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[Seraphim342]

Lol, Possum beat me to it. 

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Bozhemoi.

This looks amazing, though.  Nothing like exploding grizzly bears with the power of Poseidon. 

[Urist Da Vinci]

I tried to explode some forgotten beasts with the cannon, but apparently they are too massive. They still take normal injuries and die from repeated cannon hits.

You shouldn't have any trouble exploding anything that weighs less than the water (459 urists). This includes bears, trolls, goblins, kobolds, dwarves, elves, etc. (but not horses). I'm not sure how a trap hallway would be laid out to exploit this effect.

[Itnetlolor]

Is there a chaingun variant of this masterpiece?

[Seraphim342]

Forgot to mention, we figured out in another thread that water launched by minecarts carries contaminants like FB dust.  So if you drop a syndrome-causing FB into your cistern you can have your Wave Motion Cannon also inflict face-rot on anyone who survives the initial water blast.  I'd put in some sort of washdown system from a clean water source if you do this though to make it passable to your dwarves between uses, though...

[QuantumMenace]

For that to work you need the contaminant to stay on the tiles where the carts fill, which can be tricky because of flow. You might need to dunk the carts in a small channel with toxic water before putting them into a magazine.

[Tirion]

Awesome fortress is awesome. It appears to be 40 years old... how long did it take to build the cannon?
Also, how did you get that webber FB to stand in that 1x1 between the bridges?

And strangest of all, how come everyone is legendary in all conversation skills?

[QuantumMenace]

I didn't actually start building the cannon until the fort was at least 20, though it was mapped out almost immediately. Setting up the firing range, multiplying metal, setting up the obsidian casting chamber and forges etc. Then I wanted to make everything masterwork.

I had a door directly to the north of the top bridge, since building destroyers stand 2 tiles from whatever they attack it's easy to trap them like that.

And I had lots of idlers crammed in tiny meeting zones for a long time.

[kero42]

Whoa, good job. I hope I can copy this design one day (once I figure out how to use minecarts properly, and to make fort that dosen't die after 2 years). It's awesome and useful! (also, Symmetry ftw )

[Veylon]

Awesome fortress is awesome. It appears to be 40 years old... how long did it take to build the cannon?

The resource requirements are actually fairly minimal. It's all stone and wood except for the ropes/chains needed for the pulleys. The only really tricky bit of engineering is getting water into the lower level faster than it's drained by the carts. Quantum solved this by siting the thing atop an aquifer. If you don't have a convenient and inexhaustible water supply, you'll have to pump it in from the caverns or fill up a nearby reservoir.

Timewise - setting plumbing requirements aside - it's completely doable to have a single-barrel wave cannon up before the first caravan hits and a full set like (if not quite as pretty as) Quantum's before the end of the second year if you get decent-sized batches of migrants.

[Edit]

Okay, there's another tricky bit of engineering that's not at all obvious from the pictures above. Rollers have to be powered from the side. But, look at the sides. They aren't powered. What has to be done is that the pairs of rollers in each barrel are staggered so they don't quite line up. That way, the power given to one can zig-zag down the whole barrel. The length-four low-power set that take the carts up out of the water thus need to be separately powered.

[gchristopher]

The "low" speed ramp along with water friction regulates the rate of releasing the carts. If you try to make carts release faster, they will pile up at the "barrel" end where the water is shot out and cause a jam. Trying to haul carts away from a pileup on the exploit ramp is dangerous.

I have a slightly off-topic related question. In a 1-dwarf hermit game, I'm using a impulse ramp spiral to raise magma for an extra-large aquifer piercing. Depending on where the magma's being delivered, there are a few choke points where pileups can happen. I suspect magma flow in the loading area is messing up the cart timing a bit, too

Did you ever come up with a good general mechanism for regulated cart release?