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[scourge728]

Since we had that discussion going on in the social lives thread, let's put it here instead

[Starver]

In part to PTW, in part to bump this up in the hope it'll start to be used for its intended purpose,  I thought I'd link this, which is another approach to Dorfs that sort of shows a possible approach to what might be real. (Almost describes our guys, if you power them down so that they need picks (presumably then breathing and gassifying the stone dust) instead, and are still only fishing (perhaps spear-fishing?) with their beard strands.

Solves the light problem, anyway.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Weaponized flatulence!
Deserves a thread of its own, surely. 

[Starver]

Well, if you're worried about not enough oxygen in some excavations, you could already be worried about firedamp and other methane seeps.  (Plus, radon accumulation, breaking into oil-cap layers, the dangers/opportunities of flooding ancient salt-beds, etc...)

[tussock]

I'm ever hopeful that the magma sea will one day be properly pressurised by all that rock sitting on it, and carbon dioxide (chokedamp) dissolved in it, and the first !!dorf!! to open it is rewarded with a free trip to the !!surface!!. Magma should really be much more FUN than it already is. I mean, I'm sure there'd be a safe way to do it, right?

Did you know, basaltic magmas (also, really, should make basalt, not evaporate) get much hotter when first exposed to air? They undergo vigorous reactions with oxygen! Woo! Thought to raise their temperature from a mild 800C up to 1100C, which helps with that whole expansion game.

And yes, Coalgas (methane) at 1/7 with air, that'd be firedamp and !!FUN!!. Likes to rise up fortunately so not too hard to vent, or uh, capture, for uh, well, to "trade" with the elves? Could have layers of coal to open, imagine it.
Chokedamp (CO2) at 4/7 with air, becomes lethally sleepy, likes to concentrate at the bottom of shafts, made every time you burn something, oh dear. Might have to run the forges on the surface, maybe up a bit.
Whitedamp (CO) at 2/7 with air, also lethally sleepy, and explodes! A thing that forms from explosions and explodes! How good is that. Also lighter than air, so you know, handled.

Maybe get some ventilation rules first. Airflow, if the water flow code is ever up to doing a whole lot more work. I already build double stairwells, there's plenty of heat down there to power it all, just need some code support, and a tower over one of the stair cases.

Be cool if everything flowed, really. Avalanche? Flowing snow 5/7. Digging tunnels in sand, lol, slump, 7/7 in your tunnel. Arbitrary mixes of two things in a square with the denser one at the bottom and get flows working on them, Magma 6/7 plus obsidian. Air 6/7 plus Coalgas. Chokedamp 4/7 plus Air.

And then mists too. Some of them should rise, at least until they contact something and thereby cool off enough to be merely !!liquid!!.

I mean, you can always live on the surface, until you get the hang of it, but yeah, as the military and orders systems are getting better developed, the dorfs more things to keep them happy, and the base code is gradually improving in speed if anything even with more going on, we may need a few more dangers in our forts in time, and looking to real life for things that are difficult in mines would be one place to have a think about modelling, no doubt.

--

Map re-write scheduled sort of after the first go at magic, that'd be a time that new things could be tried on damps or salt flows or even just giving us proper collapses again, like the old 2d days. I'm sure that flow code could be simplified with a few tricks, stop it perpetually oscillating, settle out to a random preferred map tile corner where it has ponds, run the rivers along the downhill trends, so most stuff flows "downhill" with less checking and calculations, and reaches equilibrium states of stasis or flow quicker that are then hardly even processed.

Unless the scheduled re-write is for the world map the fort lives in, instead of the fort-scale one the game's in. But I know I've seen collapses on the to do list.

[SixOfSpades]

As has obviously been mentioned before, caverns (or at least those with life) clearly have oxygen, but I just thought I'd point out that their current game implementation strongly suggests that they have oxygen without any sort of connection to the surface world. Posters trying to make cavern mechanics be more in line with real-world behavior have suggested that oxygen could get into caverns through minute cracks in the stone, or be dissolved into surface streams that then flow underground (or seep in as groundwater), and I don't blame them. But the act of breaching a cavern, which suddenly allows cavern spores to grow in all connected subterranean soil tiles, clearly implies that now there is airflow to the cavern, where previously there wasn't.

