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[Quift]

I like a lot of these suggestions so I'm gonna add some.

1, magma piping cannot be used for heating. neither of rooms or to create steam. This is because if the magma is used to heat up something heat is drawn from the magma to that other thing. in effect cooling the magma into a solid rock within the pipe and clogging it with shard of obsidian.

2, rooms should be heated with warm water or steam (as in many appartments).

3, The first workshops that I would like to see powered are the Sawmill and the Stonemill. Where logs are boulders are cut into planks and slates. These are then used in the masonry to build tables and chairs or in the carpentry to biuld beds and bins. one log could produce several planks, and several planks should be used to biuld larger pieces of furniture (altough, not a whole tree).

4, I think that it will be implemented that dwarves will find it heavier to go upwards carrying stuff. So an elevator between the bottom mining operations to the metalworking area and from there to the jewelers etc.

[Sukasa]

Eh, in the current version magma produces its own heat, so it wouldn't be cooling down in the pipes.

Sapidus: the valves thing is neat, but I can see that only working for manually-operated valves, not mechanically-operated ones, which have only two states (and therefore can only be closed or fully open).  Not that that;s a problem, you can just hook two valves up together   Anyways, if not turbine, what should it be called?

Lastly, I thought of a steam tie-in to the hygeine issue.  Using a ''diffuser', you could make Saunas, which dwarves would then go and relax in, where the diffuser gives off a little bit of steam, but not enough to be damaging to a dwarf (think a small amount of steam, versus the massive blasts of deadly superheated steam you'd get from a burst pipe)

[XmasApe]

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile
Sure, it didn't do any work, but if we came up with it in the first century I would think it's not unreasonable for dwarves, little builders they are, to expand the principle.

[Sukasa]

When will I ever stop coming up with other ideas?

This time, it's related to pressure of fluids in the pipes and Z-levels.  Basically, I was thinking that the fluids in pipes can't rise up beyond a certain amount from the fluid source, and that to go higher a booster pump would be needed, somewhat the way it's needed in real life (steam would be exempt from this due to the higher pressure and drastically reduced gravitational force)- basically, water can only go up three Z-levels from the highest pump in the system, and magma an only go up one, requiring a few extra pumps along the line so that you can't just make one little pump and yet manage to shove fluid up 15 floors and over a giant wall, and magma, due to its increased consistency, can only go up one tile, i.e. you'd need pumps every second floor at minimum to move magma up.

This brings in a suggestion for a new type of pipe construct: the inline pump.  Basically a screw pump, but it's contained within a pipe with no opening, and uses only a pipe section and corkscrew, however it can only pump from a pipe to a pipe.  The pump itself acts like a normal pipe tile to fluids/etc when unpowered, and acts like a pump when powered, though it can still hold a tile of fluid in itself.  The pump draws from the tile below it, and outputs water a tile above it- magma can't go any higher than that, but water can go up another 2 Z-levels, assuming it's in a pipe still.  The pump would also have only two openings, cannot bend, and could be oriented in either of the three axises

Another use for pipes is having a 'sprinkler' hookup that produces a thick mist that can sometimes create 1/7 water around, but doesn't quite produce a positive thought, which would be useful in the fire/lighting arc as a fire retardent, basically a dwarven sprinkler system.  Since repeated exposure could cause negative thoughts 'was soaked by a sprinkler' when used where there is no fire, whereas 'was soaked by a sprinkler during a fire' could be a positive thought resulting from a sprinkler system putting out a fire but also wetting a dwarf.   Anyways, just more thoughts, s'all.

[Draco18s]

Archimedes Screws don't push water up higher than themselves.  Ever.

[Tacroy]

In re: mine carts, ramrods:

I think they're a really unnecessary addition to the game at this point. My personal favorite idea for this is the conveyor belt, which has various benefits:

1. It's easily doable with the dwarfs current technology (just take a couple of powered axles, some free spinning unpowered ones, and stretch out some cloth over the whole thing)

2. The code for it already exists (it's like getting pushed with pressurized water)

3. It adds a use for an otherwise sort of useless product (cloth)

4. It elegantly solves the problem of getting things from point A to point B, without adding weird things like moving carts or ramrods. The spinning waterwheel animations can even be re-used!

[Sukasa]

the ramrod is still fairly effective as a trap device, but conveyors are definitely much better for moving goods, or maybe goblins (to the ramrods?).

Anyways, draco, since archimedes screws shouldn't produce any extra Z-levels, according to you, should the screws only puch the liquids to the Z-Level directly on top of the screw, without any more ability to add Z-levels, or should pumps use more mechanisms instead of corkscrews, and still produce the force, or should we just bite the bullet and ignore that little fact?

[Draco18s]

Anyways, draco, since archimedes screws shouldn't produce any extra Z-levels, according to you, should the screws only puch the liquids to the Z-Level directly on top of the screw, without any more ability to add Z-levels, or should pumps use more mechanisms instead of corkscrews, and still produce the force, or should we just bite the bullet and ignore that little fact?

...What?

And, possibly, an answer:
An Archimedes Screw uses an incline of 63 degrees, maximum.  You can't pump strait up and you don't get any pressure out of it (a real screw has a lower outflow rate than inflow, depending on the length of the screw and it's watertight-ness: some of the water falls back down the screw!)
DF's Screws take up 2 tiles and require a 3rd "input" tile (the channel) be free, which approximates the required slope, though on the low end.

What I think your suggesting is a perfectly vertical screw (which wouldn't work in the first place) spinning at high speed (waterpower?) in order to force water to "fountain" out the top.  And I'm saying "no.  It won't work."

[Sukasa]

That was one of the suggestions, yes.  So, if we only allow horizontal inline pumps, then how are we supposed to be able to implement a vertical pump?

