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[Whackjob]

Just a brief question.  Let's say I have a wood barrel that is not fireproof.  I fill it with high quality Dwarven hooch.  I place this barrel on the end of a long, lifting drawbridge.  I pull the switch. 

Will the barrel detonate on impact?  How far must a barrel fall before it'll boom, if at all?  If not, can barrels burn for a time before the booze ignites and detonates?  If so, what is a reliable method for igniting them that doesn't require lava?  This is something I want to do en masse. 

Additionally, while I'm doing my neophytic query barrage, I might as well check some other things.  Does the length of the drawbridge determine the firing arc of the barrel?  Would a one-length drawbridge fire the item directly up?  It might be fun to set a trap that'll dump an enemy down a pit, only to have him met halfway down by a burning barrel of acid or something.  Plus spikes at the bottom.  Triple fun!

#EDIT:  Can a spike trap be placed on a ceiling?  I get a happy thought from visualizing a kobold scarf thief being rocketed into the air and impaled on spikes in the ceiling.  Like a really macabre chandelier of death and misery and supreme dwarfnessness.

Just a brief question.

Ahaha!  In retrospect, I am a liar.

[Deepblade]

As I've kept my booze away from magma I don't know for certain, but I don't think alcohol is capable of exploding currently.
Drawbridges move things a few spaces, I don't think they actually "shoot" stuff. Also, nothing can be placed on a ceiling currently. I like to pretend that it's full of cave moss for illuminating my fortress.

[Whackjob]

Hrm.  I was hoping the angle of the barrel's flight path would be determined by its distance to the fulcrum for the bridge.  Ah well.

So that trap idea won't work.  But there's others.  And I still gotta find a reliable barrel ignition method.  If I break a ton of barrels of ale open in a room, and use a screw pump made out of soap to spray it out, and then ignite it, would I have napalm?

[Button]

For barrel ignition, I bet you could use a magma mist generator.

Place the barrel next to a shallow pit of magma. Above the magma, build a retracting bridge, and put rocks on it. Pull lever, rocks drop off bridge and into magma, generating lovely magma mist.

[Deepblade]

Only 2 liquids actually exist right now, magma and water. You can get various liquids in barrels, including blood from merchants,, but out in the open there are no others unless it's mixed into water as a contaminant.

[Suoli]

I'm almost completely certain that alcohol barrels don't explode on impact. As for lighting them up, your options are:
1) magma
2) trapping a firebreathing/throwing creature and building an elaborate ignition chamber.

Drawbridges don't work for your plans at all. They're pretty much completely random when it comes to firing things. What you want here is a minecart cannon. Do a search on this forum or look at the Goblin Space Program if you don't know how to build one. I personally think the impulse ramp-variant is the easiest to understand and build.

Mind you, I'm not sure if the barrels would actually explode under any conditions, even if you ignite them. I do wonder what happens if you try to douse a goblin with alcohol by launching a barrel out of a minecart, though. Next steps:
1) cage the alcohol marinated goblin
2) capture a fire man and place it in a pillbox
3) load the goblin cage into an upward firing minecart cannon
4) shoot skeet with fireballs and highly flammable goblins.

[Whackjob]

I call it the "Minecart Shotgun".  Yeah, I'm familiar with the concept, though I really need to sit down one day and come up with a good self contained design using minecart rollers, a water wheel, and a pump in a self-contained and self powered design.

I just wanted to do something different, really.  Though I suppose I could just load up the cart full of serrated discs and fire it.  That'd be fun.

[BoredVirulence]

Well, after a quick test run of droping magma in my drink stockpile, barrels can "explode." You get a small plume of boiling dwarven rum! But if you use rock pots, alas, they don't seem to explode. So my drink stockpile just melted dwarves, only had 1 small explosion from a wooden barrel that was left over.

I'll test again to see if I can get something better.

[Suoli]

Well, after a quick test run of droping magma in my drink stockpile, barrels can "explode." You get a small plume of boiling dwarven rum! But if you use rock pots, alas, they don't seem to explode. So my drink stockpile just melted dwarves, only had 1 small explosion from a wooden barrel that was left over.

I'll test again to see if I can get something better.

So the rum didn't actually ignite? Do other liquids (milk, lye etc.) behave the same way?

[Button]

Well, after a quick test run of droping magma in my drink stockpile, barrels can "explode." You get a small plume of boiling dwarven rum! But if you use rock pots, alas, they don't seem to explode. So my drink stockpile just melted dwarves, only had 1 small explosion from a wooden barrel that was left over.

I'll test again to see if I can get something better.

So the rum didn't actually ignite? Do other liquids (milk, lye etc.) behave the same way?

Oh Armok

boiling giant cave spider venom

[Whackjob]

Try igniting a dumped stack of, say, 10 wooden barrels of whiskey.  I think this may do it.

[Solon64]

I don't think barrels explode.

Which is a crying shame, because I've long held a dream of launching barrels of Plague Fluid (masterwork mod) at goblin seigers and watching them scream in agony as their everything melts.

Seriously. Look at the raws for the Plague Beast's Plague Fluid. The syndrome is... my Armok, if anything were ever TOO dwarfy, that'd be it.

When Toady codes in barrels that can be launched from catapults and explode on contact, I'm recreating the battle at the Wrathgate from WoW.

[Oaktree]

I call it the "Minecart Shotgun".  Yeah, I'm familiar with the concept, though I really need to sit down one day and come up with a good self contained design using minecart rollers, a water wheel, and a pump in a self-contained and self powered design.

I just wanted to do something different, really.  Though I suppose I could just load up the cart full of serrated discs and fire it.  That'd be fun.

I had a few forts that used shotguns as part of the defense works.  I fired a mix of serrated disks, spears, and spiked balls (all copper).  Usually only a 10-20% cart load - about forty items.  I just had a hatch system to allow myself to fire 4-5 of them in quick succession.  I preferred multiple small shots since I discovered that a goblin early in the path could stop 20-30 of the items for a massive overkill while leaving goblins further back unharmed.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Alcohol doesn't explode, it simply boils and pleasantly/harmlessly mists people in warm alcohol vapors. The burning wood barrel does more damage.

[Larix]

If i read the raws correctly (not very likely, but possible), alcohol _does_ have a temperature at which it ignites. It's listed as 10800 °Urist, which should be... about 450°C, i think. Since the ignite point is much higher than the condensation temperature and gaseous materials dissipate in a cloud of steam/vapour almost instantly, it might be difficult to actually get it to ignite. And tt would probably still just burn and not explode.