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[CobaltKobold]

unless you're building a frigging clock tower for each trap

Sounds dwarfy, actually. Strike the Hour!

[darkevilme]

Adding here cause i dont want to leave the forum strewn with the relics of my musings.

1. A big reason i want the 'designate safe area' command is so i can use siege weapons for defence...and find out how dangerous they are to my defence.

2. I dunno how long it'll take for this to be implemented but it'd add a lot of flavour to modded races if we could define their settlements as something other than the hard coded six or so used by the original races. Not sure how we'd do this. Maybe a paint program or something? with the ability to mark down walls, floors, furniture and places for people of various proffessions to stand around. Then save this like a multilayered picture which'd be generated into a building as part of the worldbuilding of NPC sites.

3. Again for modding, seperate the Martial Trances from the Artifact Trances. At least as far as tags are concerned, for those of us who want one or the other.

[Silverionmox]

2. I dunno how long it'll take for this to be implemented but it'd add a lot of flavour to modded races if we could define their settlements as something other than the hard coded six or so used by the original races. Not sure how we'd do this. Maybe a paint program or something? with the ability to mark down walls, floors, furniture and places for people of various proffessions to stand around. Then save this like a multilayered picture which'd be generated into a building as part of the worldbuilding of NPC sites.

We'll need a growth algorithm for settlements, and a ways to mess with it. It should work with very basic units (eg. shelter, movement vectors, food production, ..) which we can then define in several levels (eg. shelter2: 4 walls, roof, floor, 2 beds, table, chairs; shelter 3: 4 walls, roof, floor, room1: 3 beds, chest; room2: table, chair, cabinet; etc.). All these units would also have values of what they contribute to the settlement (eg. shelter3: habitation 4, storage 1, industry 1; or elven tree house: habitation 3, storage 1, food 2, camouflage 3). We could list the buildings that are allowed for a given civ, and when there are excess resources it will build one of these randomly, chosen from those that correspond to its highest need (eg. habitation or industry or whatever). We could define a preference for spreading out or concentrating in a spot.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I agree about more algorithms (including fractal ones, for ore placement, plant growth, and such) in more places.

I also agree that traps are way overpowered, in their current form. That's not *necessarily* a bad thing, but I also don't think that the particular unbalanced state traps currently exist in, really adds a whole lot to the game.

[darkevilme]

Well that would be the point at which it could be implemented i suppose. When towns become more complicated and actually have things like workshops in them and check for nearby resources.

My basic setup would of been where you could design a structure using constructed walls, floors, stairs etc. then add doors and furniture and places for people to stand based on proffession, so a spot for a leader or marksman to linger. And these structures would be placed instead of town like buildings. Course the structure could easily be carved subterranean rooms instead or a mix of both. To link i thought of adding four types of special tiles in the design stage. Which represent points it will either tunnel corridors from or build bridges of constructed floor tiles from to link other structures in the settlement with this one, four types cause you need straight edged and quickest path versions of each. Straight edged would only lay these on e/w or n/s lines where as quickest path would do diagonals. This'd allow you to build customized underground fortresses of a sort if you wish.
On top of that it seems feasible for it to be saved as 'Naga housing spire: shelter 3, storage 1'

Though while we're on the subject i do hope that settlement structures wont be collapsing into the water in future. Either cause it checks that it's spawned on dry land or cause it'll build pylons down to the lakebed or what have you as support.

[eerr]

rockfall traps without ceilings make no sense

perhaps they should require building the trap "above" the spot?


with spring loaded wall mechanisms, a heavy duty power source is going to be a huge waste hooked up to a continuously powered reloading mechanism.

merely because of the axels, there are fancy ways to disconnect something from a continuos power source.


the problem is, we need to balance the traps. Don't forget that.

toady will require the assitance of a physicist if he wants to make a semi-accurate model of the real world.

any and all fancy control mechanisms involved (moving parts) will decrease the ability of the trap to function.

a stonefall trap will ironically be the epitome of traps, while cave-ins are the epitome of usefulness and reliablity.


What we need is an engineer/physicist, not a mathemetician or programmer. Fnet from friction, gravity, power, ect potential energy. the mechanisms will require some research into engineering, but it's not that far away from a small abstraction, considering they're not even depicted yet.

toady needs to recruit an engineer

[Dragooble]

On stone-fall traps in fields

[LordDemon]

I sort of see how stone fall trap could work outside. Take a head size stone, rig it up with a coiled spring. Dig the spring into the ground, so the stone looks just like a stone on ground, then make a tripwire. Someone steps on the tripwire, spring unwounds, practically shooting the rock. This is sort of like a trap with bent tree brush with spikes on it. The stone doesn't even need to be that big, because it get more speed then freefalling stone, if the spring is strong enough.

