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[Cattani]

I fucked up their woods and now they're pissed. I feel sorry and want to compensate.

My idea was building a hatch with tons of mugs over their heads, for dropping. Afterwards, I would open the caldera floodgate so they can feast on boiling water tea, the best quality. I even put some quarry bush leaves in it for flavor!
Problem is, I'm planning on doing this on a freezing biome. Does anyone knows if water can freeze in mid-air, forming a rain if icicles on them, or would it freeze just as it touches the ground, encasing them in ice?
Not that I'm trying to harm our oh-so-peaceful neighbors, you know? Just so i know how to kill them in the most entertaining fashion how to give them the best tea party ever.

[wierd]

quantum stockpiles of boulders on top of a retracting bridge over their heads would work.

Pitting them with captured goblins in a big hole in the ground can be effective as well, but zombies work better.

[notquitethere]

I'm interested in seeing how death-by-mugs works out.

[wierd]

For maximal efficacy, one would need to make the mugs very heavy, and also ensure large numbers of them are dropped. 2 or 3 z level drop using a quantum dump may be sufficient, hard to say.  Death by Item* can be hit and miss. Fluffy wamblers are notorious for being deadly when thrown/dropped, for instance.  typically though things trend toward lethality. Much research was done to find nonlethal objects for coinstars.

I am more apt to suggest DwarvenSizing their tea servings however, and suggest dropping whole BARRELS on them.

[Tonguetyd]

Problem is, I'm planning on doing this on a freezing biome. Does anyone knows if water can freeze in mid-air, forming a rain if icicles on them, or would it freeze just as it touches the ground, encasing them in ice?

Yay, Ice Tea!!

[GavJ]

Does anyone knows if water can freeze in mid-air, forming a rain if icicles on them

In between those two: If you shoot pressurized water out of a cliff, it will usually freeze about 15 or so blocks in a sort of horizontal spike before the ice stops more water from coming out. None of it falls, because it's all stuck to itself all the way back to the opening (this happens even with cisterns that would normally shoot out hundreds of tiles of water in one tick or whatever)

It has always puzzled me. It's as if the game calculates 15 or so pressure tile calculations, then randomly stops and updates temperature before doing the rest? Dunno, but that's what happens.

Actually, in my experience, the spikes tend to actually have the exact same layout if you do it more than once in the same direction in the same fort.

[EvilBob22]

Naturally flowing water either freezes instantly, or not at all in a freezing biome.  So, if it is liquid above their heads, it will still be liquid when it hits them.

I know what you are thinking, "what if I dump it into a freezing tile from a non-freezing tile?"

This happens:

Initial setup (side view)
Inside   Outside
______
≈≈≈≈
▓▓▓▓▓
▓▓▓▓▓_e__


After one "depth" of water flows outside you get an ice floor
______
≈≈≈≈_
▓▓▓▓▓
▓▓▓▓▓_e__

After the second "depth" flows outside, it is blocked by an ice wall (which doesn't fall)
______
≈≈≈≈▓
▓▓▓▓▓
▓▓▓▓▓_e__

[GavJ]

Wait, that's a good idea, which SHOULD work, in fact I suggested it not two weeks ago for an unrelated purpose derp.

This:

###
~~X     [F->]
###
###    e
########

~ = pressurized water
# = rock
X = floodgate
[F->] freezing biome starts here and continues right, with a one tile gap of still-warm biome in the air between the floodgate and this.