As part of the Innovations thread, I had a few thoughts with applications for light & ventilation.

• Bedrooms could have small vent-holes drilled, connecting the room with the hallway. They should be near the ceiling, both to exclude crawling vermin & to discourage peeping toms.
• Augers (temporary buildings giving the ability to drill small holes through multiple tiles in a straight line) could be invented, allowing these vent-holes to connect multiple parts of the fort with each other, or with the surface.
• After Bellows are a thing, some dwarf can think big and invent the Great Bellows, a powered building that fills a 3x3 room with 1 entrance & 1 exit. A huge leather sail fills one entire wall, and sweeps back & forth continuously. Leather flaps in the sail act as valves, allowing air to pass only in one direction, turning the whole room into an air pump.
• Once Windmills are developed, someone can invent their opposite: Fans. Powered large Fans could turn horizontal or vertical shafts into pressurized ducts for continuous airflow.
• Not an Innovation, but glow-worms are a thing. See also: their hunting techniques. Great for controlling airborne vermin, but impractical for 1-story areas with dwarves walking around.
• The previously-mentioned possible phosphorescent plants & fungi, available both as tree-sized "streetlights", and potted-plant "lamps" suitable for illuminating small rooms.
• Magma itself can be a light source, albeit a very dangerous one. Dwarves would have to be shielded from its toxic fumes, and as glass windows would melt, they would have to be made of mica.
• The predictable candles, oil lamps, torches, wood fires, etc.
• Mining Helmets: Helmets with built-in lanterns.
• With magic on the horizon, Gem Lanterns might be a thing: Magical light sources that consume gemstones for fuel. (Presumably, emitting light the same color as the gemstone.)

On the scale of dwarf forts, you would need industrial air pumps. It's not doable with medieval tech.

Admittedly, I haven't researched period ventilation techniques, but I think Fans and Great Bellows both seem doable.

[KittyTac]

Or magical ventilation.

[Starver]

Sub-tile ventilation (like holes drilled in walls) will also make for sub-tile leakage of water/magma flow in instances where it wouldn't currently be expected. No, you'd (probably) not deliberately drill through your cistern wall or into a sometime-drain tunnel adjacent to a room (especially from the drain-control-levers room), but when that Epic Dig Fail or Improper Pump Placement inevitably happens you might currently expect walls to block the result somewhat while you attempt remedial changes.

From a technical POV, you'd probably design some sort of special hole for that situation (say an omega-bend with (water- and/or magma-proof) floats that'd normally sit on vanes but as soon as it gets inundated will float up into a seal and block the overpass in whatever direction the liquid is trying to pass). Or a lining material which expands (inward to constrict flow) upon being directly exposed to wetness or heat. Unless you go for something maybe much too hard sci-fi (gas-permeable/liquid-opaque force fields) or the magical equivalent (some sort of Maxwellian demon sat in there?).


Valves of various designs could be part of the building/digging/equipping strategy, like with minecart track-laying. Or just suck it up and treat them much as per liquid-threatened fortifications already may be (floodgates and/or raising bridges installed to shut them off on command), and strategic draining-grates to remove the threat ASAP.


Right now, I'd prefer hand-waved ventilation (with or without Overseer-specification of what it should feel like, maybe setting up 'flow zones' to encourage circulation and air-mixing, or strategic directional "ceiling fans/wafters" built from a mechanism or three) than the full complexity of having to manually install(/assign to be installed) a whole complex ducting arrangements down to the minutest detailing.


Also:

The Trapper

The trapper was often the youngest member of the family working underground. Their job was simple: to open and close the wooden doors (trap doors) that allowed fresh air to flow through the mine. They would usually sit in total darkness for up to twelve hours at a time, waiting to let the coal tub through the door. It was not hard work but it was boring and could be very dangerous. If they fell asleep, the safety of the whole workings could be affected.

...and more relevent elaboration at http://www.dmm.org.uk/educate/mineocc.htm#t

[Bumber]

Admittedly, I haven't researched period ventilation techniques, but I think Fans and Great Bellows both seem doable.

I'm not sure the bellows are practical. To move the air throughout the whole fort would require a great deal of pressure, which neither the bellow materials nor the piping are really up to.

