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[OverrideB1]

Right. People make two very flawed assumptions that I've noticed:

• If someone back then designed it, it must be period-appropriate! Not necessarily. A lot of things could have been designed or even used once or twice without being widespread in the least, and a lot of theoretical designs couldn't have even been produced at the time, or they weren't feasible to. See: da Vinci. Point is, sometimes dudes are thinking ahead of their time, and it's called that for a reason.
• If they theoretically had the technology required to assemble something, it also must be period-appropriate! Also wrong. A society's attitudes and knowledge about a thing are just as important. For instance, you could make a binary computer out of rocks if you felt like it and were really goddamn patient. That doesn't mean it would be period-appropriate for some game taking place in the stone age. Similarly, even if dwarves COULD make a design for a good steam engine, it doesn't mean they WOULD. It's easy to forget that we're speaking from the benefit of our own society and the knowledge and ideas that come with it. Another example: Number systems don't really take any technology or equipment at all to produce, but it still took Europe until some time in the Middle Ages (late Middle Ages probably) to actually start using a place-value number system or to accept zero as a number.

I'm not arguing that such technology must or should be included in DF. What I am arguing, however, is that people shouldn't just wave their hands and say "bah, too modern" when some possible addition is suggested for inclusion.

Do I want electric lights, steam-tanks and gunpowder cannons in DF? Absolutely not - even though the "technology" was in place to create some of these things (just not the knowledge or understanding) in the 15th century.

Application is everything, however. As I said upthread, Hero built a steam-engine: all it did was spin a copper ball (very fast). Nobody knew what the heck to do with it because the knowledge of how it could be applied wasn't there. But Dwarves have an understanding of gears and mechanisms, therefore (given that this is a fantasy game) it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that some brighter than average "village idiot" thought - "Hmm, if I attach this here, stick an axle there, and put this there, I can grind corn without a water-wheel or a windmill." - especially since gears (mechanisms) and axles are already in the game.

Of course there should be a downside: difficult to build, hard to maintain, and prone to launching unwary Dwarves half-a-mile if it goes "BOOM" due to sloppy maintainance or poor manufacture. 

I'd like to see the Mechanic have something to do other than just making mechanisms and maintaining traps. Maybe small-scale steam-devices, or rock-elevators/conveyor-belts driven by an animal-powered capstans, could be that "something" since they'd have to be maintained? But, again, I stress, that inclusion of such a thing isn't a "necessity" for me to enjoy the game - it's just a suggestion for discussion rather than waving my hand and going "bah, too modern".

[praguepride]

See, except for refining steel and adamatine, it doesn't appear that dwarves are any more technologically advanced, they're just more skilled at using existing technology.

Elves and Humans have platemail, but none do it quite as well as dwarven adamantine platemail. Dwarves aren't necessarily technologically superior, but are just more adept at using rocks and metals then other races.

Just like elves can use wooden weapons/armors and humans can use larger weapons armor.

The racial distinctions really come into play in who can use what material for what object. Elves can make wooden armor and weapons and bows, humans can use iron and copper for essentially larger versions of weapons, and dwarves can used advanced metals, like adamantine and steel for existing items.

They don't have some super dwarfy tech that no one else doesn't get. If dwarves have steam power, then elves and humans would have steam power, they'd just build it out of different things, at least that's how technology is currently represented in the game.

[Granite26]

Whether or not dwarves are more technologically advanced than other races, whether or not apocryphal techs damage the period feel, etc are all side subjects anyway, and best decided by the developer. 

This is really intended to be a list of what is possible, and what would need to be added to enable more complicated stuff.  Whether or not it's appropriate for vanilla dwarves is a separate discussion.

[praguepride]

So, you're saying I should start up a bitch thread entitled "Additional Mechancis/Traps Wishlist is too high-tech?"

We're not allowed to discuss whether we should be suggesting these ideas?

[Granite26]

What's to discuss?  Some people think they're too high tech, some people think they're technically ok but bad for the theme.  Nobody is going to convince anybody else.  We've framed the discussion and moved on to informed opinions, which have been stated.

DF isn't just vanilla.  It's intended to be modded into other fantasy type worlds.  Take a look over at mods, where we have kobold mod (no digging), zombie mod(with shotguns and nuclear reactors), orc death mod, and 2 lego mods.

I'm not really trying to historically justify any techs in the post, only say 'Here's some things that could expand the functionality of all worlds, even if they aren't in vanilla'  Even most of the suggestions stay away from technical specification or implimentation details.

[Silverionmox]

Whether or not dwarves are more technologically advanced than other races, whether or not apocryphal techs damage the period feel, etc are all side subjects anyway, and best decided by the developer. 

This is really intended to be a list of what is possible, and what would need to be added to enable more complicated stuff.  Whether or not it's appropriate for vanilla dwarves is a separate discussion.

Yeah. Every discussion about that starts to look like this one after a while.

[Granite26]

What would be needed to mod in flying T-Rexes:

Vehicles
Flying Vehicles

That's it.  There's no difference between adding the capability for raw-controlled magical floating castles and raw-controlled f-14's.

Or maybe a mod world with little ground, magical airships and dragon riders, a la Air from the Death Gate Cycle?

[Silverionmox]

Of course, that's how it should be. But we'll often end up arguing "it's cool!" "no, it's stupid!"

