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[Cogsmith]

I'm going to catch a lot of frak for this from the Let's Play Cave Dwarf Fortress! crowd but some of the ideas this allows are just too funny.

Electricity.
No I'm not talking about lightning generators or robots. That's WAY out of line for DF. My thoughts is it acts just like a power-type, generated from special windmills/waterwheels/possibly some form of coal-burning building.
The diffrences are the following:

1)It loses no power in transit.(no sapping from gear assemblies/what have you. Though if you hook it up to a gear assembly then to an axle you would lose power, though I can think of no reason to do either)
2)It conducts along metal& water. Metal constructions, floors, walls, buildings, anything made of metal will get an amount of power in it and be considered "Live". Water does the same.
3)Live constructions are hazardous to health, low power levels merely stunning, very high ones capable of killing a dwarf on the spot( or  goblins or whathaveyou)
4)You can't SEE electricity. Neither can dwarves, or anything else. "Live" floors, and "live" shallow bodies of water path as being safe, legitimate pathways to go through. For flying creatures? It genuinely is. Everything else smells deep fried after a few minutes.

Electricity, is basically one of the key forces in the universe, dwarves being stupid, should reflect this in their usage of it. I.E. It should be at least as dangerous to them, as to their attackers, if not more so, and while useful, the knowledgeable user is going to have to be very ,very careful to not make his dwarves all kill themselves with it.

In short moderately useful, particularly in building lever activated traps(use little 1x1 retracting bridges as ON/OFF switches) or moving power a great distance, but with some very significant draw backs.

NO Robots, Tesla coils or anything like that. Just a new type of power.

[Sowelu]

Neat idea but I think it's been very specifically said it's not going in :x

Also, geez, overpowered much?  Think of the absurd defenses you could make with that.  Way worse than acres-of-spikes.

And just plain electricity is pretty hard to force to do work.  You need magnets...and an understanding of electromagnetism.  Well, we've got magnetite, but dwarves aren't that smart.

[Silverionmox]

I'm going to catch a lot of frak for this from the Let's Play Cave Dwarf Fortress! crowd but some of the ideas this allows are just too funny.

Maybe Sim Life is more something for you?

People will mod in electric toothbrushes afterward, no problem, but during development some restrictions are useful to keep coming up with new ideas, rather than reiterating known history once again. When we have a consistent medieval setting, it will be much easier for modders to add stuff that interacts in an interesting way with the environment.

[Cogsmith]

I was hoping to abstract the exact production of it out.

Just a special building to generate the correct power type. Of course you can say it requires magnetite bars, and copper bars or even a copper enormous corkscrew (to simulate coil) or whatever else you want and make it go through some hellish building requirements (first architect, then mechanics, then metalsmithing then masonry then...)

And electricity going through a medium isn't that hard to understand, especially if you don't bother to include circuit elements(which this doesn't), it only really gets complex when you start getting LRC circuits or electromagnetic radiation (which DF shouldn't even TOUCH)

And overpowered? Really? We're talking about the game that gave birth to the magma-pult, and Project Fuck the World which literally set half the map ablaze. A game where "fair and reasonable response" to elves snubbing you at the trading post is to release the still-feral dragon. A game where the more enterprising deal with sieges by dropping the entire map 2 z-levels. We left "overpowered" behind a looong looong time ago. Besides if you think about it it would never be able to inflict yellow or red wounds, just occasional stuns, umm bruises I guess, and at VERY high power levels maybe set their clothes on fire?

[CobaltKobold]

No power lost in transit? Why wouild dwarves ha'e room-temperature superconductors, when we do not?

Your understanding of electricity danger is lacking. Static charge isn't terribly dangerous itself, it's being a conductor- birds sit on power lines just fine, it's when they bridge them that they get zotted. People working on high-'oltage lines wear not rubber, but metal chainmail suits- so if they screw up, the short'll be through it rather than them. Of course, if you're walking along, it's fairly likely that you are going to be connecting two bits in a new way...which is why you are supposed to hop away from a car should a power line fall upon it.

Pure water is actually not too conducti'e- it just ionizes/dissol'es nearly e'erything, and those ions make it nice and conducti'e.

[ZeroGravitas]

Electricity does not fit with the overall theme very well.

Maybe steam power and clockwork would be a better fit?

[Granite26]

STOP IT

I don't want to have to read another discussion about this.

PLEASE go find one of the other threads where electricity, steampunk and everything else has been discussed.

