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[Sukasa]

Basically just amalgating from various threads and adding my own input, as well as bumping for attention.

At any rate, it's probably been said that I'm very into mechanics in DF.  Anyways, going through old suggestions, I've found a couple that I thought were quite good, so I read what had been said and thought about it.  First off, from SquashMonster [http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=5908.0]:

1 - pipe sections.  These exist now, but need to be made possible to build as their own building.  Pipe sections link with one another and with pumps.  Fluids connected to an open pipe section will flow into them, but can only be sent up with the aid of a pump.  Magma pipes do not power magma buildings.
-> one thought I've seen are pipes as buildings you can enter, and only leave via a pipe entrance not connected to anything.

2 - valves.  These act as pipe sections, but can be levered on and off.
-> one thought I had with this was buildling destroyers, and how they react to the valve, based on whether they're inside pipes or not.  if they're inside, then they might bash the valve, causing it to become damaged and in an 'always open' state as far as pipe contents are concerned, however the valve will not leak outside the pipe, versus outside-bashing where the valve leaks everywhere.

3 - boilers.  These require a water source, either by pipe or by having water flow through them.  They also require a heat source.  All valid heat sources for forges (charcoal, magma, ect) apply to boilers.  They come with a valve.  Whenever properly set up, this valve will produce steam if on.

4 - turbines.  These require a steam pipe connected to them.  A turbine vents unfocused steam (the kind of steam you see in the current game), which is dangerous.  On the other hand, they produce three times as much power as a water wheel.
-> (altered power production) one possibility I'd thought of was a second pipe connection, where the spent steam can be recycled, or at least vented somewhere safer.  This goes hand-in-hand with the suggestion that steam in pipes can condense back into water after a while, from cooling down.  Another possibility is that isntead of steam coming out of the turbine, water comes out.

5 - optional: steam cannons.  These require a steam pipe connected to them.  They work exactly like a ballista, but vent unfocused steam and use rocks as their projectiles.
-> again, steam vent, and possibly water coming out instead.

Ways to make steam:
- Use a boiler.  Boilers turn a heat source and water source into steam.
- Pipe water through magma.  A water pipe in a magma-filled square should produce steam in the pipe.

Uses for steam pipes:
- Power machinery.  Steam is harder to set up than water and has a dangerous side effect, but produces more power.
- Vent steam.  A pipe carrying steam that ends without a closed valve produces steam on the other end.  This hurts things that touch it.
-> one thought I had was using it in two ways.  first off, the obvious 'steam blast' with a pipe facing into an execution chamber, but another way is like this:

Code: [Select]

OOOOOOO
O.+++.O
O+++++O
O.+++.O
OOOOOOOwhere the . is above a vertical opening of a steam pipe.  on a whim, the steam can start, and fill the room slowly, causing death and pain to anything in it from temperature.
- Steam cannon.  Steam cannons shoot in the ballista's mighty straight line, and use the catapult's easily obtained ammunition.  In exchange, you need to provide it with steam power, and it vents steam.

Uses for magma pipes:
- Heat rooms.  Sleeping in a room with a magma pipe can produce a happy thought.
- Move magma.  Pipes make it a little easier to move fluids.  Putting magma where you want it is always useful.
- Produce steam.  A magma pipe running through a water-filled square should create a lot of steam outside the pipe.  This can make an old-fashioned steam trap.

As well, normal screw pumps should be able to feed into pipes, I would think.

Second, from LumenPlacidum [http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=19973.0]:

I propose a new trap/machine component: the ramrod.  This would be a device requiring blocks that could be sized to be some odd number of tiles (at least 3) by 1 tile and would be oriented upon construction.  The purpose of this device would be to push whatsoever is in its way in the direction of the construction.  The device would require mechanical power to work (perhaps the more mechanical power it has, the more quickly it pushes?  These devices could be linked to levers and pressure plates, which would trigger them.  The ramrod's two states would be extended on one side or on the other.

