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[wallie79r]

The Inca and Aztec, and probably some other mesoamericans, used padded cloth armor which was woven so well that it compared favorably with steel and iron. While not very dwarfy, it would be nice to have elves with actual, functional armor.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Not a bad idea, Wallie79r. Do you have any online references for that, that I can look at?

Topcat: Crankshaft will be added to the OP, great suggestion!

Silverionmox, et all: I think, from this and other posts, that the necessity for a megathread on educating our dwarfs, the role of guilds, dwarfen intellectualism, suggestions for new skills, etc. is becoming more and more evident.

I don't mind hosting it here for now, but what this thread is really concerned with is just engineered, material, physical inventions.

I just feel that the subject's a little big to be handled here, in a way that's fair--and I really can't commit the time it would require to do a good job with another such thread.

[Squirrelloid]

Paint (and painters!).

(at least) 2 types:
paints for walls
paints for paintings (good) made at an Artist's Gallery workshop or somesuch.

Obviously both existed by 1400.  I imagine the first is lead-based and the second oil-based, but I can't swear to that for pre-1400.

Paintings should be able to be hung on walls.

-----

...and Tapestries (made at the weavers), which should be able to be hung on walls.

(For hanging an object on a wall, perhaps have it convert the wall to a colored engraved tile look?  This would provide a way to 'engrave' constructed walls)

[SirHoneyBadger]

Interesting factoid about old paint: In the bad old days before archaeologists became something more than just treasure hunters and grave robbers, people used to grind up Egyptian mummies-human ones-and use them for creating black paint.

This might be an interesting use for all those damn undead we're always running into: recycle them.

-Crankshaft and paints have been added, by the way.

[CoyoteTheClever]

Since this thread is also about technological progress, I think I might as well kick off a discussion on that. I remember the devs saying that eventually we should be able to play in earlier ages. If that is true, isn't it a little silly that a third generation dwarf would know how to make a catapult, metal weapons, ect?  Technological progress should be a gradual thing, with dwarves and other civilizations starting out with the basics and learning from there. Some civilizations are obviously more likely to be adept to technological progress than others (With Elves and Kobolds barely learning anything new in that regard. Though perhaps they might just have different technological progress trees) as well.

How would discoveries be made? Well, for basic discoveries, dwarves might just learn them from trial and error and experimentation. An apprentice might make an accident that turns out to be a great discovery, or a dwarf might see something in the natural world that inspires them. Later on, as writing systems develop, there might be more formal institutions dedicated to research and discovery. I think this opens up a lot of avenues for fun. It might be cool to generate a world at its 5th year, make some cool technological discoveries as a civilization, then abandon the fortress and speed up time to the year 200 or so and see how those discoveries affected the world. Perhaps even the names of great inventors might be engraved all over the walls and might be commonly discussed among academics.

Another fun idea with technological progress are dead end scientific theories. Not everything works out after all. A dwarf might even go mad trying to make his crazy invention work even though it is an impossibility. Or there might be some crazy discoveries that do work on some randomly generated worlds and not others, for some of the more fantasyish contraptions (In one world, portals might be feasable technology. In another world, they might not).

[jaked122]

there must be some form of viable explosive for Dwarves... I think that greek fire is close enough to quench my thirst

[CoyoteTheClever]

In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, if we are taken that to be a historical source, Zhuge Liang invented landmines in the 3rd century, so that is a kind of explosive  He used it against a southern tribe that had oiled rattan armor that was super strong and made them undefeatable (Perhaps that could be a possible elven invention?).

[CoyoteTheClever]

Er, fourth century rather.

[jaked122]

if the game was to generate inventions randomly, something like 'in the 100th year the sliding dwarves invented a cat pleasuring device'... this would be hilarious but I don't think that unless toady has a great revelation on the methods involved for this to be plausible, that it will ever happen.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I'm pretty interested in what might come of the comments he's made about "knowledge" being introduced into the game, and what that addition might mean for invention.

