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[Andeerz]

Pointless?  How so?  Enlighten me.

But I think I know what you mean though about knowledge being the only limiting reagent in the case of DF, and not real life.  My previous point was little more than a bit of speculation using an example from real life to point out that maybe perhaps if things in DF were sufficiently realistic (and they are not right now), maybe the other reagents in addition to knowledge that were involved in plate armor tech and possibly steam power (again, speculation) would actually be a factor.  As things are in DF right now, I agree, knowledge is essentially the only limiting reagent. 

Also, for what it's worth, knowledge of steam power was probably not widely known prior to its practical development in the 1600's, and knowing is half the battle...

[G-Flex]

Why is universe-player discontinuity a problem? Do you mean to say that we all know the world better than the characters we're role-playing?

Yes, in the sense that we can look up how to create freaking electricity and aluminum and steam engines and assembly lines with automated equipment, yeah, we do. We definitely do to the degree that the DF universe works by the same (assumed) rules as ours, which, to a large degree, it does.

In DF we're role-playing Armok, the god of blood.

No, we're not. This has never been the case, implicitly or explicitly. I won't go into Toady's analysis of the subject further in this post, but it should suffice to say that you either made that up or heard it as a repeated rumor.

These anomalies can easily be explained away like the artifacts are. You're a god who posessed your hundred dwarves to make an artifact power plant.

No. You're not.

I think that you're not considering the whole picture either. The difficulty of achieving a task should also factor into the decision of including a task. Face it, mega-projects are fun. Mega-projects that do retardedly awesome things are more fun. Making retardedly awesome mega-projects in DF is loads of fun and is definitely one of the main attractions of the game mode.

That has nothing to do with it. Something being hard for your dwarves to do is very different from your dwarves doing something they simply do not even have the slightest inkling of how to accomplish in the first place, in theory or in practice.

On the other hand, when you start modeling things really well, you also simulate many of the very things that made building a power plant back in the day near impossible anyway, i.e. the requirement of having the necessary infrastructure and economic base to build the stuff and implement the technology.

This is true, to some degree, but sometimes it mostly is just an issue of knowledge, and often getting that knowledge itself requires new conditions to arise, even if that knowledge would allow you to create examples of the technology using the same exact resources your ancestors had. I mean, given late medieval resources and technology, and some out-of-universe knowledge, it's not really that infeasible for a guy to create a fairly basic electric generator. The biggest thing stopping them is the knowledge, which only came after there came an impetus for the development of that sort of thing in the first place. The same goes for a lot of advanced chemistry.

[Andeerz]

This is true, to some degree, but sometimes it mostly is just an issue of knowledge, and often getting that knowledge itself requires new conditions to arise, even if that knowledge would allow you to create examples of the technology using the same exact resources your ancestors had. I mean, given late medieval resources and technology, and some out-of-universe knowledge, it's not really that infeasible for a guy to create a fairly basic electric generator. The biggest thing stopping them is the knowledge, which only came after there came an impetus for the development of that sort of thing in the first place. The same goes for a lot of advanced chemistry.

Well put!  I agree.  I just wanted to point out that maybe (as I'm not qualified to say with certainty) the steam power thing could have been one of those situations where knowledge wasn't the limiting factor back in the time of the aeolipile.  I didn't mean to say anything as definite, and with regard to the electric power plant, I was just playing devil's advocate.  :3

[JohnieRWilkins]

Why is universe-player discontinuity a problem? Do you mean to say that we all know the world better than the characters we're role-playing?

Yes, in the sense that we can look up how to create freaking electricity and aluminum and steam engines and assembly lines with automated equipment, yeah, we do. We definitely do to the degree that the DF universe works by the same (assumed) rules as ours, which, to a large degree, it does.

That wasn't as much a real question as much as it was an argument against role-playing lesser people in a realistic world. I know how to logically reach a stated solution with given resources - but I don't??

In DF we're role-playing Armok, the god of blood.

No, we're not. This has never been the case, implicitly or explicitly. I won't go into Toady's analysis of the subject further in this post, but it should suffice to say that you either made that up or heard it as a repeated rumor.

