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[Tierre]

There were no muskets before 1521 so your mod is too technically advanced.

As for steam power - too advanced too:( So only simple cannons (bombards which can blow to air during fire - !!FUN!!) and simplest arquebuses that were invented right at that time - they were efective against armor only at close range so not game breaking at all.

[JohnieRWilkins]

I'm going to hijack this thread to pose this question:

Is it feasible (it's definitely possible, but is it practical?) to use steam to transfer water up zlevels rather than pumping it? The way I see it, giant pump stacks break the tech limit. How would someone with a big beard and a crude hammer get machine tolerances good enough to create vacuum seals?

It'd take huge quantities of energy, using coal, and several heating elements arranged up the pipe to maintain dryness of steam, and a condenser, using a small water reservoir, to help steam condense wherever you want it.

If it's practical, then there's finally an excuse to put steam into the game.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

There were no muskets before 1521 so your mod is too technically advanced.

As for steam power - too advanced too:( So only simple cannons (bombards which can blow to air during fire - !!FUN!!) and simplest arquebuses that were invented right at that time - they were efective against armor only at close range so not game breaking at all.

Muskets were already an advancement of the firearm.
Go for the Arquebus for the older version. In use in the 15th century. So still iffy.
Handcannons on the other hand were in use in the 14th late-century.

[Andeerz]

...and frikkin' siege cannons no later than 1360!!! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon#Islamic_world)

I could envision a quite dwarfy siege involving the on-site construction of a multi-piece bombard (something like the Great Turkish Bombard) made of bronze or stone facing an enemy establishment... then the firing of the bombard and the resultant destruction of large chunks of walls or gates from a safe distance.

Perhaps they could even be built offsite and fire from a mile away! 

Maybe this post belongs in a different thread...

[NW_Kohaku]

I'm going to hijack this thread to pose this question:

Is it feasible (it's definitely possible, but is it practical?) to use steam to transfer water up zlevels rather than pumping it? The way I see it, giant pump stacks break the tech limit. How would someone with a big beard and a crude hammer get machine tolerances good enough to create vacuum seals?

It'd take huge quantities of energy, using coal, and several heating elements arranged up the pipe to maintain dryness of steam, and a condenser, using a small water reservoir, to help steam condense wherever you want it.

If it's practical, then there's finally an excuse to put steam into the game.

If you were living in a cave, it's possible, but hardly efficient to do that.

What you are describing is almost the same thing as current Desalination processes - you just boil the water, and collect the steam elsewhere so that you get saltless water. 

The thing is that (A) water takes a lot of energy to get to a boil, so boiling large quantities of water takes tremendous amounts of energy.  This is why large-scale desalination is not terribly feasible even today.  Further, (B) steam is going to conduct heat into the surrounding walls as it is being taken away - that may be a lot of stone, which can conduct a lot of heat, which will waste even more of your energy as that steam boils away. 

(Of course, if we have magic magma as an infinite energy source that never depletes and never kills dwarves working just a couple inches away from it with heat or poisonous gasses, then screw realistic limits on energy! Geothermal all day long!)

Of course, the vacuum seals are kind of impossible, as well, but those Archemedes screws were originally used to keep boats from filling up with water faster than the screws could pump that water out.  Pump stacks like how we use them are not quite possible, but not quite something that breaks all realism - at least, until you get to how easy it is to power those mechanisms.  (Waterwheels that are infinitely efficient producers of energy.)

[JohnieRWilkins]

Stones offer exceptional insulation actually. Maybe it depends on the type of stone? (space shuttle re-entry heatshields are ceramics)

Magma is definitely a good solution to the energy problem. Run a nickel heat exchanger from the magma sea up to your water reservoir, and into a chimney leading up to your destination z-coordinate, fitted with a surface condenser. I think this is a far better solution to getting water up zlevels than pumping it. It's one dwarves ought to have thought of!

[JohnieRWilkins]

Here's a helpful illustration:

Let's say that the nickel heat exchanger is a solid column of nickel with a footprint of 1square and it's insulated on 3 sides. The chimney is likely a metal pipe that runs in parallel and in contact with the nickel column. There may be a need to place a fuel furnace inside of the nickel column some way up to maintain heat in the entire column. A player may also want a steam turbine at the top of the pipe to recycle some of the energy in the form of mechanical work.


The beauty of all of this is that it can run at near standard pressure using good ol' superheated steam. More realistic than pump stack?

[10ebbor10]

Most of the steam would float out via the well or not condensate (fast enough) because of the influx of more heat. Besides a pump stack is really possible, though it won't work that fast. Sadly I can't draw so no illustration of that.

[NW_Kohaku]

It seems mechanically sound, although you'd need to introduce the concept of heat conduction, since, you know, you can make wooden chambers contain magma. 

The thing about losses to stone, by the way, was not about stone conducting heat very well so much as it was about how you'd be passing by quite a lot of it, and the fact that it can continuously sink heat nigh infinitely, just adding to the amount of energy inefficiency, which would only matter in a finite source of energy like coke. 

For magma, you just need to have the ability for that heat exchanger to actually transfer enough of that heat the whole distance of the way from magma to the top of the chimney. 

I would think you'd eventually cause some of the magma around that heat exchanger to cool into a solid stone like obsidian or basalt, however, as you'd be purpoesfully trying to rapidly transfer heat from the magma to the water.  When that happened, you'd have the opposite problem that the cooled off stone isn't as good at conducting heat into your heat exchanger as you'd like. 

[JohnieRWilkins]

Most of the steam would float out via the well or not condensate (fast enough) because of the influx of more heat. Besides a pump stack is really possible, though it won't work that fast. Sadly I can't draw so no illustration of that.

Bigger reservoir would solve the problem I think. I can totally see how a pump stack would work if there's no back-pressure on the rising water. Like if you're filling tubs. I dig that. Here's a very crude image of how it is feasible:



The current simulation is nothing like this though. Also, steam is more awesome in general. (Turbines. New use for furnaces.)

This suggestion would of course require sensible (pun!) steam properties and proper heat transfer. While the pump solution would require only a tweak to leave pumps as open channels to backpressure water, reduce their pump rate, and create a new construction that resembles my crudely drawn tubs.

[Sadrice]

I'm going to hijack this thread to pose this question:

Is it feasible (it's definitely possible, but is it practical?) to use steam to transfer water up zlevels rather than pumping it? The way I see it, giant pump stacks break the tech limit. How would someone with a big beard and a crude hammer get machine tolerances good enough to create vacuum seals?

It's actually pretty easy.  DF pumps are archimedes screws, which don't need a very good seal, and were used in stacks to drain mines by ancient people.  When the reverse overshot waterwheel was invented (probably by the romans), those were used in stacks instead.  Here's a pumpstack from the rio tinto mines that lifted water 96 feet in the roman era:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[JohnieRWilkins]

So a proper way to handle pumps would then require the pumps to shut down after they're submerged under a certain height of water. (ex: 4/7 water)

I still think steam is an elegant solution that belongs in DF.