[Tacroy]

I don't understand what you're all going on about. Pumps work fine the way they are right now. Once we've got multi-z-level buildings, they should probably create some image on the space from which they're pumping water, but right now there's nothing wrong.

[Grek]

That was one of the suggestions, yes.  So, if we only allow horizontal inline pumps, then how are we supposed to be able to implement a vertical pump?

A different style of pump. Instead of an archimedes screw, use something with buckets and rope.

[Sapidus3]

but right now there's nothing wrong.

No one is saying there is anything wrong with the current pumps. However, if pipes were introduced there would be room for a new type of pump to keep fluid flowing through the pipes.

There's nothing wrong with iron weapons, but that doesn't mean we can't have steel weapons as well .

A different style of pump. Instead of an archimedes screw, use something with buckets and rope.

I'm not sure if we could call it a pump still. However, there could be a powered well, that sort of dumps water out somewhere. It would have a low output, but could be useful to keep a small area at a high z-level hydrated.

[sweitx]

Anyways, draco, since archimedes screws shouldn't produce any extra Z-levels, according to you, should the screws only puch the liquids to the Z-Level directly on top of the screw, without any more ability to add Z-levels, or should pumps use more mechanisms instead of corkscrews, and still produce the force, or should we just bite the bullet and ignore that little fact?

...What?

And, possibly, an answer:
An Archimedes Screw uses an incline of 63 degrees, maximum. 

Not necessarily 63 degree.  You can increase the angle by making the helix tighter (making the screw slope smaller).  However, this will quickly reduces the amount of fluid it can carry per turn (I think 63 degree is reference to the kind of screw Archimedes designed.  Similar designs could use a different helix period to create different lift angle.)

You can't pump strait up and you don't get any pressure out of it (a real screw has a lower outflow rate than inflow, depending on the length of the screw and it's watertight-ness: some of the water falls back down the screw!)

Depending on screw's design.  The water leakage occurs if the screw itself spins independently from the cylinder it is in.  In some design the screw is "glued" to the cylinder, with a good seal, the outflow should equal to inflow.  You're correct in that it doesn't generate any pressure above the water level within the screw itself (it CAN "generate" pressure by pushing the water at the output, but only up to the water level that can exist in the screw, which will never be above the screw pump itself).  Another form of Archimedes' screw doesn't use a screw, but a pipe (or several pipes) arranged in a helical manner, it still operates on the same principle.

DF's Screws take up 2 tiles and require a 3rd "input" tile (the channel) be free, which approximates the required slope, though on the low end.

Hm... maybe the vertical z-level has different scale then the x,y axis...  If not, a single tile screw pump should be possible with 63 degrees (one tile construction, one tile for input, and one tile for the fluid to go to.

What I think your suggesting is a perfectly vertical screw (which wouldn't work in the first place) spinning at high speed (waterpower?) in order to force water to "fountain" out the top.  And I'm saying "no.  It won't work."

A vertical screw could work.  Since if you spin a simple propeller (a very short screw) very fast you could send water up a pipe see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_flow_pump.  Although the key here is VERY fast (Trying to imagine an Archimedes screw spinning an 1000 rpm, and thinking a waterwheel with a 1:1000 gear ratio...).  In short, in a Dwarf Fortress' world, a vertical corkscrew pump should not exist.

Wikipedia do have a lot of pumps that could work in Dwarf Fortress.  Examples.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_pump
Uses just gears, the hard part is to make the gears relatively good water sealed.  So probably slightly out of dwarf fortress tech.
A positive displacement pump could work.  It requires a displacer/piston and 2 directional valves.  A valve could simply be a small wooden/metal/rock flap on top of a hole and a piston could just be a cylinder (or any shape for that matter, as long as it fits).

[Sukasa]

Of course, we could just make the vertical pump use a couple mechanisms and leave it at that.  I mean, you can already forge steel items on a golden anvil, so I highly doubt that it's going to hurt if the vertical pump's internal design is abstracted away.

Also, why not allow players to know, say, when the steam pressurepressure available in a pipe system is above X amount?  This would be good for making sure that the emergency steam release valve only opens when there's actually enough steam to be dangerous...  which leads into another suggestion:  If the steam pressure in a pipe (pressurized steam) is too high, and there isn't enough of a draw (e.g. 9000 untis of steam, 0 units used), then randomly along a pipe network (or just along the weakest/lowest quality parts), a pipe section could rupture from the pressure, and different materials rupture at different pressures, e.g. a bronze pipe section would rupture well before a steel section, even if the sttel section was a lower quality.

And, another old but incredibly beneficial suggestion: allow inverted lever connections.

[katana0182]

for the heat source for boilers: in addition to magma, wood, and coal, we might want to add pitchblende, already mineable in the game, but not useful as of yet--fill the boiler with water, smelt the pitchblende into bars at the smelter, forge the bars into rods at the metalsmith, and install the pitchblende rods in the boiler. this could provide a way of getting lots of heat in a map without magma. you would only have to replace the pitchblende rods once every few years, probably, while generating a large quantity of steam constantly. what you do with the used rods? good dwarves could throw them into a below ground cistern filled with water, while bad dwarves might cast them into armor to sell to the elven treehuggers, forge bolts out of it for their crossbows and ballistas, or use it for "special" furniture for the rooms of their idling nobles who have given out one too many inconvenient mandates.

it would also add more, how shall we say, possibilities for "fun" into the game, especially when the goblins destroy the river water-pump feeding the boiler, or the dwarves shut the water valve for the boiler conveniently located amid the goblin horde milling outside the fortress walls. in addition, random events could occur, like a crack in the boiler, a rod exploding out of it, or a pump malfunctioning.

for more info, look up pitchblende at wikipedia to see what i'm getting at.