These anomalies can easily be explained away like the artifacts are. You're a god who posessed your hundred dwarves to make an artifact power plant.

No. You're not.

Wait, what are you supposed to be in fortress mode? This is an important question. If you can't answer that, then you can't make any appeals to role-playing your character. Which means that you shouldn't be limited by your character's knowledge. Which means that you really have no argument against awesome modern-knowledge fueled mega-projects.

I think that you're not considering the whole picture either. The difficulty of achieving a task should also factor into the decision of including a task. Face it, mega-projects are fun. Mega-projects that do retardedly awesome things are more fun. Making retardedly awesome mega-projects in DF is loads of fun and is definitely one of the main attractions of the game mode.

That has nothing to do with it. Something being hard for your dwarves to do is very different from your dwarves doing something they simply do not even have the slightest inkling of how to accomplish in the first place, in theory or in practice.

They know how to build a wall. They know how to build a wheel. They know how to build a copper chain. What they don't know is how to put the three together in such a way as to create  SCIENCE That's your job in DF.




P.S: I'm not actually advocating electricity or electricity generators, even though that would be fairly cool. Everything I'm advocating- dwarves would be able to build with their knowledge, applied to steam from other fields they are comfortable with, such as mining, water heating, and water-wheel construction. Those are the only three things they'd need to make steam-power feasible.

Ok here's an example of a simple device you could make, if steam was a modeled flow with a pressure value:

3x3 cistern: (vertical cross-section)

Code: [Select]

▓▓▓▓▓
-═-▓▓
▓▓-▓▓
▓▓¢▓▓
▓XXX▓
▓666▓
▓777▓
▓▓!▓▓= is the water wheel
X is steam
! is a heated square (probably a metal touching the magma river below, or your coal furnace on your HFSclad)

1 unit of water should generate several units of steam, so it should naturally become pressurized. Opening the hatch cover would release the steam up the tube and onto the water wheel. This would give your goblin-grinder on the other side of the wall a large burst of power.

[G-Flex]

Wait, what are you supposed to be in fortress mode? This is an important question. If you can't answer that, then you can't make any appeals to role-playing your character. Which means that you shouldn't be limited by your character's knowledge. Which means that you really have no argument against awesome modern-knowledge fueled mega-projects.

As far as I've been able to tell from induction and from what Toady has said himself, you represent the will of the fortress in an official capacity. You represent, in a way, the official decisions that are being made by the guys in charge, one way or another. In other words, you're not any specific dwarf in the fortress, but you're also not anything external to the fortress either. You are, in a sense, the bureaucracy within the fortress.

They know how to build a wall. They know how to build a wheel. They know how to build a copper chain. What they don't know is how to put the three together in such a way as to create  SCIENCE That's your job in DF.

This was all true up until the last sentence, which you pulled out of thin air. Why is that that "our job", exactly? When I play the game, I certainly don't consider it my job to exploit the system to make decisions for the fortress for which the requisite knowledge/ability doesn't actually exist in the game.

P.S: I'm not actually advocating electricity or electricity generators, even though that would be fairly cool. Everything I'm advocating- dwarves would be able to build with their knowledge, applied to steam from other fields they are comfortable with, such as mining, water heating, and water-wheel construction. Those are the only three things they'd need to make steam-power feasible.

That bit I quoted from that article goes into this. It's about things like a knowledge of how gasses and pressure and forces work, which aren't things you can necessarily count on. It requires much more advanced knowledge than "you can boil water and the steam can move around and maybe push something".

1 unit of water should generate several units of steam, so it should naturally become pressurized. Opening the hatch cover would release the steam up the tube and onto the water wheel. This would give your goblin-grinder on the other side of the wall a large burst of power.

You might be seriously underestimating the amount of pressure that would be necessary to do something like that, and actually controlling that process would be difficult.

[Squirrelloid]

I am going to agree with the 'knowledge was not the limiting factor'.

Historically, the aeolipile proves steam can cause stuff to move.  Hell, it even proves steam can cause rotary motion.  So knowledge isn't an issue - we know people before 1400 knew steam could cause stuff to move.

