Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[CobaltKobold]

I'm still not sure how one "accesses" the water material (or the other hardcoded materials like glass, potash, lye, etc.) in the new material system.  They're certainly not part of a creature/plant material list.  Maybe they're in the INORGANIC group?

well, since Toady did mention going through the 'filth' materials, when he was going down the list of materials for RG validity, they're presumably accessible.

Be somewhat surprised if you didn't get ice (and, thus, water) accessed somehow through Blizzardmen and/or something new.

[Shoku]

Y'know.. I know that F=mA, and E(g)=mg I believe because it's been a while.

Ep=mgh: Ep=Energy potential, m=mass, g=acceleration due to gravity (9.81m/s/s on Earth), and h=height above ground.
Ek=mvv/2: Ek=Energy kinetic, m=mass and v=velocity.
Units are in m/s, m/s/s, m, and kg.

Here's the formula sheet I use.

But I don't care for all the technicalities. I just want adamantine to do more DMG than iron.

I agree.  Legendary metals should do legendary damage and have legendary value.

Should gold do more damage than iron because it's rarer/more valuable?

So it's just a weighted average, which is both obvious and might not be true for all alloys. I know it isn't always true of things like melting point, and since different crystal structures for different metals are involved, I'm not sure it would always be true for (all types of) alloys either. It probably gives a good approximation for most, though.

If you're smart enough about it you can make alloys that do crazy stuff like have a negative refraction index (if you stuck a pencil in it the pencil should look like it bends to never be in it at all I think.)

If i could get the scientifical stuff for free (i just love open access!) one (i) could look a bit into the mess to setup a simpliefied calculator for alloy properties. But sadly scientists sell theyr Results that are in many many cases paid by the state (or the Eu and other govermental organisations) to a paying circle.

I guess a main thing that keeps programmers from doing Physic-systems like dfs is the inavaibility of data. This expands to other fields like economys, social science etc.

The main grant type research is fairly accessible and it's just the whole paying the journals for printing/hosting articles thing that erects a dollar barrier.

With crystal related phenomena you probably couldn't make a nice formula though.

If i could get the scientifical stuff for free (i just love open access!) one (i) could look a bit into the mess to setup a simpliefied calculator for alloy properties. But sadly scientists sell theyr Results that are in many many cases paid by the state (or the Eu and other govermental organisations) to a paying circle.

I guess a main thing that keeps programmers from doing Physic-systems like dfs is the inavaibility of data. This expands to other fields like economys, social science etc.

People don't want to just give away things they spent time and other people and their own money on, I think it is a detriment that our countries don't pay scientists and give away this information for free as an aid to world globalization. However that would require us from not want to kill each other constantly.

Technical information at this level mostly just doesn't show up in google results because there aren't hobbyists making webpages about it. It's like how wikipedia has 20 page entries for some anime series but maybe a page about calibi-yau manifolds. The people who sit around documenting everything they know anything about on sites like wikipedia just aren't the ones that know about this stuff.

I mean the Papers in general. And i dont have the money for all those the fancy Magazines which even let you pay for the online version of the article (wich you can circumvent by Google-cache but i dont want to get in any "shade of gray zone"). Getting even a simple artice for free is darn hard. Thankfully organisations like the "Frauenhofer institute" have Open Access Projects . Which i like to explore - TVtropes-effect for geeks and nerds.

And newspapers are basically dieing because they don't have that pay model and just handed articles out for free on the net. I wish it could be free too but publishing this stuff is a profession and they worry about the quality dropping if they change anything.

I know what you mean. A gigantic sledgehammer wouldn't make a particularly good weapon (unless you were fighting a wagon, or something) but it just looks a hell of a lot more fun than realistic warhammers

I just realized that a wagon based megabeast has a chance of being a bug in the next release.

-

From reading the medieval interest weapons stuff all this warhammer talk has me feeling the need to mention the bec de corbin. I don't actually have anything to say about it though.

[Mel_Vixen]

I'm still not sure how one "accesses" the water material (or the other hardcoded materials like glass, potash, lye, etc.) in the new material system.  They're certainly not part of a creature/plant material list.  Maybe they're in the INORGANIC group?

well, since Toady did mention going through the 'filth' materials, when he was going down the list of materials for RG validity, they're presumably accessible.

Be somewhat surprised if you didn't get ice (and, thus, water) accessed somehow through Blizzardmen and/or something new.

just checked the raws. Blood, Slime, milk and Alcohol is there but no Water thought toady said that this are only "some" Raws.
Liquid-man and semi-liquid-man like Sand or Mud would be interresting for theyr physics because a weapon might pass through them without doing any harm. The question is if there is any tag that tells a tissue-Material to let stuff pass through without harm. On The other hand with enought strenght a Liquid man could be very problematic with stings and blows from his arms. Speaking of bodieparts A liquid-man wouldnt even bound to any form.
Makes me wonder if a Sand-man can walk up, then flow around you and then walk away from you while you drop dead because in the flowing part got skinned (Some 1000 atacks per second that add up) by said sandman.

With crystal related phenomena you probably couldn't make a nice formula though.

Whos talking about a formula? it schould be possible with the properties of the materials to create a virtual alloy which can be tested virtually (Wich actually seems to be done already - if i could just get this one paper on the issue for free!) on its properties. Thought said properties wouldnt be 100% exact but a good quota should do fine especally with "fantasy" alloy of Phlebotonium and/or clownite.

The modelling whould have to be done only once for any desired alloy - just keep the results of this one simulation.

[Quatch]

If i could get the scientifical stuff for free (i just love open access!) one (i) could look a bit into the mess to setup a simpliefied calculator for alloy properties. But sadly scientists sell theyr Results that are in many many cases paid by the state (or the Eu and other govermental organisations) to a paying circle.