Fans seem more practical. I don't think they were ever used for ventilation, but the Chinese invented a mechanical fan for personal cooling. You could have large shafts with a bunch of fans connected by a vertical axle. (Would it be going too far to let them be used for geothermal power? It would be kind of hard not to notice the magma forge fans are turning on their own.)

I think period ventilation technique was to have shafts that just used air pressure created by the wind blowing across the surface. I don't think it would get you that deep. DF has oxygenated caverns, of course, but they don't have any wind.

[tussock]

Old mines were all ventilated, they had to get the water out, and they couldn't lift water far, so there were drains everywhere. The longest drains dug for mines in the middle ages were cut 20 miles through solid rock over several years of 24/7 labour.

Then, once you have a drain somewhere, the air comes in it, and goes out the top. Any air movement past the entrances generates a pressure difference that's quite capable of circulating air for any mine. They sealed various doors throughout with wet clay to force the air up the working tunnels and shift the damps out the main entrance. Door sealing being a young kid's job, didn't pull mine carts until they were a bit older.

Now, dorfs dig deep, and often on flat land, so they'll have to rely on heating the air against the lower rocks to provide most of the energy for the system, you just need two entrances with one venting higher than the other, that gives you the pressure differential off a good breeze, and the hot air will sustain the circulation so long as it stays reasonably well sealed with no shortcuts to break the inward flow into the depths. Not really suitable for a massive coal mine, but for everyday stuff it would work.

[GoblinCookie]

Doors seem a big issue here.  Once we implement oxygen then solid doors become quite a problem for dwarves.  It seems that internal doors to fortresses would likely be made of cloth, or they would be woven together.

As has obviously been mentioned before, caverns (or at least those with life) clearly have oxygen, but I just thought I'd point out that their current game implementation strongly suggests that they have oxygen without any sort of connection to the surface world. Posters trying to make cavern mechanics be more in line with real-world behavior have suggested that oxygen could get into caverns through minute cracks in the stone, or be dissolved into surface streams that then flow underground (or seep in as groundwater), and I don't blame them. But the act of breaching a cavern, which suddenly allows cavern spores to grow in all connected subterranean soil tiles, clearly implies that now there is airflow to the cavern, where previously there wasn't.

Lots of caverns in RL have no connection to the surface world but still have oxygen.  They have oxygen because the water that flows into the caverns has oxygen dissolved into it, oxygen that is then released into the caverns.  There is actually no reason why oxygen cannot remain dissolved into the water for millions of years and then be released when it flows into a cavern.  In order to get to lots of caverns you have to swim through an underground lake, actually there is probably a whole world of underground caverns with lifeforms entirely unknown because it is so difficult to get to their location. 

[SixOfSpades]

Sub-tile ventilation (like holes drilled in walls) will also make for sub-tile leakage of water/magma flow in instances where it wouldn't currently be expected.

With the operative word being "currently". Under the natural assumption that both the door and air vent open onto the same hallway, it's pretty much a given that any water/magma high enough to reach the vent would have leaked under the door well before that point. It's not terribly realistic that every single door in the fort is both magma-safe and watertight, after all.

Right now, I'd prefer hand-waved ventilation (. . . maybe setting up 'flow zones' to encourage circulation and air-mixing . . .) than the full complexity of having to manually install(/assign to be installed) a whole complex ducting arrangements

Well, the "complexity" would depend on the design of your fortress, and it needn't be anything like ventilating every single room. You might have, say, one major central staircase, ringed by a hallway at every level, and all other major rooms open directly onto a hallway. In a case like that, you can just ventilate the crap out of the central stair, and let the oxygen dissipate--as long as it doesn't have to go too far, or through multiple closed doors, to reach nearly any point in the fort.

Doors seem a big issue here.  Once we implement oxygen then solid doors become quite a problem for dwarves.

Tolkien's dwarves were clearly able to make doors that fit absolutely perfectly, but that doesn't mean that all doors have to be airtight. If the masons knew that self-sealing bedroom doors would almost certainly kill their users, then naturally they'd want to leave small but sufficient gaps. Besides, it's a lot easier to open & close doors quietly if they don't make full contact with the sill and doorjamb. If I were a dwarf, I don't imagine I'd get much sleep in a hallway that's constantly filled with the noise of stone scraping on stone from all the comings & goings.