[OrigamiZoo]

Conveyor is definitely something I would like to see (I was just talking to a friend about this yesterday). Just make it so it moves slower than a dwarf and it wouldn't be unbalanced. Think of it... no more going outside to dump garbage. No more having people running around with loads of rocks, just convey them to your factories. And when burrows are added, this could be made into/for inter-burrow transfers. (As a side-note/thought, the logic for moving things could also be used for piping water/magma (steam?).)
How about terraforming (although minor)? By that I mean shaping the earth. you should be able to make dirt mounds or fill holes in with dirt. You could make farming terraces without having to pump water to it. (Which also fixes something that has bothered me for a bit, why does wet stone become mud?)
Ceramics/pottery is a must. esp. considering how it much it was used for construction, food storage, ect. With some recipes and minor (miner?) explosives too, you could have 'grenades'. 
Maybe a new building, a sawmill. allows more efficient uses of logs? Just make it so a full log is need for ash/charcoal. Limited use for dwarfs (except where wood is scarce), but humans might stand to benefit.
Batteries (which have been traced back to BC times) which could be used for (historically) electroplating. I'm sure dwarves could find some other uses for the power as well (torture justice). Zinc/iron and copper in a mild acid (like vinegar).

Thats it for now.

ps. I assume you are the HoneyBadger from Dom3?

[Odin]

The Inca and Aztec, and probably some other mesoamericans, used padded cloth armor which was woven so well that it compared favorably with steel and iron. While not very dwarfy, it would be nice to have elves with actual, functional armor.

Cloth armor was not something unique to the mesoamericans. Textile armor was probably the most widespread in europe in the early medieval period, and were used under other defensive weapons such as chainmail and plate as long as well into the 17th century.

While more effective than you'd think, I wouldn't say that cloth armor compares favorably with steel armor. Rather, it has different properties which to some extent gives better protection from some wounds, but less protection from others.

By layering textile fibres in much the same way we today make bulletproof vests from kevlar fibres, cloth armors have been shown to be quite effective against high velocity projectiles, such as arrows or bolts. These are traditionally what armour such as chainmail has been demonstrated as being vulnerable to. The same goes to an extent for blunt trauma weapons.

However. Against cutting implements, iron and steel armor is vastly superior indeed.

[Odin]

Not a bad idea, Wallie79r. Do you have any online references for that, that I can look at?

Well, I don't have any on mesoamerican references, but I do have some from europe.

Here's a few references. First some pictures all showing different styles of textile armor from different periods in europe. Mostly paintings, but there is a picture of an extant garment in there as well. Needless to say, textile armor tends to be a rare archaelogical find.

http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=8426

and here's some more info from the same site, on gambesons in general and one reproduction in particular.

http://www.myarmoury.com/review_rc_gambeson.html

Gambeson on wikipedia (yeah yeah I know, but still, it's a nice introduction to the subject)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambeson

A rather nice book on medieval warfare, containing quotes from a manuscript listing the various armaments of the local militia. The less wealthy having cloth armor instead of hauberks.

http://books.google.no/books?id=pgMQMmmPYMYC&pg=RA1-PA86&lpg=RA1-PA86&dq=gambeson&source=bl&ots=1YH1OPFlzA&sig=7iS9pR4xfVwzwvrw3YpkFKXEALw&hl=no&ei=l-31SYrqAo-Z_AamicTLCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8

I have some better sources, but unfortunately they aren't in english.

[Aquillion]

Another factor to remember -- different societies should have different technologies.  It isn't just matter of clear-cut "tech levels", but of people knowing the secrets of the things that are native and common to their area, and maybe not knowing the secrets of things from further away -- think silkworms or the ability to brew soy sauce, both of which were well-known in the East but nonexistent in the west.  Think Damascus Steel.  Think the absence of the wheel in Mesoamerica.

Some societies are logically going to be far behind AD 1400 tech.  They might even lack things like writing.  Not everyone will have domesticated every animal.  Not every society will know the secret of steel (although every dwarven one should.)

Also, everyone should check out this page -- it's research for a different game, but the fact that it's intended for a game (and on research of interest to a game, sorted by time period) makes it especially useful to us.

[technotopia]

 Inventions is great idea.
 However, everything depends on implementation.

 Team of researchdwarves or one scholar noble 'doing research' and finally bringing fruit, would be rather bad way.
 I suppose inventions should be random (smth like strange mood results) and not guaranteed.
 So player can not rely on having some technology of producing desired alloy later. Probability increases with time and number of skilled dwarves (in a way related to desired idea) and probably decreases with number of already achieved discoveries, one can not have everything. In this case every other fortress will be unique, hence need to devise new designs for given set of available ores, resources and discoveries. If your dwarves have missed something valuable, they'll have to trade for it, thats another good thing.