The faculty of this device would be to allow both new trapping possibilities as well as product management, since you could push items with them.

The construction would look like this:
X is a tile that is physically blocked, preventing passage, and needs to have solid ground underneath it when the component is made.
= is where the rod actually is.
_ is an empty space (open floor, open to below, stockpile, etc.).

Size        Schematic           Instance (oriented left typically, uses key above)
3x1:        XXX                    _X=
5x1:        XXXXX                __X==
7x1:        XXXXXXX           ___X===
9x1:        XXXXXXXXX     ____X====

The '=' sections would pass through the 'X' section to push everything in the '_' sections in the direction of the orientation of the building.
->I agree with this 100%, it would make for a great automation tool.  Perhaps there should be two variants however- Mechanically operated (slow), and steam-operated (very fast).  That would make for some fun variety, especially in adventurer-mode traps.

Lastly are three old suggestions and one maybe new one, two of which are specifically mentioned already, but repeated for the sake of repetition:

A) Rotation Sensors
B) Waterproof axles
C) more uses for mechanical power
D) move pressure pads from Traps to Mechanics, or at least make them unaffected by ADVENTURER_TRAPS.

[Sukasa]

Thought about this some more last night, here's a bit more on steam vs pipes, etc

Anyways, my thoughts on steam was that is could come in two forms: 'pressurized' steam vs. 'Unpressurized' steam.  Pressurized steam is made at a boiler, which can either accept wooden fuel and provide steam for x amount of time, or have magma piped to it/be built on top of open magma a la the magma workshops, with of course a steady supply of water.  The pressurized steam has a 'power' count much like mechanical power, and if too much steam pressure is needed, nothing works- and if there's an opening to ___ in the pipe, power usage might increase by a large amount as the steam escapes from the open pipe.  Things like turbines and ramrods use steam, and take x amount of power somewhat like pumps, etc do.  With this comes the need for a new part: the pressure limiter.  If steam is available on one side (sides being set when the limiter is built), then x amount of power is taken from that side, and x amount is produced on the other, up to a set amount, making this useful for traps and such to make sure they don't, say, shut down your aquifier pump system by sucking too much steam.

The unpressureized steam is created after pressurized steam has been used, and can either be vented at the source, through a pipe, or fed through a condensor, which is well within dwarven ability.  Basically, the condensor takes two inputs: water, and the spent steam, and outputs the water plus a bit from steam, think the water cooling the steam down and it all going out one output, or maybe two outputs, one for water, and one for condensed-into-water steam. this is done by just wrapping the pipes for each around each other, somewhat like a heat exchanger in nuclear powerp lants, just with less heat.

Lastly, comes pipes.  I propose pipes be built with a wadxes construction option set, with each button corresponding to a direction, e/s being Z+1/Z-1 respectively.  This allows side-by-side pipes without cross-connecting your magma and water pipes, for example.

[Anjey aka PM]

Hurray to new Mechanics Ark

/signed

[Bryan Derksen]

Lots of great ideas there, though personally just starting with pipes that are able to transport fluids would be awesome - it's always such a pain trying to do anything fancy with waterworks inside a fortress, I run out of space for the channels and usually wind up with alternating z levels devoted entirely to "utilities".

Oh, if steam piping is "invented", how about adding smoke piping too? Then non-magma forges and furnaces could produce smoke that has to be dealt with through ventilation. I already pretend to do that by digging grate-sealed holes into my furnace rooms but having actual smoke would be prettier, and add yet another fun-fun way to kill one's nobles.

[Draco18s]

Hurray to new Mechanics Ark

/signed

Arc, as in a curve.  Not ark as in a boat.
(Though, boats would be cool.  Ark Arc anyone?)

[Sukasa]

More thoughts!

