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[Tanelorn]

I had a idea a while back, and sadly I was never able to spend the time trying it (job and family), but I am fairly sure it would work and be extremely deadly.

It's an automatic cave in machine 

I'd like your feedback about it? Would it work or not, is it dwarfy ...

Essentially, the machine needs a 1z high corridor with natural floor underneath, a 2z level deep magma tank immediately above the corridor, and either a) a 1z level water tank with bridges as a base immediately above the magma or b)a 1z level water tank operated by a hatch  hatch at least 2 z levels above the magma. This is how I imagine it would work:

The bridges would open and drop the water into the 2z level deep magma tank. The magma turns to obsidian on the top of the tank, and since a) there is no solid under the wall and b) bridge won't support the wall from above,  the obsidian wall will fall.
It will fall through the magma at the bottom of the tank, smash the base of the magma tank, and stop in the corridor (since the corridor has a natural floor).

The magma tank should not leak, because the top of the obsidian wall (now in the corridor) should plug the hole that the wall made as it fell.

That is the cave in part.

To reload, have a miner dig out the obsidian wall in the corridor, and refill the tanks (magma + water).

I reckon the shape of the water tank could be adjusted to have different shapes of cave in.


Do you think this trap would work?

[Necro910]

I had a idea a while back, and sadly I was never able to spend the time trying it (job and family), but I am fairly sure it would work and be extremely deadly.

It's an automatic cave in machine 

I'd like your feedback about it? Would it work or not, is it dwarfy ...

Essentially, the machine needs a 1z high corridor with natural floor underneath, a 2z level deep magma tank immediately above the corridor, and either a) a 1z level water tank with bridges as a base immediately above the magma or b)a 1z level water tank operated by a hatch  hatch at least 2 z levels above the magma. This is how I imagine it would work:

The bridges would open and drop the water into the 2z level deep magma tank. The magma turns to obsidian on the top of the tank, and since a) there is no solid under the wall and b) bridge won't support the wall from above,  the obsidian wall will fall.
It will fall through the magma at the bottom of the tank, smash the base of the magma tank, and stop in the corridor (since the corridor has a natural floor).

The magma tank should not leak, because the top of the obsidian wall (now in the corridor) should plug the hole that the wall made as it fell.

That is the cave in part.

To reload, have a miner dig out the obsidian wall in the corridor, and refill the tanks (magma + water).

I reckon the shape of the water tank could be adjusted to have different shapes of cave in.


Do you think this trap would work?

Not sure. This is a great idea, but we need some !!Science!! done. Tell me immediately, as I am trying to find a way to defeat the forces of Hell.

[Necro910]

Huh... I'd expect this to be popular. I mean, repeatable cave-ins? 

[Reelyanoob]

I had a idea a while back, and sadly I was never able to spend the time trying it (job and family), but I am fairly sure it would work and be extremely deadly.

It's an automatic cave in machine 
[...]

EDIT : I hadn't read you post fully so what I wrote was irrelevant.

Something relevant is - you need a tube which will not "stick" to the obsidian sideways. I was thinking Raising Bridges (in raised position) but they need a floor under the raising part, and these floors will stick to the obsidian block. I'm half-guessing but you'd have to have a 3x3 area of raising bridges in this pattern (numbers indicate each bridge) :-

Code: [Select]

213
213
243
Only bridge#1 would be linked to a control. All bridges would be covered in 2/7 magma. 2/7 water (1/7 maybe ??) would be dispensed onto the middle  of the 3x3 area to create 1x1 Obsidian, and bridge#1 retracted to drop it.

Some additional magma splash would be unavoidable, a number of ways might reduce this, i.e you could have pumps start to pump magma out of the surrounding squares of the magma reservoir when the trap is running, followed by a refilling sequence, once the bridge is back up. I haven't got too far in timing circuits though sorry, this is gleaned from the wiki etc. An easiers way might be to have the trap a couple z-levels higher and the block fall past ledges which should catch most splash.

[Necro910]

I had a idea a while back, and sadly I was never able to spend the time trying it (job and family), but I am fairly sure it would work and be extremely deadly.