Where airtight doors made sense, conversely, would be rooms where you want to discourage life, such as food stockpiles. Maybe you could carry 2 torches when you enter, but leave one still burning behind you when you go, so it leaves less oxygen for the vermin? At the very least, sealed doors would keep new vermin from getting in.

I'm not sure the bellows are practical. To move the air throughout the whole fort would require a great deal of pressure, which neither the bellow materials nor the piping are really up to.

You may be right, but I disagree about requiring high pressure: it's only air, after all, and it doesn't need to be moving anything like fast. Additional measures, of course, may still be required to avoid unhappy thoughts around particularly stinky places, like tanneries.

You could have large shafts with a bunch of fans connected by a vertical axle. Would it be going too far to let them be used for geothermal power?

Not in my book. I figure that if anybody's going to invent steam turbines, it's dwarves.

[Bumber]

Doors could have built-in vents that are able to be set to open/close from the 'q' menu. With open vents you'd risk water and poisonous gas flowing through. With them closed, you'd need an alternate means of providing oxygen to the room.

I'm not sure the bellows are practical. To move the air throughout the whole fort would require a great deal of pressure, which neither the bellow materials nor the piping are really up to.

You may be right, but I disagree about requiring high pressure: it's only air, after all, and it doesn't need to be moving anything like fast.

It has to keep pace with 100+ dwarves. (Some players go above 1000.) It also needs to get to all the nooks and crannies of the fort, which means you either need to run ventilation ducts there (requiring pressure so it actually reaches all the exit points,) or you need to do an extra good job of oxygenating the main areas so the air can diffuse throughout the fort. Fans are at an advantage because you can use a bunch of them to induce a continuous flow. Bellows waste half their effort filling up.

[Starver]

Under the natural assumption that both the door and air vent open onto the same hallway,

^{[citation needed]}

That'd seem to me to be the worst way to do it, under a truly realism-based system, given any other options.

[SixOfSpades]

Doors could have built-in vents that are able to be set to open/close from the 'q' menu. With open vents you'd risk water and poisonous gas flowing through. With them closed, you'd need an alternate means of providing oxygen to the room.

Or, dwarves could assume that if there's enough !!FUN!! to fill the corridors with water or toxic gas, then they're pretty much screwed anyway. To me, it seems analogous to building a fallout shelter in your basement: Yeah, it might come in useful someday, but if your city does get nuked, chances are you're fuckin' dead, fallout shelter or not.

It [any ventilation system] has to keep pace with 100+ dwarves. (Some players go above 1000.) It also needs to get to all the nooks and crannies of the fort, which means you either need to run ventilation ducts there (requiring pressure so it actually reaches all the exit points,) or you need to do an extra good job of oxygenating the main areas so the air can diffuse throughout the fort.

I'm of the "extra good job of oxygenating the main areas" camp, just ventilate the highest-traffic areas and let homogenization do the rest. Since gases diffuse themselves to be of equal concentrations among all connected areas, I think the cracks under doors + doors not being closed all the time should be enough. Of course, whether or not these areas are lit by fire will most likely prove to be an overriding factor.

Fans are at an advantage because you can use a bunch of them to induce a continuous flow. Bellows waste half their effort filling up.

I don't mind bellows being sub-optimal: One of the key factors of the Innovations plan is that the player does NOT choose what gets discovered/invented, so in one game you might embark with a civilization that happened to develop Fans, while in your next game you have nothing better than the Great Bellows (but with a chance to develop Fans afterward). I'm not saying Bellows need to be a thing, I'm just saying that multiple games will be more interesting if different forts know different technologies, and half-measures like Bellows would be useful in that regard.

Under the natural assumption that both the door and air vent open onto the same hallway,

That'd seem to me to be the worst way to do it, under a truly realism-based system, given any other options.

What's so terrible about venting into the hallway? Do you have a grudge against transom windows or something? Yeah, you could dig (or drill) a separate access path for ventilation alone, but that seems like a lot of extra work. What's wrong with air flowing along the same paths as traffic?