First off, building a pipe would be somewhat annoying, because with the wadxes style, you'd have to place every single tile separately.  So, in the case where you have either w and x active only, or a and d only, then the corresponding umhk commands will activate, allowing you to place a number of pipe tiles down in a line, in much the same way constructions are now handled.  Another thought was naming pipe networks, and giving a warning when you try to connect two named pipe networks together ("Are you sure you want to connect WaterMain to MagmaPipe?"), and what happens if you try and force water and magma into a single pipe network.  I would think that should this be the case, then either the pipes would burst at the meeting point, or the networks would stop working, with the status message 'mixed active source types', which basically sidesteps the problem altogether.  A third thought I had was how to handle 'unpressurized' steam building up in a pipe network.  I thought that if there was too much steam being vented, and not enough capacity to handle it (e.g. not enough open pipe ends or not enough condensors), then the vented steam would 'pressurize' just enough to shut down the system again, until more capacity was added to condense or vent the steam, sort of like a reverse mechanical theory.  This could result in the network stopping due to 'No venting capability' for all devices connected to that particular vent, whereas other devices just venting locally or on a different, capable unpressurized network would work just fine.  Lastly, pipes that only have one opening, would act as 'pipe ends', which are exactly what they sound like.

[Sapidus3]

I like the idea of pipes carrying water and boilers. However, its never been clear to me if the pipes used in a water pump are hollow pipes, or more of wooden rods. The reason I say that is because of the giant corkscrews in pumps. Makes it seem to me that the pumps are something like archemedes screws, in which case the pipes would likely just be axels for the corkscrew to turn on. I might be wrong about that though, and even if I am not, real pipes could easily be made.

I am not a fan of turbines. Its one thing to have boilers (back in 2d DF people would do that themselves with magma and water), but to introduce tubines would be giving a level of technology to the dwarfs that might not mesh with the feeling. Also I feel there should be more uses or power before many more are added. Thats where I am going to add to the list of ideas.

It's allways bothered me how certain things seem to move via magic. Bridges should act like pumps. When you trigger them, a dwarf could go and lower/raise the bridge (by turning a crank at the edge of the bridge perhaps), or there would have to be power being fed to the bridge. I realize that alot of people probably wont like that idea but I think it would mean that more thought would need to go into bridges. Also during seiges you would no longer want to wait untill the last minute to mess with the bridge in hope of killing enemies. Because it would take time/power, you would want to get closed up as quickly as possible.

The same logic can apply to floodgates, weapon traps, and anything else that "moves" that I am not thinking of.

Now for some ideas that add things to the game rather than just make existing things more difficult to use.

How about a large capacity pump. Maybe its 3x3, uses more power, but pumps much faster. There could also be a "Tall pump" it would be 2x1x3. Same footprint as the current pump, but 3 z-levels tall and it would drop water up much higher. This would make it a bit easier to construct water towers.

Eventually if/when minecars get added they could run off of power. A quick thought on this. It sees like this would be fairly easy to do if one end is treated as a stone stockpile that is allways empty. So dwarfs are allways taking stone to it. The other end stops at an actuall stone stockpile. The car dumps all the stone out there. While it would be limited in its usefullness, it does not seem that it would be to dificult to implement that way.

I've seen this one suggested before, but power work shops. Perhaps a powered carpenters shop would build faster. A power loom could perhaps make cloth in mass. Not every workshop should have this option. For example it doesnt make much sense to give power to a tanners.

Large clocks. They don't need to serve a real purpose, but I think would be darn cool. I wana make a working clock tower. Perhaps they could act like statues only better. Or maybe if some sort of scheduling system is put in where dwarfs can take shifts, they would be controlled by the clocks.

Vault doors. These would be really heavy. They would act sort of like floodgates in that they would be activated by a lever. They would need power to open and close. Dwarfs would know that they could pull the lever and get through the door unless it was marked forbidden. Floodgates can serve a similar purpose, but the vault doors could perhaps be 2x1. This way if you wanted to be able to block off a large area, it limits the amount of linking you would have to do.