I assure you it isn't this simple, and this isn't even really true.

Scientists don't sell their results to journals. Frequently it costs us money to get articles published. We don't get any payment for publishing (from the publisher), or for doing peer-review. Journal publishing is a bit of a trap that Science as a community has gotten itself into. ArXiv and such with the internet may get us out of it, but it will be a long haul.

Summarized in style in the first panel of this comic: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1200

Now, back to your regularly scheduled physics/RAWs discussion.

[Darkond2100]

The thing about hammers as weapons is that warhammers are actually quite light weapons with relatively small heads to begin with, not the sledges that fantasy typically depicts; they were designed to combat a hardened iron armor that other, edged weapons might glance off of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_hammer

honestly, I still picture the fantasy war hammer when I iamgine what's going on in DF because it fits... Toady obviously has some sort of war hammer in mind for the statistics he's created for them, and I guess it would be best to ask him what his intent is.

I know what you mean. A gigantic sledgehammer wouldn't make a particularly good weapon (unless you were fighting a wagon, or something) but it just looks a hell of a lot more fun than realistic warhammers

This is something like what I imagine as a warhammer:

Or THIS Dwarf's Hammer (Ignore the human, she is is slave). Well, it's kinda like an artifact hammer, with all the engraving on it:

[Manae]

I know what you mean. A gigantic sledgehammer wouldn't make a particularly good weapon (unless you were fighting a wagon, or something) but it just looks a hell of a lot more fun than realistic warhammers

A maul and a sledgehammer are basically the same thing, as far as I can tell.

I was curious about whether there's historical precedent for such a weapon, and it turns out that one was used at the Combat of the Thirty in 1350: "Billefort fought with a mallet 25lbs. weight, and others with what arms they chose."  However, the way the author singles out the "mallet" for specific mention suggests that such a heavy weapon was an unusual choice.

A general desired weight I've heard in the past is around five pounds for a hand weapon, so twenty-five seems worth mentioning even if the mallet was being used two-handed. It might sound like nothing, but swinging that kind of thing around for fifteen minutes can take a lot out of you.

[RavingManiac]

Here is a video of a warhammer made by Cold Steel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP3kWUxoZIs

Yeah, the things are really scary. The spike on the opposite side of the hammerhead is used as much as the front end, and can stab through armor.


Regarding adamantine not being heavy enough for a war hammer, why not just make it have a reasonably high mass, but low weight? The stuff is magical, after all. This will make swinging an adamantine hammer feel like swinging an iron hammer on the moon.

[Im_Sparks]

After playing Mass Effect 2 and then Dwarf Fortress..

Will it be, at any point possible to create a Geth-like race? IE: Founding a civ deep down, and creating replicating organic machines to wage war with the surface?

They'd need "Sleep" at "Hubs" to recharge, they'd need food in the form of maintenance I guess, and I think the nobles like "System Administrator" would be amazing. Also, the caste system would be great because there'd be the destroyers, the creaters(Farmers/miners?), and the crafters.
Just an idea.

[Footkerchief]

Will it be, at any point possible to create a Geth-like race? IE: Founding a civ deep down, and creating replicating organic machines to wage war with the surface?

Replicating organic machines?  Yeah DF has those, they're called creatures, and yes, certain ones already form underground civs and wage war on you.

[CobaltKobold]

Regarding adamantine not being heavy enough for a war hammer, why not just make it have a reasonably high mass, but low weight? The stuff is magical, after all. This will make swinging an adamantine hammer feel like swinging an iron hammer on the moon.

...

Mass is the important measure of how hard something is to swing. Not weight.

[Sean Mirrsen]

If you're on the moon, the aforementioned 25-pound mallet could be swung 1-handed. Sure, it'd be rather heavy to handle, but without its weight, it'd be a lot easier to wield.

Note, however - I'm not saying it'd be easier to "swing" that mallet. Acceleration is applied to mass, not weight. However, it wouldn't weigh you down nearly as much, and you could simply redirect the thing's motion if you miss, using your own mass and the tensile strength of your arm.

(btw, when I first heard the term "specific gravity", I thought about something like this)

[Im_Sparks]

Will it be, at any point possible to create a Geth-like race? IE: Founding a civ deep down, and creating replicating organic machines to wage war with the surface?

Replicating organic machines?  Yeah DF has those, they're called creatures, and yes, certain ones already form underground civs and wage war on you.

Bad jokes aside, I mean synthetic-organic machines.

If you're on the moon, the aforementioned 25-pound mallet could be swung 1-handed. Sure, it'd be rather heavy to handle, but without its weight, it'd be a lot easier to wield.

What does that have to do with anything? Hahaha.

[Footkerchief]

Bad jokes aside, I mean synthetic-organic machines.

It wasn't a joke.  The game doesn't have a "robot" object type -- if you mod them in, you mod them in as creatures.  And yeah, you can mod all that stuff into the next version, except that a) you can't make the game call beds "Hubs" and b) you can't restrict entity professions by caste.

[CobaltKobold]

-..? maybe you can...aren't nobles restrictable to castes AND job-forceable?

Would be quite clunky, but...edit: curses. Looks like DM's smelty-job is gone.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I just thought of something. (something stupid, as usual, but interesting)

X-Men!

If castes have some sort of ratio of appearance (I'm pretty sure they do), we could introduce "mutants" in mods. Mutants having more arms, or superspeed, or webbing, or firebreath, or giant claws (imagine it being born... or don't), or poison touch, etc, etc. They'd be very rare, but could spice up the game nicely.