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[MagicJuggler]

Good day everyone; over the past few days, there have been numerous suggestions for all sorts of outlandish means of killing things dead. So in the interest of consolidating them all into a single grand unified series of suggestions, this here is a checklist of things to do or not:

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=26009.0 [Pyrotechnics]
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=25969.0 [Rotatable Floors]
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=25912.0 [Vehicles]
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=25712.0 [Winches]
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=26042.0 [Naval Combat]

Summary of each one

Pyrotechnics Board:
-Flame Trap (Either Pressure Plate or Lever)
-Explosive Trap
-Grenade
-Flamethrower
-Siege Flamethrower
-Shaped Charge
-Fire prevention methods, including carrying water buckets/improved dwarven AI that doesn't loot burning items.
-Torches

I suggested consolidating the assorted types of explosive into a single customizable explosive based on payload, power, and explosion direction (e.g. linear vs. conical vs. radial). Also suggested that torches should be lever-based and flamethrower tech should be based on screwpump/torch/oil tanks. I also suggested newton's third law be capable of affecting non-fixed objects like dwarves and buildings (e.g. allowing for explosive knockback or rocket propulsion)


Vehicles:
-Vehicles such as boats, siege engines, horse carts, chariots, the Helepolis of Rhodes, or Dwarven Steam Tank Deathmobiles, could all be consolidated as part of a generic vehicle-construction system.
-Vehicles would be built from the ground-up out of building components that only stick to the vehicle, and could later have extra parts grafted onto them.
-Vehicles could have internal stockpiles.
-Vehicles could have tasks allotted to them, and Dwarves would attempt to use the vehicle to aid them in such tasks. E.g. a woodcutting/wood hauling vehicle would provide transport and a mobile stockpile for a woodcutter. 
-Traffic zones could also be used to designate allowed areas for vehicles to wander.
-Vehicles in time of crisis could be drafted, in essence being assigned to squads as a form of transport. Units would do their best to remain in that transport.
-Power can be either internal or external. Internal power includes steam engines/work pillars/etc and can be hooked up to gears/axles like normal. External power uses an animal harness, and is only considered power for the purpose of moving the vehicle.
-The total weight of the vehicle is based on materials, and determines the power to movement ratio, as well as the total buoyancy of the object.

Rotatable Floors:
-Floors of radius up to 3 can rotate in either xy, xz, or yz axis, with items/objects attached to it. This would allow for siege-weapon turrets, secret passages, etc.
-A fuzzy-logic version of the lever should exist in the form of the wheel. The wheel would be capable of making 45-degree turns which would allow for fuzzy-logic implementations of objects like floodgates, wheels, gears, and drawbridges (rotate clockwise/counterclockwise);
-45-degree floors and walls should be possible. Walls that rotate 45 degrees become ramps, or floors at 90 degrees
Winch:
-Basically a rope on crane, allowing for elevators/other things. Could be used alongside rotatable floors for neat devices.
-Such devices include cranes, wrecking balls, hooks, cages, etc.

Naval Combat:
-Primarily extended from the vehicle thread, expands on buoyancy ideas, as well as naval equipment/training for Dwarves.

What all have we agreed on?

[Capntastic]

Why do we need a thread to discuss ideas that already have their own threads?  Many of which are already in the dev notes (explosives, torches, boats, etc.)?

[MagicJuggler]

Main reason I made this thread was an attempt to consolidate a wide variety of ideas, as a lot of them would generally overlap with one another. Directional explosives would change direction on a rotating tile for instance, while the idea of weight for vehicles would also have to be taken into account for a winch (just HOW much can it carry). The idea of grabbable objects such as cages with hooks on them could end up being extended to latchable terrain pieces such as ceilings-walls that could  be latched onto with either a winch or a rope-on-a-hook (for adventure mode in particular; imagine having to swing over a spiked pit). And with two rotatable floors with pulleys on the midjoints, and a winch with grabbing claw attached to it, one could build mechanical "hands" for long-range work such as retreiving stone from aquifers. I assume Toady is adding a system for wall damage, and therefore trap components would also be a viable way to represent vehicle-mounted weapons (e.g. the Dwarven siege drill or the giant wrecking ball).

[Silverionmox]

You might want to change the thread title, I expected a bunch of melee-related threads, not deadly contraptions.

[MagicJuggler]

You might want to change the thread title, I expected a bunch of melee-related threads, not deadly contraptions.

Changed to Combat Machines of Doom! Also edited the initial message to include other aspects. Feel free to start yay-ing, naying, adding new categories, or deciding how to merge categories. (As naval combat is essentially a subset of the vehicle subsection, plus a few extras regarding training dwarves for swimming/giving them breathing equipment).

[StrayCat]

Erm. Dwarven mining charges don't have to be contraptions to utterly slay everyone. You have to go out of your way to make a load of them, and their original purpose is to mine. You seem to have neglected mentioning that my thread is also about FIRE PREVENTION. "Water" really doesn't tell anyone what on earth I'm talking about. I'm surprised no one's asked yet "Why is there water as a portion of discussion in a fire thread?" Please change that to Fire Prevention.