Bells. People have suggested bells for various reasons (alerts, shifts, ect). They could be used manually by a dwarf, or if given power, could be rung via lever.

Rock grinder. Dwarfs dump rocks in. Dust comes out. When dumping starts agrivating chasam, lava, or river creatures, this could be an effective way of disposing of rocks. It could also save your dwarfs walking time. Creative fortress builders could perhaps come up with ways to dump unwanted visitors into the grinder.

Giant gears. I'm talking 3x3 size gears here. Either verticale or horizontal. They wouldn't do much other than look cool and make noise. But I would love to have a fortress filled with these. Maybe they could even have trap applications.

These are all the ideas I have now on this topic. Hopefully I will have more later.

[Phoenyx]

For example it doesn't make much sense to give power to a tanners.

There was a Dirty Jobs w/ Mike Rowe episode that discounted this a little. However I do agree that there should be more uses for power before there are more types of power.

Of course, then the first thing I think of would be the need for "potential energy" type sources for one-off or counter-weighted system. Consider netted boulders suspended several floors up. When released, they supply a brief burst of energy to a rope & pully system. Just enough to trigger traps, raise bridges, release the floodgates and other such "booby trap" fun.

Perhaps the "mechanisms" installed into bridged and floodgates include the counterweights needed for them to rise and fall appropriately.

[winner]

If you can make mine carts activate able by mechanism and pressure plates trigger able by mine carts then you can get some really cool computing going. Or re-enact zelda levels

[Draco18s]

I like the idea of pipes carrying water and boilers. However, its never been clear to me if the pipes used in a water pump are hollow pipes, or more of wooden rods.

Wooden rods?  The Archimedes screw needs at LEAST a half-pipe to function.  The pipe surrounds the screw:

[Sukasa]

Sapidus3, I can give at least three good uses for steam power, traps, noble execution, and looking good.  Second, I like your ideas, they're most definitely useful (and since it's been suggested there be a mechanics arc, what better thread than here? ), however I see both a use for turbines and a practical dwarven implementation of them.  If you were to expand it a bit, here's how a dwarven turbine would look, somewhat:

Code: [Select]

OOO|OOO
O.WWW.O
OOOOOOO

OOOOOOO
=+++++=
OOOOOOO
The =  tiles are the steam pipes, and the WWW is basically a steam-ready waterwheel-type device.  Voila, there's an expanded view of a dwarven turbine.

So, should bells be configurable as 'ring-once' or 'ring-continous'?  This would be useful in some ways when dealing with sleepy guards, as well as peasants who INSIST on grabbing that burning sock- have a continuous-ring bell constantly mark an area as 'stay out.

Perhaps giant gears and vault doors should also be immune to being wrecked, due to their extra large size.

[Areyar]

-> one thought I've seen are pipes as buildings you can enter, and only leave via a pipe entrance not connected to anything.

You mean...like tunnels? 

Sorry about the sarcasm. unwarranted for your troubles of rehashing these fine ideas.

Archimedes screw does not need a pipe, it is a pipe with a screw inside, you can turn the entire barrel and it will work as a pump. without mechanisms.
If you use a screw attached to an axis inside a tube, you need a mechanism to turn it.

[Sapidus3]

Perhaps my problem is I assume the corkscrew to be very large and the pipe to be not so large. I had just figured the "half  pipe" to be carved into whatever block is being used. I imagine the pumps in DF to look alot like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Arkimedes_skruv_i_Huseby.JPG. As I said I am uncertain and am more than willing to believe the corkscrew fits inside the pipes.

I have no problem with steam itself. I agree it could be used in traps (if made deadly again) and also liked the idea of a steam powered balista. There are all sorts of uses it could have.

My problem with turbines is partially with the name. To me the word turbine has very modern conotations as well a relationship with electrical applications.

