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[Aquillion]

Counterpoint: Explosives are practically indispensable to large-scale mining, which is they central goal of all dwarves.  Sulfur, the key ingredient of explosives, is in fact a mineral, of which dwarves are experts.  Metallurgy is tightly intertwined with chemistry and requires a reasonable degree of chemical knowledge in order to advance at all as a science...  expecting dwarves to know nothing of explosives is like expecting Eskimos to know nothing of furs or fire.

Furthermore, explosives have been around far longer than most people realize; they were used in China before the 9th century, and were well-known in the Western world by the end of the 12th century.  This is well before where most of what we think of as the the 'fantasy' period appeared (numerous fantasy staples, such as European-style plate armor, did not exist at all until after explosives had become widely understood.)

I think that, naturally, there are going to have to be explosives in the game at some point for use in mining, producing traps, and generally making mayhem.  Alchemists with explosive formulas are something of a fantasy staple...  blowing things up is, by and large, what alchemists are for, and no fantasy alchemist's workshop is complete without the occasional explosion.  Producing explosives is one of sulphur's primary uses; using this effect for mining or traps is strongly in keeping with dwarven character, and allows them to produce effects for which other races would rely on magic.

Laser-guided sniper rifles?  No.  But I think it's fairly clear that simple explosives fit perfectly into the setting.

[ August 08, 2007: Message edited by: Aquillion ]

[Istrian]

There is an old RPG titled Darklands which has an extensive alchemy system based on 'real' 11-th century alchemy. Here's a link to its manual

[Haedrian]

What about a barrel, which when it becomes too hot, it just explodes, clearing a 3X3 area around it. You could give the heat using a 'fuse' and fire, in traps for example. (or an easy way to take out magmamen   )

Wont have much of a use in mining, unless there'd be some 'very hard rock' type which would take ages to mine, unless you blow it up.

[Grek]

I think that dwarfs would be able to make a cannon, but not a gun. You have to have very good metal to make a gun barrel that is light enough to carry around and strong enough not to explode when the gun fires. A cannon gets around this by being extra thick. A cannon would work like a catapult, but smaller and require a barrel of gunpowder and a metal cannonball instead of a rock to fire.

[Istrian]

quote:Originally posted by Grek:
<STRONG>You have to have very good metal to make a gun barrel that is light enough to carry around and strong enough not to explode when the gun fires.</STRONG>

Historically, muskets could be made of brass, bronze, iron or steel. As for smaller gunpowder weapons (such as revolvers or flintlock weapons), I believe they were mostly made of iron or steel, sometimes decorated with silver or gold.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

As far as the explosives argument goes, I can understand having simple explosive devices used for mining, though currently it does not seem necessary (getting legendary miners who walk through rock like butter doesn't seem that difficult (^_^;; ).

But I am also totally against dwarven fire weapons.

First of all, I think it goes against the flavor of the game.

Secondly, I want to remind you of where the dwarves are living: In underground caves! Yeah, sure they make big halls and corridors often, but still, there is a lot of blocked terrain. They are not living in the free meadows where the ranged weapons really pay off. More often than not, they would only be able to fire once at blank range - killing one foe before his two friends show him what good goblin swords can do. In the same vein, explosive devices would make poor tools in combat since in such confined quarters, they are likely to splatter both the target and the user (kind of like the gridling grenade in that simplified WH40K board game (^_^;; ). Thus, personal fire arms seem more than unlikely to me (on the other hand, the idea of traps, for example, fits very nice to the fact of confined space).

Well, I have not wikied for that, but this is what my gut tells me.

Deathworks

[FlamingKittenMittin]

How about smoke coming from guns after their fired, after a few shots in a 2x2 hallway it should be impossible to see from more than 2 sqaures away if your in the smoke.In a 2x2 hallway the smoke should only spread 5 squares in either direction It would also take time to reload depending on what type of gun it is. If it was a arquebus type gun it should take the game equivalent of a minute to reload. If if was a blunderbuss it should take maybe half that. If the dwarf has a good level in gun shooting the time it takes to reload should go down some.