[MagicJuggler]

Erm. Dwarven mining charges don't have to be contraptions to utterly slay everyone. You have to go out of your way to make a load of them, and their original purpose is to mine. You seem to have neglected mentioning that my thread is also about FIRE PREVENTION. "Water" really doesn't tell anyone what on earth I'm talking about. I'm surprised no one's asked yet "Why is there water as a portion of discussion in a fire thread?" Please change that to Fire Prevention.

Sorry about that mate; changed accordingly. I liked the talk about explosives in general though and found it would integrate better with the other suggestions though I thought some of the ideas like mobile flamethrowers could integrate better with the concept of customizable vehicles...e.g. build your own siege flamethrower.

[StrayCat]

I suggested building siege flamethrowers off the bat. You said that'd be integrated with modded in carts and vehicles. By "Mobile" you mean "Man portable" as of yet, because carting about 35Kg of oil, wood, and a torch seems to slow dwarves down, oddly enough. The explosives won't be consolidated. They're in different categories and require different materials for a reason. They're different from each other. An atom bomb and a bottle full of vinegar and baking powder both explode. They're rather different. Same deal with mining charges and exploding traps. Already talked about this in the thread. And N's third law will go with game mechanics when Toady finds a way to factor it in- since it's physics and realistic, I think I don't have to remind toady that things are better realistic. And yes, he did show me to include screw pumps in my previous siege flamethrower design. Oil, a barrel, and the torch were already written in from the start. And I still don't see why the torches light up by flicking a switch, and I've said so.

[MagicJuggler]

You yourself mentioned infantry flamethrowers. That is one scale of weapon. Siege flamethrowers are another scale. A dwarf-portable siege flamethrower would probably require two, probably more Dwarves to properly tow it into place, certain areas of the vehicle being designated as latch points (an area that would overlap with the winch suggestions; come to think of it, latch points could probably be attached to rope/chain as well, making it possible for troops at a distance to carry the vehicle). This isn't too unreasonable, right?

When I suggested the consolidated explosive, I said the material used in it would determine the nature of the explosion. So adding more oil would increase the incendiary component, while adding nails (or other sharp objects) would increase the shrapnel output. The idea was that by adding materials into the alchemical soup we call an explosive, we would have a weapon that would be considered nice and dandy. What is it that makes a mining charge so special from a regular explosive anyway aside from it being more suited to mining? It's just a more powerful explosive that goes in a single direction. What's to prevent a really really big bomb lowered into a mineshaft from doing the same thing?

As for why a torch would light by a switch, the best reason I could come up with is a wheellock mechanism where striking against a flint surface would generate a spark. Sort of like how a wheellock mechanism would work. Extinguishing it would be another matter...hmm.

How do we summon Toady from the nether plane where he dwells? Derek Smart! Derek Smart! Derek Smart! NOOO WRONG INCANTATION...

[dizzyelk]

What is it that makes a mining charge so special from a regular explosive anyway aside from it being more suited to mining? It's just a more powerful explosive that goes in a single direction. What's to prevent a really really big bomb lowered into a mineshaft from doing the same thing?

Actually, early "mining charges" involved drilling holes, filling 'em with power, topping with sand and packing it down with a fuse. Then lighting the fuse and getting out of the way.

[MagicJuggler]

Hmm...a suggestion for a "Fill with Powder" designation perhaps that would fill the area with up to a depth x/7 of powder (depending on the depth you want to fill it up to? Only explodes in contact with a source of flame, such as a magma man or a fuse. This could be used to create the custom-bombs/charges then...with some basic bomb design one could build a PACKED clay-pot superbomb that would really hurt when it blows up, or we could take advantage of the Misznay-Schardin effect to build directional claymores/etc. Or even with a proper use of hatches/newton's third-law/a double-gunpowder chamber, we could build primitive rockets. Yummy.

[jaked122]

why not make it so the player can build vehicles like walls,floors, ect. so there is (possibly) less work to do  to all this to happen, it could easily be made so that weapons of all kinds could be built into a vehicle, a furnace for powering the wheels or what have you, and a 'driving' skill

[Fist_Of_Armok]

Steam Tank=Freakish Living Wagon Cancels Just Sit There, Mating with Metal Stockpile?

[Belteshazzar]

That mental image made me imagine the Chaos 'Defiler' siege engine from Dawn of War. Seriously that thing was the most annoying piece of warpforged scrap imaginable. It brings to mind simultaneous images of a crab, a tarantula, and a washing machine from Hell. I can't remember how many bases and men I lost to those armored monstrosities. But I am all in favor or being able to give something like that a magma bath.

[Fist_Of_Armok]

Ah yes, the Defiler. Awesome machine, that.

Sure, why not? Wagons are, in DF, alive for god knows what reason, so we might end up with massive metal tanks that scream for death when attacked.

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