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[mirrizin]

Like screw pumps, except these generate power that can be transferred to machinery.

[cochramd]

Screwpumps can already be operated on dwarfpower, and the other two machine components, rollers and millstones, do things that dwarfs can already do by hand. The only uses I can see for this treadmill would be physically isolating the dwarfs from the devices that needs power (irrelevant for the case of the millstone), setting up a manually powered millstone (which I'm not even sure is worth it - is a millstone over twice as fast as a quern?) and acting as a back up to a waterwheel or windmill. Perhaps if a particularly strong dwarf (or a draft animal) can produce more than 10 power, there might be a way to use it to increase a pumpstack's efficiency, but overall I see very little use for a treadmill unless it can be used with draft animals, and it'll be quite some time until those are even implemented.

[mirrizin]

Screwpumps can already be operated on dwarfpower, and the other two machine components, rollers and millstones, do things that dwarfs can already do by hand. The only uses I can see for this treadmill would be physically isolating the dwarfs from the devices that needs power (irrelevant for the case of the millstone), setting up a manually powered millstone (which I'm not even sure is worth it - is a millstone over twice as fast as a quern?) and acting as a back up to a waterwheel or windmill. Perhaps if a particularly strong dwarf (or a draft animal) can produce more than 10 power, there might be a way to use it to increase a pumpstack's efficiency, but overall I see very little use for a treadmill unless it can be used with draft animals, and it'll be quite some time until those are even implemented.

I think the ability to physically isolate the supply from the output could be cool, but I do see that that's a relatively minor thing.

[Bumber]

New Power Source: Treadmills

[cochramd]

New Power Source: Treadmills

Cyclops-powered treadmills? I hadn't even considered that possibility. A pity that dwarven ethics don't allow slavery.

In all seriousness, though, the usefulness of a treadmill is almost entirely dependent on whether or not you can use draft animals with it, but when you can use draft animals with it, it becomes a game changer. Say, for instance, that one has a pumpstack 120 z levels tall. It would take 120 dwarfs working at once to operate it manually, and not only is that going to use up most of a fortress's labor but it's going to cause a lot of 'hiccups' as dwarfs take breaks and such. However, if power produced is directly proportionate to body size, then this entire pumpstack could be operated by a mere 8 water buffalo. If this is done with treadmills and each animal needs 1 dwarf to manage it, then you've freed up 112 dwarfs and have drastically reduced how much the system is going to hiccup. If you set up some kind of Conan-style wheel of pain, then all 8 animals can be managed by a single dwarf and while the system will have to stop every now and then to rotate the draft animals, the hiccuping has been eliminated entirely. And on top of all that, there's the possibility of using war animals as draft animals to train their attributes....

[Bumber]

New Power Source: Treadmills

Cyclops-powered treadmills? I hadn't even considered that possibility. A pity that dwarven ethics don't allow slavery.

But do elves even count as sentient?

[cochramd]

They do, but on the other hand nobody bats an eye when it is only the elven residents who are assigned treadmill duty, not even the elves. Funny how that works.