The bullets would be made in the masons workshop out of rock or the forge made out of some type of metal. The rock ones should break up in the air half the time and not do as mutch damage because their so weak. The metal ones should do more damage than the rock ones and be able to fire more actually.

The powder would be made in an alchemists workshop out of Saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur. Saltpeter can be made via potash, among other methods.  Charcoal already occurs in the game, and sulfur should be found near the magma river.

The powder and the shot would be made into packets in the clothes workshop. You could make ten packets out of a single piece of fabric. The packets would be kept in a pouch able to hold 30 packets. If the packets got wet they would become useless.

The guns would be assembled at a mechanics workshop and the dwarf who assembles it will get experience in the gunsmith skill. If the maker has a low gunsmith skill the gun should be more prone to break and to missfire. The gun would be made of one block of wood two mechanisms and one barrel and not the one your thinking of, the only thing this barrel will feed you is lead (or talc     ). The barrels would be made at a metal smiths forge and only made of iron or a metal stronger than that.

Now that iv explained the production of guns I'll get into how the dwarves would use them.Any one asigned to use a firearm would pick up a sachle and put packets in it. If a dwarf was off duty with it he would go to the shooting range and practice. They should be able to practice on the same targets archers use. Every shot that hits the target should chip away at it. After about 50 shots the target should break. It should be pretty hard for a dwarf to learn how to use the gun properly. If a dwarf is walking with his gun in his hand or his holster every step should have a chance to missfire.The chance of a missfire should be very small and only happen rarely,the chance would increase or decrease depending on the guns quality level. If a gun missfires a bullet will either fly in what ever direction the person was walking in,giving an amount of damage to what ever it his including other dwarves, or shoot the person in the foot.

As the gun is fired over and over it starts to get dirty. Eventually it should make it less acurate or less deadly. As well as getting dirty the pieces should also start to get weaker until they finally break. If the pieces are high quiality they shouldnt get broken as fast.  The mechanics workshop should have a job called "clean firearms" where every gun that is dirty gets sent to the shop to get cleaned. There should also be a "repair firearms" button that does the same only replaces any broken piece.

Lets see...am I forgetting anything? Ah yes I haven't covered explosive mining yet.

You should be able to take a barrel of gun powder and set a timer on it with mechanisms. The barrel would be fitted with two mechanisms in the mechanics workshop. If the barrel was made with bad quiality items or was put together badly there should be a chance that every step a dwarf takes moving the thing would blow it up. After one of your dwarves puts the barrel where you built it(it gets built like a statue)there should be a task like a lever that you could set where a dwarf walks up to the bomb and sets it to explode. After its been armed it cant be stopped. it would give you enough time for your dwarves to get away. When it explodes it should blast away about 7 tiles in each direction. Any ore or rocks closer than 3 tiles to the bomb should explode but any rock farther than that should just get pushed back. It should also shoot fire out, maybe about 10 or 11 tiles. As for using it in traps I don't care either way seeing as i probly wont use it as a trap even if it was in.

Yep I think thats all i wanted to say.

-edit- Oh wow maby I should have started a whole new topic. This block of text is huge

[ October 08, 2007: Message edited by: FlamingKittenMittin ]

[Anti-Paragon]

I'll keep my stance short and sweet.

Gunpowder is way too human. It would blow out large chunks of stone, rendering it unusable, and is a just plain wimpy way to mine. A real dwarf would coat his teeth in adamentine and bite his way into a mountain. But since that's not possible, they have to settle with picks.

So there. Nyah.

[The Menacer]

I say screw firearms in dwarf fortress short of 12th century hand cannons such as the Chinese used.  Pretty much just a bronze or iron tube with a bullet and some gunpowder in it.  Wildly inaccurate, hard to reload, but capable of blowing some awfully big holes in anything you managed to hit, whether or not it was wearing armor.  What we definitely need though is explosives.  Launching explosive barrels via catapult, mining with explosives (should make for an interesting way to encounter fellow underground civilizations once those are implemented), explosive traps, and giant ornate cannons all seem to capture the sort of "hand you the tools to build something that seems really cool at the time and then dissolves into a horrible pit of despair" spirit that Dwarf Fortress embodies.  Also, something needs to be done with liquid fire.  Putting it in flasks and having dwarves throw them at people would be totally awesome.  Plus imagine this scenario:  