Historically, one of the major limitations in developing commercial steam power was making a boiler that wouldn't explode.  That's not a problem when you carve the open space for the boiler out of solid rock.  Heck, dwarves are super-awesome at metallurgy and metalsmithing, ie, beyond 1400 technology levels, so even building a plausible boiler isn't too unreasonable.  But the solid rock boiler is enough to justify being able to do something with steam.

And generating enough heat?  We harness fricking magma!  Much more efficient than any real-world boiler heating system.

So not only do we historically have the right knowledge, DF gives us the tools to avoid the historical problems.

[G-Flex]

Historically, the aeolipile proves steam can cause stuff to move.  Hell, it even proves steam can cause rotary motion.  So knowledge isn't an issue - we know people before 1400 knew steam could cause stuff to move.

What? It proves that it can cause itself to move. I've already addressed that point anyway, as has the author of the article you showed me yourself. Knowing that steam can create some kind of mechanical force is not the same as knowing enough about gasses/pressure/mechanics to make a working, functional high-pressure steam engine.

Historically, one of the major limitations in developing commercial steam power was making a boiler that wouldn't explode.  That's not a problem when you carve the open space for the boiler out of solid rock.

Okay, sure, if it has no openings whatsoever, but the weak points aren't going to be in those solid parts, it's going to be in whatever openings you have, of which there will be two at the bare minimum.

Also, if you're not talking about carving it out of solid, natural rock, consider that rock is actually sometimes quite easy to fracture.

So not only do we historically have the right knowledge, DF gives us the tools to avoid the historical problems.

No we don't. Read the other posts in the thread.

[Lord Darkstar]

Historically speaking, the old world used HYDRO power with just a bit of steam thrown in to create pressure activated devices. The Great Light House is written as having steam whistles, as did other, lesser constructs. Several recorded automatons used steam power in there functioning. But it was just easier for them to use water power (particularly water wheels), so that's what they primarily used. The romans used ASSEMBLY LINE processes and automated work to create the bread they feed their population with, for instance. The Chinese used water power to automate just about everything we did in the early industrial age (food, weaving, metal pounding and shaping, etc). The Chinese also had steam whistles and steam toys for the elite. But they didn't take it a step further, because they had the manpower, as well as the water power, to spare.

Dwarves MIGHT actually use steam power--- as a power source to pump water out of their mines due to the SCARCITY of physical labor. That's what the first steam engines were used for, and then civilization got ideas about using that system for other things, like driving boats on the water. However, so long as there is wind, dwarves are more likely to use windmills. However, with magma around, dwarves should be able to route water near the magma and create steam to do things with (ie, use pipes made of magma safe material, route water through the pipes near (adjacent to) magma, have mechanisms to transfer power from steam to cogs and go from there, etc. It could easily be done inside Dwarf Fortress. The question is, should it?

Steam does provide for the FUN that we are so well acquanted with. Exploding steam pipes detonating in your fortress, or having water pour on magma creating explosive steam cloud that boils and explodes all in its path. Great tragic story potential. But is it that worth it to drag down the computer processing our fortresses? Perhaps in 5 or 10 years, when another couple of generations of processors have rolled along, DF will be able to model all of that without causing us to live with 5 or 10 FPS as soon as we get "steam" to be processed.

[Squirrelloid]

G-Flex, if you actually checked out the Heron works, you know, the ones from Roman times, you'll see steam used in other applications where it actually causes stuff to move.  Its simply that only the aeolipile qualifies as an *engine*.  But using steam to move stuff?  Yeah, they knew that.

[G-Flex]

I did a small amount of research, and everything I've found is strictly mechanical/hydraulic in nature.

He had one device to open a temple door by heating water such that it rose and collected elsewhere, but that's quite dissimilar from anything I'd call "steam power".

[Lord Darkstar]

You know, a steam trap would be awesome. Boil those armored goblins/humans/dwarves in their armor whole! But we'd need piping for that to work. And the amount of friendlies it could hit because they run in to grab the dead dwarvenoids stuff, and the enemy is still present and triggering death would just be awesome FUN. As would having the pipes get too much pressure and blowing up along the plumping, detonating like large bombs in your fortress.

When is piping/plumbing coming along? That isn't a top 10 is it? Or will it be included in the "better mechanisms and such" work?