heat from vent shafts. In this imaginary version of DF we are talking about, at least.

Dwarfs are fantasy creatures, sure, but the world they operate in might be expected to operate similarly to ours. so even though this kind of worldbuilding leans a little too far towards mimesis fetishism it's totally awesome and fun to think about.

I think the biggest issue would be keeping the lower depths cool, rather than dealing with the resulting heat. Beards come equipped with self-contained A/C units, so the dwarves themselves are OK, but what about the equipment and material?

Oh the other common concept is magma fueled forges. They dont exist in the modern area despite large concern for the environment and ever increasing expense in energy and heating, somehow the dwarves are more eco friendly?!

magma itself cools quickly. even the hot red stuff you see is way colder compared to what it was below. So maneuvering this deadly liquid into a location where it can be used is difficult, and even then as soon as it cools you have a gigantic ROCK where your heat source used to be. So one would need to engineer a constant flow magma smelter of some kind... which is a really cool idea and could represent an interesting challenge in DF - what if magma smelters required a constant, new input of magma? What kind of engineering problems might arise when building a literal magma waterwheel (magmawheel? firewheel??)

so yeah. Only in Iceland, maybe, due to the generally controlled eruptions and prodigious number of said eruptions. basically if the Vikings didn't invent it, I don't think anyone will.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

except dwarves of course!

If you were interested in modding some of these things, perhaps creating workshops or devices that only worked above or below a certain temperature. That might be possible with DFhack and scripts..

[thegamezbeplayed]

I speak purely from a in a real world scenario perspective not a in game one, it would be neat to have some of these things but I gave up modding for a few reasons but one reason, and related to your comment about adding this to the game; alot of things are simply not possible without toady exposing avenues to do so. For example temperature and isolated climates.

You mention air vents, which while used today are probably more common due to ease of construction versus effectiveness. As we are dwarves not only is underground our home, we are masters of the mountain. Our solutions should be permanent, grand, and of great architectural prowess. Since real world miners dont also live bath and sleep underground they wouldn't need an extravagant solution. Time and materials spent to pamper or increase comfort cuts into costs. But again we are dwarves our treasures and crafts are far more precious than iron and gold. One masterwork candy large serrated blade should make up for any setbacks installing dwarven air conditioning, while knocking out a hotbath and steam room while were at it.

I question the effectiveness or practicality of air vents. water has more cooling capacity, and the inlets can be much smaller thus being safer from attack. You would have to push fresh air down somehow which would be a not so subtle operation that takes place on the mountain top. you can have many water pipes and gravity would do most of the work taking the mountain top run off down to the depths below.

I just am uncertain at the moment if the rocks/underground would heat up faster than a system could cool.

[Eric Blank]

It'll definitely reach equilibrium eventually, that equilibrium might not be tolerable though. Like you said, water pipes are probably the most efficient way to cool the underground chambers, but you absolutely have to have air flowing down into them too, and ventilation carrying away harmful gasses from the smelter operations. One way dwarves could do that is to design a cooling tower built into the mountain, exactly the shape of modern nuclear reactor cooling towers, built either underground pits exiting onto the surface or as towers above ground. That will pull hot steam and air out, allowing cooler air to be drawn in through inlet vents, providing circulation. Magma forges are where it gets really icky, because you have not only the noxious gasses produced in normal smelting operations, but the noxious gasses naturally found in lava. Dwarven engineers would absolutely have to use separate ventilation systems to pump those gasses out, keeping them downwind of the fresh air inlets as some of them can be quite dense and sink back down into the fortress.

Keeping the magma flowing is one issue for them, but they would need to prevent pressurized magma pockets from bursting with all the force of a volcanic eruption, turning the fort into a new volcano pipe. It's under constant pressure from the rock and magma above and around it, and any empty spaces it can burst into it will, killing everyone inside and filling the chamber until pressure is equal throughout. Even if you were trapped in an air pocket inside there, you'd be experiencing pressures akin to the deep ocean or worse, where you'd need a submarine structure to prevent you being crushed to paste. Dwarves are not immune to being crushed to death, unfortunately.

You can use that pressure to your advantage to allow hot, fresh magma flowing into your smelter, but where is it flowing to? You can't pump it back down into the magma sea, you just get another opening ita trying to escape to and now your pipe has two high pressure ends and a blocked center. Dwarf fortress has giant open underground caverns, you can let it flow into the third cavern layer, but dwarves don't want to lose access to a very precious resource there; nether cap trees, whose temperature is (somehow) constantly quite cool and act as an eternal heat sink. Building nether cap paneling into every surface of the lower forts or cooling systems would solve the overheating issue.

Dwarves have access to basic mechanical systems to pump air and water into the fort below (but probably not sufficient to do the job irl), but not really anything to stop magma from bursting up through the floor. Unless the magma is no longer under high pressure for some reason, which in dwarf fortress at least is the case, as all the open lava tubes to the surface show. Whatever level the lava tube fills at, it will remain constant, without the entire magma sea attempting to thrust skyward as the solid earth collapses on it. If that's the case, the weight of the earth above the sea must be supported by something other than the magma sea. Probably the columns of adamantine, I imagine supported by networks of fine filaments between them, holding the world up like a great hammock.

[Dorsidwarf]

How does the existence of the Fun Stuff affect the heating calculations? Could the Fun Stuff be the cause of the depressurisation of the sub-rock magma sea?

[thegamezbeplayed]

Since toady does not include much radioactive minerals the circus would basically act as the real world heating medium so it could be considered the same.