It's an automatic cave in machine 
[...]

Automatically casting a new block of obsidian should be possible (with careful timing, maybe water-based), but you'd need a dwarf mechanic to link up the support and pressure plate again each time. The pressure plate may not survive either if right under the falling block, so would have to be rebuilt too.

And you have to dig out the fallen block (only after the support is linked above though or it'd cave in one the miner!)

To make it a viable main system you'd need a bank of the traps (each would be only a single tunnel), and a way to seal entrances into each one so they can be relinked in safety.

If you're going this far though, why not just link the magma hatch to the pressure plate and make a magma trap?

Huh... I'd expect this to be popular. I mean, repeatable cave-ins? 

Actually sounds like the principle behind the Magma Piston, so I'd use that basic repeatable design (but with another Magma source, of course)

Not if it's a lever. If it's a lever, then it can be repeated! A door could be locked on the invader (Steel door vs. slade titan?), then the cave-in would fire. Instant death to all HFS attacks!

[Reelyanoob]

Not if it's a lever. If it's a lever, then it can be repeated! A door could be locked on the invader (Steel door vs. slade titan?), then the cave-in would fire. Instant death to all HFS attacks!

You could use the Hatch-Pressure Plate combo to force invaders to be stuck somewhere. This is great because citizens can path straight in but invaders are blocked without you having to lock a door, or even if you are AFK. I had an FB come across one of these entrances and all he did was break the hatch, sealing himself outside on the other side of the channel.

[Hyndis]

Magma hammer:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=81125.0

No actual screenshots of it in that thread, but its a very simple and highly effective machine. The only hard part about it is that you need to allow the obsidian chunks to fall directly into the magma ocean, so you need either a volcano or a very significant amount of terraforming. Volcano is just easier.

[Tanelorn]

Code: [Select]

213
213
243
Only bridge#1 would be linked to a control. All bridges would be covered in 2/7 magma. 2/7 water (1/7 maybe ??) would be dispensed onto the middle  of the 3x3 area to create 1x1 Obsidian, and bridge#1 retracted to drop it.

Some additional magma splash would be unavoidable, a number of ways might reduce this, i.e you could have pumps start to pump magma out of the surrounding squares of the magma reservoir when the trap is running, followed by a refilling sequence, once the bridge is back up. I haven't got too far in timing circuits though sorry, this is gleaned from the wiki etc. An easiers way might be to have the trap a couple z-levels higher and the block fall past ledges which should catch most splash.

This is close to the setup I had in mind for the smallest cave in size, using drawbridges.

Two differences for what I was thinking:
- I would use raising drawbridges, so that the entire 3x3 water tank is filled with water, and the raising bridges (all linked to the same lever) would atom smash the water on all the tiles except the central one. There would be nothing to support the obsidian, and the fall will be guaranteed.
- I would make the tank bigger: bigger tank = bigger cave in. And as above, the sides of the tank would atom smash the water.  For example, with a 5x5 tank:

Code: [Select]

21113
21113
21113
21113
44444

where bridge 2 raises to the left, 1 raises to the top, 3 to the right and 4 to the bottom. The central 3x3 would turn to obsidian and cave in

[Flare]

Sounds a lot like dwarven machine gun, except with a lot of maintenance that needs to be done after each shooting. Just dig a straight channel right into the magma sea and let loose the obsidian boulders. The dust will still have the same exploding effect around the hole, it will also blast up a lot of magma vapor for you too.

[Hyndis]

Sounds a lot like dwarven machine gun, except with a lot of maintenance that needs to be done after each shooting. Just dig a straight channel right into the magma sea and let loose the obsidian boulders. The dust will still have the same exploding effect around the hole, it will also blast up a lot of magma vapor for you too.

Thats the magma hammer.

The water source can be provided by vertically stacked pond zones and a bucket brigade, or via a system of pumps to trickle water onto the surface of the magma. So long as the target tile is not adjacent to the walkway it will instantly collapse, and the resulting explosion will kill anything within the blast radius.

