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[Granite26]

added recursive levers (might be a pain to program though) and cleaned up the on/off/toggle verbage

[Random832]

Considering that the most advanced technological weapon is the crossbow in DF (and the most exciting technology is a simple pressure plate) I think going into "battery powered grinders" is a bit of a stretch. Sure the chinese have had gunpowder since the A.D's but they didn't use it like it's used today. At best it was used to set off firecrackers. Whoopdy doo.

Wrong. WP says: "The Chinese wasted little time in applying gunpowder to warfare, and they produced a variety of gunpowder weapons, including flamethrowers, rockets, bombs, and mines, before inventing firearms"

Early firearms were of course mostly incendiary in nature, but these early guns were in use even in europe by 1400. The tech cutoff is frankly no excuse for not allowing guns; if we're going to fall back on a vague "not in line with the fantasy flavor of it" line of argument we should at least be honest about it.

[G-Flex]

The Chinese were techno-wizard guys of the highest order. When they found out about some neat new technology, they went goddamn nuts with it.

They invented double-piston flamethrowers and hand grenades and trip-mines and things that shot fire and poison at you.

[Granite26]

Trip mines, you say?  Or rather, single use pressure plate traps?  Sounds like that could be a whole category.

Single Use (Requires mechanism)
        RockFall (Requires ceiling)
        Snare (Requires rope)
        Pit(Requires floor)
        Spiked Pit(Requires floor and spear or spike)
        Simple Weapon (axe on a string, requires weapon)
        Claymore (requires explosive)
        Cage (Requires cage)

Multi Use
        Weapon Trap

To compliment the multiuse traps we've got.

Edit:  Ok, fin, they are all single use already...

       

[RAM]

Maybe resetting plates should require more mechs than single-use plates. Given that dwarves are completely incapable of kneeling, bending over, or, in fact, voluntarily bending their body in any way, wouldn't something in a pit trap be stuck there until an access tunnel was built? Land mines don't sound like much fun to me, I want proper mines, the sort where you connect an unreliable fuse to several tons of buried explosive. Will it explode before the goblins get here? Will it explode after they have gone? Will it never explode, or, at least, not explode until some unlucky dwarf draws the tall straw and has to go out and check why it didn't explode... yet? Will it collapse half the fortress? Will it explode under a horde of goblins and rain goblin chunks down over some distant elf village for weeks to come...

Hmmm, that looks kind of off topic though, is there a specific explosives thread?

[Granite26]

Well, arguably, the ability to added a physics explosion is more on topic than what we're talking about.  You did a good job capturing the variables involved in explosives

Power
How much power varies
Fuse
How much fuse varies

etc

[praguepride]

Wrong. WP says: "The Chinese wasted little time in applying gunpowder to warfare, and they produced a variety of gunpowder weapons, including flamethrowers, rockets, bombs, and mines, before inventing firearms"

Early firearms were of course mostly incendiary in nature, but these early guns were in use even in europe by 1400. The tech cutoff is frankly no excuse for not allowing guns; if we're going to fall back on a vague "not in line with the fantasy flavor of it" line of argument we should at least be honest about it.

A one line summary of an entire book does leave a few things out. Early firearms did "exist" but they weren't widely used. I tend to use the 100's year war as a good point of reference because the technology between DF and that time period 1337-1463 seems to fit together beautifully from a technological standpoint. The primary range weapon was the bow or crossbow. Explosives were used as part of siege warfare, or possibly as a novelty stunt to appease a crazy noble. Who knows?

This: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_cannon is your firearm of the medieval ages (and earlier). Read the usage passage

"The hand cannon was a simple weapon, mostly effective in sieges and ambushes. It was less effective in open battle and in wet or windy conditions. "

I'd not necessarily be opposed to gobbos using crazy explosives to destroy walls (cue the LotR: Two Towers siege scene) but beyond breaking walls the usage just wasn't up to par with what we envision firearms to be. It was a one-shot affair that was incredibly inaccurate (there's a reason why they used them to hit at gigantic walls). There was no rifeling, there was no repeating ammunition, there was no safety (they were nearly as dangerous to the firing crews as to their intended targets)... there was a reason why it took as long as it did for firearms to be the weapon of choice on the battlefield.

@Crazy Chinese Inventors: Evidence would say otherwise, but my gut disagrees with this. I believe that when presented with a new technology any and all societies goes nuts trying to exploit it, but the Chinese DID actually document things which western civilization didn't do very well. I wouldn't be surprised if *somewhere* in Europe someone designed a flamethrower and it just wasn't recorded.

The tech cutoff is a "general guideline" but just like with any technology, you can find traces of its existence long before it becomes public.

[RAM]

If plates and traps are separated then this would be redundant with the ability to turn off plates, but I would like to be able to engage and disengage traps. If all my serrated discs get clogged by the enemy when they attack, then there won't be anything left to catch them when they retreat...

Also it would let me turn cage traps off versus megabeasts so that they have a half a chance...

[RAM]

I am not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but what about linking pressure plates to pressure plates so that they all trigger if one triggers and they won't untrigger until they are all ready to untrigger?

[kotekzot]

I am not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but what about linking pressure plates to pressure plates so that they all trigger if one triggers and they won't untrigger until they are all ready to untrigger?

i think this could be easily be acomplished with an and operator.

[praguepride]

Can we get combustion engines added to the list? I think it'd be neat to be able to combine booze + lava to get some REAL ULTIMATE POWER!

[Puck]

Don't know if already mentioned... but there's something I'd really like to see. SInce I have no clue about the code of the game I don't know which solution would be best.

It would be cool, if there was a solution for the problem with water triggered pressure plates and the things they are linked to getting out of synch. Maybe the option to set a pressure plate to "critical", which causes the game to check all the objects that are linked to it every x th cycle and, if necessary, to update the state.

[sunshaker]

I like the powered workshops, but I'd suggest that they require components to build; the powered Forge needs a trip hammer (think a giant Hammer Head trap component + gear assembly), the powered carpenter shop needs a large serrated disk (already a trap component, though maybe require it to be metal), the powered smelter needs some kind of bellows or fan (maybe giant bellows built at leather working shop).

[Techhead]

I just want pitfall traps. One hatch cover, one mechanism, built over open space. Must be manually reset after use.

[praguepride]

Even better if you can make spike traps that impale when you fall on them.

Or the punji tiger traps that spring spikes at you.