As for weapon traps rearming themselves, they could be powered by weight too. The creature steps on a stone, and it's weight causes stone to lover abit, and a flywheel to speed up (mechanism presenting gears). The energy is now stored into flywheel, which can be used to rearm trap. Under the stone is a spring, so that when the weight is lifted (by chopping it to pieces) the stone raises up again. Next time someone steps on it the flywheel will again speed up. Jamming would mean that too much of a corpse is left on the stone, and the mechanism will not reload.


While we are on sibject of springs, why not a spring trap? I would love to be able to push enemies sideways on a narrow bridge.
The game also needs the crushing room type of trap. Moving walls, that will squish everything in between them.

[buman]

A rock trap above ground could just be a mini pit rather then something that falls on you, or some type of rock trap door that smashes your ankles in.

Considering the dwarfish powers available and the unknown size of a square, a dwarf could make a large underground spring loaded contraption to power a multi use trap. When it jams it could be that the spring mechanism is also out of energy.

[sweitx]

I have to agree with Footkerchief here.

The amount of stored energy in a watch spring is extremely tiny. It only moves watch hands, and not very quickly at all.

Try winding up a spring large enough and tightly enough to send giant axe blades screaming through the air twenty times over. It won't work. At all.

It isn't just a matter of "increasing the size", unless you mean increasing the size to a degree that doesn't even make mechanical sense anymore unless you're building a frigging clock tower for each trap.

Also, a pendulum can work for hours because it doesn't encounter resistance. Every time it hits a goblin it would lose energy and slow down, becoming useless and needing to be reset. All a pendulum does is store energy in the form of its own motion.

A pendulum isn't even "powered by" gravity. It's not powered by anything. It simply isn't slowed down, because it has very low internal friction. Its momentum carries it up, gravity brings it down, repeat; the gravity never adds more net energy to the system, and it'll slow down like any other unpowered moving object if you introduce friction/collisions. If it's a ridiculously heavy pendulum moving at a decent rate, it might take a few hits, but that's all. Also, how the hell are you going to conceal a giant swinging pendulum in the middle of a field, anyway?


And no, a "mouse trap" style stonefall trap wouldn't make sense. A stonefall trap requires a rather  large chunk of rock, and things just don't scale well enough that you can put a bigger spring in there and expect it to work just fine. After all, you're basically describing a catapult there. Not exactly something you can stealthfully build into the ground, nor would it discharge very rapidly.

The trap can also have power stored with a large counterweight, kind of like a grandfather clock.  The weight will drive a heavy duty escapement that will in term power a trap with swinging weapons.

[cjet79]

I have to agree with Footkerchief here.

The amount of stored energy in a watch spring is extremely tiny. It only moves watch hands, and not very quickly at all.

Try winding up a spring large enough and tightly enough to send giant axe blades screaming through the air twenty times over. It won't work. At all.

It isn't just a matter of "increasing the size", unless you mean increasing the size to a degree that doesn't even make mechanical sense anymore unless you're building a frigging clock tower for each trap.

Also, a pendulum can work for hours because it doesn't encounter resistance. Every time it hits a goblin it would lose energy and slow down, becoming useless and needing to be reset. All a pendulum does is store energy in the form of its own motion.

A pendulum isn't even "powered by" gravity. It's not powered by anything. It simply isn't slowed down, because it has very low internal friction. Its momentum carries it up, gravity brings it down, repeat; the gravity never adds more net energy to the system, and it'll slow down like any other unpowered moving object if you introduce friction/collisions. If it's a ridiculously heavy pendulum moving at a decent rate, it might take a few hits, but that's all. Also, how the hell are you going to conceal a giant swinging pendulum in the middle of a field, anyway?


And no, a "mouse trap" style stonefall trap wouldn't make sense. A stonefall trap requires a rather  large chunk of rock, and things just don't scale well enough that you can put a bigger spring in there and expect it to work just fine. After all, you're basically describing a catapult there. Not exactly something you can stealthfully build into the ground, nor would it discharge very rapidly.

Are there plans to let us build giant pendulum traps in one of the next versions!?  Maybe it deals hammer damage based on the size of the creature, and the weight of the materials, except for the gear affects the hammer damage, or momentum.

[timmeh]

bent tree brush with spikes on it.

This is brilliant.....



I would love to see this in the next version.