One thing is that steam engines I don't think were really built untill around the 18th centurary. Water wheels on the other hand have been around since the BCs. Granted, DF does not need to follow these dates obviously. However, the point is simply that steam power is a much more "modern" invention.

One thing is steam power in and of itself, is not necessarly a bad thing. However, it opens up the door to alot of other things. While I myself would not mind seeing a bit of steampunk in DF, I'm pretty sure I've seen alot of other people speak out about it.

A note. If steam could recondense, You could pipe steam up a tower and let it recondense there. It would make creating a water tower much easier. Of course if people wanted to, they could then put a water wheel up in the tower and effectivly be getting power from steam.

If steam power was in the game it would have to have a fairly high output to be worth the fule costs on non-magma maps.

I know there are a few other posts that discuss the whole bell thing. Not sure if any of them are recent though. I'm going to do a search, read them, and then come back with my thoughts.

It would also be nice to perhaps have a gearbox that is not simply on or off. One that could either shunt power in direction A or direction B. If it was in the traditional "on" position power would be transfered in direction A, otherwise in direction B.

A mechanical weight would also be nice. Kinda like a counterweight. So you could use power to set off weight sensors. I am not sure what the imediete applications would be, but it would alow people to make more complicated creations and you could use somethign other than water in complicated setups.

Another more complicated idea for ways power could be made more useful, though more dificult to implement. At a mechanics shop the ability to make a "device."  The player would design a device in a seperate screen. They would lie down the individual gears and axels and what not. It might have 9 connection points. each point is where the device could be hooked up to other mechanical systems or recieve power. When done the device would be saved and built (more time and materials needed for a more complicated device). You would end up with a box the size of a gearbox and could then place it somewhere. People could make their own clocks then . Pretty much people could use it to make complicated mechanical systems. Of course this would likely take a fair amount of time from Toady (and could be an extra addition to the CPU load).

Another thing that I will mention here for the sake of completness is conveyer belts. I've seen them mentioned somewhere else, but figure that we might as well bring them up. I don't imagine having your dwarfs make productive use of them, but I can see lots of trap applications and also like the idea of dropping things down a chute onto a belt. I imagine it could just move things along in the same way water can. That being said, im not sure how well they would fit in.

Edit: Just saw that Areyar posted while I was typing. Yea its unclear to me what the pipes are. They may be the barrel, tube, holder, whatever for the screw. They may also be an axel, or even serve to dirrect the run off water. Or perhaps they serve some other mysterious purpose.

[Sukasa]

I always thought the pipes just housed the corkscrew, myself .  To be very annoying and precise *assumes nasally high-pitched geek voice* The turbine in a modern power plant converts the steam pressure to mechanical motion, which is then converted to electricity by the generator attached...  but most people refer to both devices as a single turbine, which is actually quite misleading *end voice*

And yeah, Steam power should produce a bit more power than water power, if only because it is that much harder to set up...  300 units of power per turbine should be good, using 100 untis of steam power and having a single boiler produce eith 100 or 200 units of steam power.

Also, I -Like- your devices idea.  Needs rotation sensors to work well, though.

[Sapidus3]

With the pumps, I suppose it could be one of those things like how three chunks of stone can make any type of workshop.

Yea I know that it's the generator that produces the electrisity and the turbine just draws mechanical power from fluid flow. The problem is the level of sophistication that the word carries. Its mainly a matter of conotation.

Also, I -Like- your devices idea.  Needs rotation sensors to work well, though.

Yea the device thing wouldn't happen for a long time I imagine.

Another thought if we had pipes. Perhaps valves could be oppened between 0-7. if it was set to say 1, it would only let very little water/liquid/magma through. This would allow significantly better flow control.

A cool idea I just had for power, after watching Ninja Warrior, are training courses. You could have powered "obstacles" using wooden swords and trap components. Your military dwarfs could train on them to improve streangth, toughness, ect. There could even be a labor option, "train with obstcles." It would only be used if the dwarf had nothing else to do, and they would still be marked as idle.