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[Neruz]

Yep. Adamantine is great for edges and plating, but you don't want to make an entire weapon (or golem) out of it; The damn stuff is about as dense as smoke.

[Neonivek]

The thing I am wondering however is if leverage and the weight and strength of your arms could actually make a Adamantine Hammer (especially one with a long handle) actually worthwhile in a small way.

A lot of things when they are also light are also squishy. An Adamantine Hammer however is completely solid.

So is it an improvement?

As for throwing... It is hard for me to explain but there is an optimal size and weight for your arm to throw something. anything smaller or larger then that becomes hard to throw. In the case of small objects it is because you have a harder time concentrating the energy of your arm/wrist into the object itself.

That is what is so great about a gun. The actual blast a gun creates isn't all that destructive, in fact it is sometimes harmless. What it does however is it concentrates all the energy into a small object.

Other then that, lighter objects seem to be resisted by the air more then heavy objects.

I am saying this from a pure common sense standpoint, not from any sort of scientific background. So I am fully prepaired to be wrong.

[Chronas]

I am saying this from a pure common sense standpoint, not from any sort of scientific background. So I am fully prepaired to be wrong.

you said it so nicely that i don't want to contradict you

[Footkerchief]

Your intuitions are all correct.

Throwing small objects is difficult because there's a limit to how fast your muscles can actually contract, so you can't give the object enough velocity to compensate (momentum-wise) for its small mass.

Bullets are deadly because they're fast and have a small cross-sectional area, making it easy for them to punch through things.

Air resistance is a force determined by the projectile's velocity and size/shape, not its mass per se, so two baseball shaped-objects, one of iron and one of balsa wood, which are moving at the same velocity, will both experience the same initial force from air resistance, but the wooden one decelerates more because the force of its air resistance is acting on a smaller mass.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Which reminds me. Adamantine giant eagle golem. All the positive sides of adamantine, and very little of the negative (a bird does need to be lightweight, and is rarely experiencing sheer blunt force, unless somebody shoots ballista logs at it).

[Nordic dorf]

so,assuming you have the tools to smelt it,just put relatively thin plating of adamantium over steel plate.congratulations, you now have mass to go with that adamantium. and if this adamantium is supposedly ultra-strong, it with the steel will absorb alot of kinetic energy,combine with padding for win. as far as swords,same thing,adamantine for the cutting part,steel for the inner core and handle. i apologizeif someone has stated this, i dont wish to read 385-some pages.
just my .001 cent

[Sean Mirrsen]

You don't really need mass for armor - if you can keep the hardness, removing mass is actually a plus. We're talking about weapons and creatures built entirely out of adamantine.

[MoonCabbage]

pun incoming... well guys i guess mass does matter!

i could imagine a adamantine based creature having a terrible time in a windstorm being so light.
dwarven steam machines could just push them away.

[Neruz]

It does in the case of Adamantine; i did the maths awhile back and determined that Adamantine was something like less than half the mass of Styrofoam; it was only slightly denser than smoke.

[Nivim]

Megabeasts kidnapping people for a host of purposes. Or devouring them.
Or demanding the periodic 'tribute' of a fair young maiden (or young master!) from a site(see: Dragons), in exchange for letting them live (or possibly e'en protecting them from other megabeasts). Could also see nations doing this form of tribute demand, though only really goblins atm would seem to want to go for it.

A random note: I thought that in many newer stories the dragon only needs one or two maidens to perform upkeep on the dragon's treasure.

[Mandaril]

After reading the latest dev note I got this uncontrollable urge to donate. There's quite a lot what one can do with that one. Some very interesting building projects.. hmm.. *ponders*

[Chronas]

I've added the ability to specify in the world gen params the number of sky z-levels, the number of z-levels minimum between each layer (it'll often be more because of elevation changes), and the number of extra z-levels down at the bottom. It doesn't yet allow dynamic resizing but this should be enough for the requests I've heard about.

Holy carp, Toady is best dev EVER
Think about it guys, a tower of babylon that reaches higher than vdwarf can fit in a screen, or a floating sky fortress way above the clouds. or the ultimate dwarf made chasm, that stretches down to the foul depths of HFSdom with machinery and boardwalks crisscrossing it like the spawning pits designed by saruman himself, epicness will come of this. mega-projects on a scale that has never before seen as much freedom. now i REALLY cant wait.

wow i just squee'd like a fangirl, never done that before...

[QuantumSawdust]

Oh yes oh yes oh yes awesome. My enthusiasm for the next release just increase noticeably, which I had not considered possible until now.

[Neruz]

[smjjames]

*pours magma on the bannana thing*

Now its a dwarvenly dancing bannana! Well, a charred one anyway.

With this new world gen param, I bet we will be seeing height differences on the order of thousands of levels. Provided a computer can even HANDLE that. Although this is probably maximally extreme. I would wonder at some of the effects though, like how high the mountains will be or how deep the oceans. DF equivalents of the Marianas trench, the deepest parts of the pacific, the biggest mountain ranges in the world. Heck, the cliffs indicator is probably going to need at least 5 or more symbols to make an accurate representation. Although a higher resolution may be needed for that.

However though, just making the underground 100 z levels deep will allow for some huge cavern chambers.

Actually, I have a thought:

Since an exploration team of dwarves (or whatever race you're playing) could take a season or more to return to base, will there be a way to have them gather food or whatever or will it be limited to how much they can stuff into the backpacks and how many waterskins they can carry?