The goblins have managed to sneak into your fortress via an unlocked side-entrance, they're creeping through the dark passageways, happy to have not encountered a single guard.  Is this fortress really so lax in its security?  Suddenly they can make out a single light in the gloom, the size of a candle.  The goblin leading the incursion grins, thinking they've ambushed a dwarf out for a stroll.  Suddenly the light flares into an enormous stream of fire, engulfing the front half of the group.  In the light they make out a dwarf, fully armored, with a barrel strapped to his back.  One of the goblins observes that the barrel has a hose attached to it, and to the hose is attached some kind of nozzle, and the nozzle is in the dwarf's hands, and is pointed at the remaining goblins and *FWOOSH*

Dwarven flamethrowers.  Pretty much as badass as it's possible for anyone or anything to be.

[FlamingKittenMittin]

Ha ha ha that is a wonderfull idea. But still I realy want the ability to run through a human town in adventure mode carying a blunderbuss in both hands diving behind trees while shooting people.

[Fishersalwaysdie]

Just mod it in.

[mickel]

On the topic of what this is, and is not, I'd just like to point out that <leonidas>this is Dwarf Fortress</leonidas>. Whether or not something does and does not fit into Dwarf Fortress does not depend on whether or not it is in Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, Warhammer or Halo.

Personally I think gunpowder and alchemy would be really neat in the game, but I don't think the dwarves should be the masters of it. The dwarves are already the masters of everything else, with the other races being one-dimensional extras in the game. Let the humans be the kings of alchemy, and the dwarves dependent on importing gunpowder and other pre-mixed chemicals from them.

Oh, and for a much more reusable acid trap, I'd use a pit trap with a vat of acid beneath it. All you need is an acid that corrodes goblins but not metals. Once the acid is used up or the vat full of whatever didn't get corroded to nothing, you can empty it and refill it.

[jester]

the dwarves do have the stuff to be able to make a basic gunpowder type stuff but why not have them still up pure alcohol, it burns like crazy and you can whip it up from gear from the glassworks. The odd unhappy dwarf could get hold of it and down half a barrel before passing out. Molitovs would be very nasty in the fortress corridors when the dwarves learn to stop drop and roll.  it could also be used in lamps, to disinfect wounds or rooms, and as a medical knockout drop.  sugar is something that also goes into some of the really old chinese rocket powders (they didnt have gunpowder for ages, they used stone grenades, exploding rockets that were inaccurate but scary as hell and big stone mines with long fuses).

limestone and shells from oysters can be burned to make lime, this can be damn nasty stuff, making it is slaves work because it eats at your lungs and kills the people making it, it also eats at your skin if it stays on to long.
I burned the skin of the tips of my fingers working with this stuff in cement. chemical burns are not fun.
Historicaly people have liked to tip barrels of this stuff off castles so the wind blows it onto attacking troops, blinding them. Lime is a base.
Lye is another savage base (as seen in fight club) bases are the opposites of acids and they can be just as nasty.

water + refuse = bioweapon
dog poo and old urine is apparently the best stuff for tanning.
creosote is found in chimmneys and keeps bugs away
vineger is actully a fairly strong acid, pour it on hot metal and it makes you cough and gasp. It is also good for scrubbing of rust and shining armour. The dwarves have the gear to make vineger.
Milk the skunks! the dwarves need elephant deterant!
lots of animal bits can be used for odd things like detergents
many plants can be used in poisons of medicines if you can extract the good/bad stuff with alcol, water, heat/cold etc. People have known about this since the stone ages. Then if you add knowledge of acids and bases and piles of plants and minerals you can get just about anything, how smart are the dwarves?

[Armok]

*looks innocent*
What happens if you mix the alcohol whit liquid fire from the firesnakes and a little bit of sulfur?
*tries to keep looking innocent but can't hide a sadistic smile*

[Lightning4]

Armok brew! It'll burn a hole in your gut... literally!