###~
~~~~III
###~
###    e
########

So you get a tile of water right by the gate, (or a few, in a cone), and the ice only forms out in mid air wher eit is unsupported and falls, yes?

[EvilBob22]

Even under pressure, water will flow down before flowing to the side (and will flow to the side at the bottom before flowing to the side in mid air).  So, in that diagram, the water would flow into the elf's tile and freeze it in a solid block, but there wouldn't be any falling unsupported ice.  But...

###
~~X     [F->]
###OOO
###      e
########

~ = pressurized water
# = rock
X = floodgate
[F->] freezing biome starts here and continues right, with a one tile gap of still-warm biome in the air between the floodgate and this.
OOO = retracting bridge


###
~~X~~~I
###OOO
###      e
########


###
~~X~~~I   <-- NOW it is unsupported
###
###      e
########

The water between the floodgate and the ice wall would be unsupported too though and would flow down as well

[klefenz]

I love how in this game pretty much every word means some form of murder or something deadly.
When I saw the title I didnt know what you meant with "tea", but i knew it would involve torturing, humiliating and killing the elves.

[GavJ]

Even under pressure, water will flow down before flowing to the side (and will flow to the side at the bottom before flowing to the side in mid air).

This is inconsistent with my experience. Emptying a massive cistern does NOT cause a perfectly ground-hugging layer of 7/7 water tiles with a straight path bee-lining it from the exit hole to the nearest ground.

What it does is this, an ever-expanding sideways cone, until it runs out of water:

(up)
##~
##~~
##~~~
~~~~~~
##~~~
##~~
##~
########
(ground)

And then the next tick or whatever, gravity kicks in wile-E-coyote style and it starts flowing from there downward normally.

If the tip of that cone is just entering a freezing biome, it should ice up and collapse.

It might very well be that the bottom parts of that cone are filled before the middle or top parts, but that seems unimportant for our purposes.

[Cattani]

What if I pump water inside a overhead container in a freezing biome, and keep the water liquid (and maybe boiling) with magma. When I shoot it, will it take some ticks to cool from boiling to regular water, and afterwards turn to ice?
That would make sense. But not everything makes sense in DF, so anyone knows what would happen?

[GavJ]

Okay, so I tested it out and watched step by step.  I had a floodgate with pressurized water opening into a completely open 3x3x3 airspace, where the middle and furthest planes were exposed to outdoors, but the first spot out wasn't.

It turns out that in fact it does not go straight down NOR does it go in a perrrfect cone, nor does it flood out instantly. Even though pressurizes, it actually took like 10 ticks to do anything after the door opened, then it flowed kind of like this, taking 3 or so ticks per update

4   (this first tile being the spot of the floodgate itself, shooting to the right)

7 4  (4 now in mid air, non freezing tile)   

7 7 4  (so yes it went outward TWO spots in mid air before going down or to the side at all, 4 now in the freezing tile))

7 7 Ice  (ices over very next tick)

At which point an ice wall without any support, not even diagonal anything in any direction. And it just sat there.  No cave-in.

I then proceeded another 28 ticks, with water flying all around behind it, before any more water got far enough out to freeze in such a way that it would give that first ice wall cave-in support.  So it was sitting there magically not caving in for 28 ticks.

Apparently, water flow and ice formation are not triggers for the system to check for cave-ins. So although you can freeze ice in the middle of the air, it does not kill elves... (unless they are also in mid air...)

top

middle

bottom
(thats just a floor)

[Cattani]

So... that means elfs are magically protected and can't be trojan horsed? Like, the spirit of nature wont let me throw ice walls at them?
Is this a documented bug?

[GavJ]

Well presumably, if you went and dug one tile of it or what have you... possibly even if you dig one tile ANYWHERE on the map, it would go "oh yeah!" and fall, thus killing your elves. Depends whether the cave in code just checks everywhere, or only spreading out from each dug tile.  Probably the latter, which would mean it wouldn't cave in still if you dug elsewhere, but would if you stood on the ice and dug part of it. Obviously rather dangerous.

Or you could build a support under it then pull it out again to make it remember.  So not automated, sadly, like it should be, but still at least a cheap manually reloadable cave in trap, which is something.

Dunno if it's documented. I know that buildings not deconstructing when ice they are built on melts is documented. Probably manifestations of the same bug.



Note: I can't test whether digging anywhere suffices, because I can't synchronize mining that well to make sure he mines one within those 28 ticks where the ice is still suspended. But if you were less lazy or build more airspace around this thing, then you could test it.