[Granite26]

Alrighty then, that's settled.  I'm going to add flying vehicles to the op

Oh, and (sweitx, Impaler[WrG], Techhead) : Final warning to spoilerize your early quotes of the OP before I start looking for a mod to delete them.  It makes reading the thread hard to follow, especially since the first 2 pages have so little content due to them

[Techhead]

Sorry. Fixed mine.

[G-Flex]

Application is everything, however. As I said upthread, Hero built a steam-engine: all it did was spin a copper ball (very fast). Nobody knew what the heck to do with it because the knowledge of how it could be applied wasn't there. But Dwarves have an understanding of gears and mechanisms, therefore (given that this is a fantasy game) it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that some brighter than average "village idiot" thought - "Hmm, if I attach this here, stick an axle there, and put this there, I can grind corn without a water-wheel or a windmill." - especially since gears (mechanisms) and axles are already in the game.

The "engine" you're thinking of was hardly an engine at all. The only thing it could move was itself. The ability to actually do work, like grinding wheat with a millstone, takes a hell of a lot more energy and would require something much different from "stick an axle in it and let it power something".

[Belteshazzar]

Whether or not it is appropriate for any of the civs in the final game to build gas, electric, elf, nuclear, powered devices and harness them for the power of SCIENCE, I would like the game's engine to be robust and flexible enough to incorporate a fairly realistic handling of such arcane and queer devices as would make Newton rise from the grave.

It is also of note that as players we generally control very special and extraordinary people. That triple Legendary character could very well be this world's da Vinci, Hero, Einstein, Hawking, Archimedes, or Tesla. In this way the Player is in the image of Divine Inspiration whispering sweet secrets and pouring the incomprehensible knowledge of higher planes into whatever poor fellow we choose.

Why limit our own powers creativity as not being 'period appropriate' when the only thing stopping me from building a very 'period inappropriate' High-rise Archeology is that bordom and the carp would overtake my efforts. I say let us make anything possible (with enough work) to the players, but don't worry about the AI's 'out-teching' the period, because as it stands the normal AI Dwarves arn't even capable of laying out a properly dwarven fortress design.

[Silverionmox]

Linking levers to levers.
That way, you can still activate a part of the system while retaining the benefits of a master lever. Also, since every single lever causes a delay (or better, will have a modifiable delay setting) there are very interesting things to do with timing... it would even be possible to link a chain of levers circularly, for some kind of clock that activates contraptions rhythmically.  Maybe it's better done with gear assemblies. Some kind of power would need to be inserted to keep the circle going, of course, but for now we just need to see what we can do with it.

[RAM]

Sorry, I haven't read al of this, but I would like to throw in some ideas that don't seem to be in the initial post...

I would like to see doors inverted with respect to pressure plates, at present, dwarf walks over plate, door opens, dwarf walks through door. Unfortunately, door is closed, so dwarf does not try to walk through door, so never steps on plate if plate is in front of door, door never opens... I would like, door is open unless goblin steps on plate outside door, or dwarf steps on plate inside door. I can't really see a use for hooking a plate to a door without inverting the signal, unless maybe you used it to release survivors from a pit, but what happens when they step off the plate into the door way, heh, that reminds me of the original Prince of Persia, there were these sliding blade trap/door things that would, erm, well, they were messy, and that game had really good graphics too...But yeah, the option to invert all on/off signals might be nice.

mechanical workshops might be nice, adding a speed boost to the work, I can imagine a mason using a spinning cog, or a crushing device in the early shaping stage of building furniture, a mechanical drill or chisel for fine work might not fit the setting. Heavy machinery in workshops might result in some loss of material...

Conveyor belt could be useful, a dwarf would consider it to be the same square as the end-point and somehow decide to drop it in the conveyor instead of walking there. It would probably be slower than hauling, but would save dwarf-time, so maybe less than helpful for sensitive items like rawhide...

Dwarf power would be good, you could have a machine that dwarves could use to add power to a system, also I would like to see large constructions, like drawbridges, have a power requirement, and a limit to how many dwarves can use one lever, so dwarves can power small things normally form the power they can generate via a lever, but larger things would require many levers or a power supply, that kinetic battery idea would be great with this as you could prepare it ahead of time so one dwarf could quickly raise the drawbridge, but it would take time and dwarf-power to build up the power to do it again, maybe the kinetic batteries could be hooked up to a construction but add activation time that would be dependant on the power that was being applied to it. So that a drawbridge that would normally require 5 dwarves to raise, could have some batteries hooked up to it and one dwarf could raise it, but it would take longer, but not much longer if there were more dwarves working on it...

Stone traps could be multi-level, I noticed the no trap without roof entry, but if the roof was several levels up then I would like to still be able to place them, although maybe they would be more powerful but less accurate.

good idea with the levers to levers, I would particularly like to be able to turn pressure plates on and off(checks to see if that is an option on levers, phew, I didn't wast all that time on a silly pump contraption to get my one-way door working...), being able to turn off that door closing plate without fooling around with water and doors and pumps and whatever would be a boon...

[praguepride]

Linking levers to levers.

This I highly support!

I like to have a series of bridges and in order to pull them all up I need to queue up a bunch of levers. It'd be nice if I can decide to just pull up one or all of the bridges.