[Flare]

Sounds a lot like dwarven machine gun, except with a lot of maintenance that needs to be done after each shooting. Just dig a straight channel right into the magma sea and let loose the obsidian boulders. The dust will still have the same exploding effect around the hole, it will also blast up a lot of magma vapor for you too.

Thats the magma hammer.

The water source can be provided by vertically stacked pond zones and a bucket brigade, or via a system of pumps to trickle water onto the surface of the magma. So long as the target tile is not adjacent to the walkway it will instantly collapse, and the resulting explosion will kill anything within the blast radius.

Actually, I think the term dwarven machine gun might have come first:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I built this mainly to test the effects of cave-in dust.

Veshstal, "Dustbuster"

[spoiler]Floor 0

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor -1

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor -2

On Floor 0, those are 1x1 bridges to either side of the center gap, currently covered by 1/7 water or magma. The X's to the north and south are floodgates, made to float without a floor by constructing a wall on the z-level below to make a temporary floor. This allows the fluid to be funneled into the center tile of the shaft without providing a support for the obsidian block.

Both water and magma are pressurized, but have limited flow from their source. The diagonal choke may be unnecessary. If you have a lot of flow, it might risk pushing one of the fluids across the gap and jamming it.

Most of the time the block would form at level -1 (or at least that's where it zooms to). I never saw it form at level 0.

My shaft went around the magma sea, straight to the semi-molten rock. (expose the magma flow tiles by digging down staircases and then channeling them out.) For some reason it started filling with magma some time after I finished digging it out, possibly because it was in the same embark square as my magma pipe.

The results from my test chamber:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Sometimes the horse wouldn't show up on "view". Going to the units list and zooming to its position showed it to be above the floor. So it would appear that cave-in dust causes injury by flinging units upwards, which I think even drawbridges can't do.


On using this against HFS, you could line the sides of the shaft with 1x1 raised drawbridges made to float by the wall-removal method. This will force them to fly up directly in the path of the block (unless they can destroy drawbridges, use magma-safe materials in case they can be ruined by superheated ones).

Since obsidian is technically a glass, maybe this could be called a glass cannon 

[boyhowdy]

I hate to be a downer, especially because I really want this to work, but I think there's an issue you've overlooked.  Specifically, the floor of the magma tank.

I assume from the description that in the initial set up it is made out of constructed floors that will get smashed by the falling obsidian.  Once you've triggered the trap, you have to get that floor back.  Assuming the obsidian coalescing on the corridor z-level leaves a floor above it when it's mined back out by your dorf (as opposed to removing a constructed wall with empty space above it), you've now got a natural floor that is impervious to cave-ins.  If it doesn't, the lucky miner is going to get a magma shower from the left overs in the tank.

[Hyndis]

Thats the point of the magma hammer. The obsidian falls directly into the magma ocean, right onto magma covered semi molten rock. Any free falling object vanishes from the game, which means the trap automatically resets itself. No cleanup required.

If you're using a volcano it will automatically refill itself to the correct level (you will need drainage off the edge of the map at -1 Z levels to the walkway) and so the rate of fire of the magma hammer is limited only by how fast you can dump water onto the surface of the magma.

Use 4-5 vertically stacked pond zones, all dropping water onto the same empty space, with a water source only a few steps away. You will be able to fire very quickly, with no reloading needed.

[Vandersleld]

I believe that the first mention of a Dwarven Machine Gun can be found here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=78399.msg2026665#msg2026665

Since pumps can be built so that the non-walkable part is hanging, and since obsidian doesn't stick to pumps, this device creates a continuous stream of blocks, dust, magma mist, and magma. To prevent jamming, you'd have to build it with a direct path to SMR. For this reason, it's best suited for smashing flying things coming vertically from below, like clowns. In any other application, like goblin-smashing, the dust would do most of the work, unless you found a way to make a pathable floor that doesn't get destroyed by cave-ins. I suppose that ou could take advantage of the displaced magma by building it under a magma-safe floor grate. I shall put more thought into this weapon, as it would be as blindingly fast as deadly. Hm...