The caverns are actually what would cause the fortress tempatures to be slightly different than real world examples. If caverns have there own climate like others have said then basically its a toss up of whether its hot or cold deep in a fortress. Once you open the caverns the fortress would find an equilibrium between cavern temp and above ground temp. Rocks would match these temps over time since caverns are very large it wouldnt matter how hot the rocks were originally

[Schmaven]

...
Once you open the caverns the fortress would find an equilibrium between cavern temp and above ground temp. Rocks would match these temps over time since caverns are very large it wouldnt matter how hot the rocks were originally

There seem to be 2 different types of equilibrium that could be achieved in this case.  Either a uniform temperature equilibrium, or a stable temperature gradient from hot to cold.  For a uniform temperature at all depths, there would have to be no heat sources or sinks either above or below ground, and the differing initial temperatures were just initially set at various different points.  But if the magma sea for example acts as a heat source, then it would naturally diffuse outward and upward, resulting in cooler temperatures at increased distances.  You could reduce the temperature gradient by circulating air vigorously throughout the caverns, thereby speeding up the heat transfer, but there would still necessarily be a sharp increase in temperature just before contact with the heat source.

I would expect that if you had just a wide open space dug out, deep enough to get into the hotter layers of the earth's crust, that such chambers would naturally become much warmer than the stone that previously made up that space.  The reason being that conductive heat transfer is quite slow through rock, while convective heat transfer is very fast in air.  But because air is far less dense than stone, a huge volume of air can be heated very hot, with a fraction of the energy required to heat that same volume of stone.  So it wouldn't have any measurable cooling effect on the deeper stone layers. 

If I were to start a dwarven style fortress, I'd dig a very deep hole, fill it with heat pipes, and use those to generate steam to spin a turbine to produce electricity.  Then utilize that electricity to simply blow surface air down, and exhaust cavern air to the surface with various systems of ducts and dampers.  I'm not too familiar with the specifics of heat pipes, but I imagine them to be some sort of metallic tubes (copper?) filled with a certain type of gas.  The noble gasses seem to be used in neon lights, which makes me think they would also be well suited to heat pipes, but heat pipe design is a whole 'nother rabbit hole entirely.

In order to use magma to power forges, you would be limited to smelting only certain ores.  Magma is approximately 1300°C, whereas iron/steel melts at 1500°C.  Electric forges might make more sense, given a sufficient source of electricity.  So instead of magma forges, have magma power generators and electric forges. 
(Magma generators are unfortunately not possible in DF at this time, even for mere mechanical power generation)

[Salmeuk]

It'll definitely reach equilibrium eventually, that equilibrium might not be tolerable though. Like you said, water pipes are probably the most efficient way to cool the underground chambers, but you absolutely have to have air flowing down into them too, and ventilation carrying away harmful gasses from the smelter operations. One way dwarves could do that is to design a cooling tower built into the mountain, exactly the shape of modern nuclear reactor cooling towers, built either underground pits exiting onto the surface or as towers above ground. That will pull hot steam and air out, allowing cooler air to be drawn in through inlet vents, providing circulation. Magma forges are where it gets really icky, because you have not only the noxious gasses produced in normal smelting operations, but the noxious gasses naturally found in lava. Dwarven engineers would absolutely have to use separate ventilation systems to pump those gasses out, keeping them downwind of the fresh air inlets as some of them can be quite dense and sink back down into the fortress.

i really enjoyed this point about toxic gases. very true and something that would be awesome to see simulated ala miasma, with great billowing yellow clouds of sulfur oxide flowing from your magma furnaces. I believe this has been suggested before . .

I question the effectiveness or practicality of air vents. water has more cooling capacity, and the inlets can be much smaller thus being safer from attack. You would have to push fresh air down somehow which would be a not so subtle operation that takes place on the mountain top. you can have many water pipes and gravity would do most of the work taking the mountain top run off down to the depths below.

ah, but the wind and differential pressure takes care of that. you build an entrance at the top of the mountain and an exit at the bottom, and flow a moderate stream of water through that channel while also allowing air flow. the air cools the water through evaporation and the whole system provides net cooling. In theory and practice!

Keeping the magma flowing is one issue for them, but they would need to prevent pressurized magma pockets from bursting with all the force of a volcanic eruption, turning the fort into a new volcano pipe. It's under constant pressure from the rock and magma above and around it, and any empty spaces it can burst into it will, killing everyone inside and filling the chamber until pressure is equal throughout.

Wow. this is a very scary thought. the idea of upwards pressure slowly building as the game is played, only to be released in a fatal magma extrusion as your dwarf pierces the stone beneath them. perhaps some regions would experience more pressure buildup than others.

It would bring great challenge to piercing the magma sea if every staircase you dug was very quickly filled with rising magma.

Honestly this whole thread is essentially "what if Dwarf Fortress took the mechanics of Oxygen Not Included". this is a game we all want to see, I think. 


there have been some extremely long discussions about entropy and the DF universe. obviously a sort of metaphysical game to decide which component of this fantasy world is creating or destroying energy.

In order to use magma to power forges, you would be limited to smelting only certain ores.  Magma is approximately 1300°C, whereas iron/steel melts at 1500°C.  Electric forges might make more sense, given a sufficient source of electricity.  So instead of magma forges, have magma power generators and electric forges.
(Magma generators are unfortunately not possible in DF at this time, even for mere mechanical power generation)

this reminds me of someones suggestion that we should add billows as a component in the smelting system, for this very reason.