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[Andir]

Tunnellers ARE necessecary!

And what we need is something that mandates things that's harder to get rid of than nobles.

If you want to make it desirable to have forts without bottlenecks, you don't necesarily need more monsters with gadgets; you need the need for ventilation.

You make a huge underground fort, and hit a gas pocket and the only place for the gas to go is your one-tile-wide entrance corridor . . . you're screwed. Make it open to the air, and no problem.

Some other, subtler applications for ventilation;

Wood/charcoal furnaces emit smoke
Non-dispersing miasma
Air quality?

Ventilation is fairly easy to secure though... everything from grates to passing it over a magma river.  Also, with the proper layout ventilation isn't that hard.

I'm not saying that I don't like the idea.  I do in fact.  I even like the idea of sewage systems on top of it, but it would require some modifications ot the current liquid algorithms.

[bjlong]

Yes, but attackers should have ways inside those bars or grates. Again, give the attackers the tools and intelligence to get through dwarven defenses, and let the rest happen without hard-coding. (Of course, this should be scalable, both in terms of tools and intelligence.)

[Granite26]

and air vents over magma flows seems.... counter productive?

[Andir]

and air vents over magma flows seems.... counter productive?

Why?  You are venting smoke and bad air out of the fortress.  If anything, the hot air rises law would facilitate the exhaustion of air.  It also serves as a barrier to entry if an enemy should happen to try to come into your fort via the ventilation.  For an intake, you simply place them upside down in a chasm (dig into a chasm, build a floor and walls around it, then remove the floor.)  The enemy would have to fly to get in.  Even then, just put a grate down instead of a floor.  Then the enemy would have to fly... and destruct the grate.  You would of course plan for this by running the ventilation system past your barracks first and placing a few grates to slow them down while you pelt them with bolts.

[snelg]

Maybe having your cattle actually need to eat would help move more of the fortress away from that bottleneck, most of them would eat grass and stuff (which are found outside). Either they could be let outside or dwarves would have to get the food inside.
Then again... they'd probably all eat plump helmets in the end anyway. >_>

[Granite26]

and air vents over magma flows seems.... counter productive?

Why?  You are venting smoke and bad air out of the fortress.  If anything, the hot air rises law would facilitate the exhaustion of air.  It also serves as a barrier to entry if an enemy should happen to try to come into your fort via the ventilation.  For an intake, you simply place them upside down in a chasm (dig into a chasm, build a floor and walls around it, then remove the floor.)  The enemy would have to fly to get in.  Even then, just put a grate down instead of a floor.  Then the enemy would have to fly... and destruct the grate.  You would of course plan for this by running the ventilation system past your barracks first and placing a few grates to slow them down while you pelt them with bolts.

The purpose is to get clean air in as much as it is to get bad air out.  Having magma smoke gunking up your clean incoming air would defeat the purpose

[Andir]

and air vents over magma flows seems.... counter productive?

Why?  You are venting smoke and bad air out of the fortress.  If anything, the hot air rises law would facilitate the exhaustion of air.  It also serves as a barrier to entry if an enemy should happen to try to come into your fort via the ventilation.  For an intake, you simply place them upside down in a chasm (dig into a chasm, build a floor and walls around it, then remove the floor.)  The enemy would have to fly to get in.  Even then, just put a grate down instead of a floor.  Then the enemy would have to fly... and destruct the grate.  You would of course plan for this by running the ventilation system past your barracks first and placing a few grates to slow them down while you pelt them with bolts.

The purpose is to get clean air in as much as it is to get bad air out.  Having magma smoke gunking up your clean incoming air would defeat the purpose

That's why you protect the exhaust with Magma and your intake could be protected by placing far below ground or in a chasm to pull in nice cool air as I explained above.

[nordo]

Considering the heavy cpu taxation that fluids demand, is there really any processor in the world that can handle airflow calculations?

[Granite26]

and air vents over magma flows seems.... counter productive?

Why?  You are venting smoke and bad air out of the fortress.  If anything, the hot air rises law would facilitate the exhaustion of air.  It also serves as a barrier to entry if an enemy should happen to try to come into your fort via the ventilation.  For an intake, you simply place them upside down in a chasm (dig into a chasm, build a floor and walls around it, then remove the floor.)  The enemy would have to fly to get in.  Even then, just put a grate down instead of a floor.  Then the enemy would have to fly... and destruct the grate.  You would of course plan for this by running the ventilation system past your barracks first and placing a few grates to slow them down while you pelt them with bolts.

The purpose is to get clean air in as much as it is to get bad air out.  Having magma smoke gunking up your clean incoming air would defeat the purpose

That's why you protect the exhaust with Magma and your intake could be protected by placing far below ground or in a chasm to pull in nice cool air as I explained above.

I think that sucking air up from underground would be... irl... unlikely to generate an infinite stream of good air.  Besides, at this point you are positing a bottomless pit AND magma on the same map as proof that air tunnels would be too easy to defend to be worth adding.

Gamewise, the point would be that good air = fresh air = outside air

[Andir]

I think that sucking air up from underground would be... irl... unlikely to generate an infinite stream of good air.  Besides, at this point you are positing a bottomless pit AND magma on the same map as proof that air tunnels would be too easy to defend to be worth adding.

Gamewise, the point would be that good air = fresh air = outside air

It doesn't have to be a bottomless pit chasm... just a hole really.  Something with spikes at the bottom or something.  It doesn't even have to be a pit... just a hole in a cliff high off the ground.  Put the entrance over water, with weapon traps in it if you don't have a pit.  There are multiple ways to make it really hard for the enemy and really easy for the player to make.

Edit:  Most of the forts I make have a long entrance road surrounded by a multi level pit.  this leads up to an entrance "wall" with a single door.  It would be incredibly easy to put a vent in the wall and it would be positioned above a VERY deep pit with no real convenient way to get in besides building a 50 tile long "road" across the pit.  That would take forever and I think I could kill the invader long before they were able to finish.

[Hague]

Hrm... What I see is the opportunity for expansion of the engineer archetype. Mechanics could be used as a trap-destroying/disarming ability that can be possessed by sieging goblins. Perhaps world-gen units would have more varied skill-sets and you could encounter goblins that had engineering skill and would pit a quality roll against the quality roll of the built trap. If the trap destroyer wins the roll he saves against the trap.

[Warlord255]

Considering the heavy cpu taxation that fluids demand, is there really any processor in the world that can handle airflow calculations?

You might be right. It might just be enough to need air holes just for getting rid of smoke.

[sonerohi]

We can make smoke last the same time as it does now, but limit it's expansion away from the source. Anything in the area will get a really small damage done to them (should be some way to make it lungs if we thought hard enough). The damage would only be enough to kill a low-toughness dwarf if they stood through 2 whole periods of smoke without healing anything.

[Andir]

Considering the heavy cpu taxation that fluids demand, is there really any processor in the world that can handle airflow calculations?

You might be right. It might just be enough to need air holes just for getting rid of smoke.

These calculations would not have to happen every turn like water does now.  In fact, I'd argue that water doesn't have to happen on every turn, but then we'd get into the argument over using threads again...

[bjlong]

What might work is setting the wind to be a certain direction, then somehow listing all the possible paths for the wind to take. (Each hole would get either an "in", "out" or "either" state.) The number of tiles that it takes to get through the tunnels, as well as the number of turns required to get to the outside would both be somehow inversely proportional to how much wind would flow through that path.

Of course, that would take a nasty initial CPU load, especially with multiple holes. You could just stick with the previous configuration until the new pathing is completed, and say that the lag is because of air currents reconfiguring. Which is kinda weak, but still.