Steampunk and electricity BOTH have huge long threads where people have argued their points, and if you keep talking about it here, everyone will come back and state them all over again because, God knows, it's only the latest thread that the developer reads that counts towards whether it's supported.

[monolar]

Then what about a donkey powered wheel?

[BurnedToast]

STOP IT

I don't want to have to read another discussion about this.

PLEASE go find one of the other threads where electricity, steampunk and everything else has been discussed.

Steampunk and electricity BOTH have huge long threads where people have argued their points, and if you keep talking about it here, everyone will come back and state them all over again because, God knows, it's only the latest thread that the developer reads that counts towards whether it's supported.

I like reading new threads about electricity and steampunk and robots and dwarven atomic weapons. Since we have to share the forum, maybe you should just stop opening threads like this so you don't have to read them and don't have any reason to complain?

[G-Flex]

So uh, why exactly would dwarves even know to build an "electrical generator" building?

Anyone? Bueller?

Dwarves shouldn't have something in the building list that revolves around fundamental forces of the universe they hardly even know anything about. That's quite a few hundred years out of the represented timeframe.

[Neonivek]

Personally Id think Electricity in this timeline would be pathetically weak and useless.

[Overdose]

Personally Id think Electricity in this timeline would be pathetically weak and useless.

unless it randomly strikes when it rains as a natural event. Yes, i know lightning doesn't work that way(this is in reference to the "strike" remark, not how lightning can kill you), but it would be hilarious to see a Legendary Dwarf get struck by lightning on sheer chance because he was hanging around outside during a bad storm.

It'd be even more fun to make a tower for the explicit purpose of leaving nobles on the top during a lightning storm just to fry them 

[Granite26]

I like reading new threads about electricity and steampunk and robots and dwarven atomic weapons. Since we have to share the forum, maybe you should just stop opening threads like this so you don't have to read them and don't have any reason to complain?

You like reading people reiterating the same ideas over and over again?

I'm not saying don't talk about it, just... read up on it before you start talking about it so that we don't have the exact same discussion AGAIN

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If you still think your idea is original, please, by all means, post it.  If you still think it's a good idea, bump the discussion and support it.  But don't act like you've got an original idea noone has ever heard, or worse yet, and original reaction to it when all you're doing is parroting a conversation almost verbatim from 6 months ago. 

I like the threads about electricity and steampunk too, which is why I want to see new ideas, not the same ones over and over again because people can't be bothered to spend five minutes research whether what seems genius and obvious to them has been discussed in depth in the past 6 months.

[Virex]

Let's see, what do we need for AC electiricty as a powersource:
Powerfull permanent or electrical magnets.
Understanding of the Lorenz force and Maxwel's laws.
Copper or silver wiring, preferably very pure, since oxides and ceramic compounds influence conductivity in a bad way.
A gearbox-like instalation to keep the rate of revolution constant.
Ceramics or polymers to use as insulators.

And for DC batteries:
Understanding of the concept of electrochemistry.
A stable sulfuric acid industry.
Industrial scale lead mining and processing (unless you want lithium batteries, in which case you'll need Lithium and the understanding of cristalography on a nano scale)
Again, wiring.
Polymers, ceramics or corosion resistant metals. Ceramics do have the tendency to break when a force is applied though.
High grade magnets for the enignes, and a concept of electric current to get a DC engine to run in the first place.

Somehow it seems completely within reach of dwarven craftsmanship....

[Mikademus]

STOP IT

I don't want to have to read another discussion about this.

PLEASE go find one of the other threads where electricity, steampunk and everything else has been discussed.

Steampunk and electricity BOTH have huge long threads where people have argued their points, and if you keep talking about it here, everyone will come back and state them all over again because, God knows, it's only the latest thread that the developer reads that counts towards whether it's supported.

I like reading new threads about electricity and steampunk and robots and dwarven atomic weapons. Since we have to share the forum, maybe you should just stop opening threads like this so you don't have to read them and don't have any reason to complain?

If you like reading about it make a new post in the DISCUSSION forum. It is counter-productive, redundant, superfluous, a great waste of time and effort, and contributing nothing but noise to reiterate the same topic time over time in the SUGGESTION forum.

It is not that Granite or I have to read the threads, it is that Toady has. Every new thread detracts from every old and makes new suggestions more likely do be overlooked. So I'm with Granite, re-use old threads, DON'T MAKE NEW ONES for existing suggestions. Read the huge box above the threads, will ya!

Also, we want the sub-fora or mandatory thread tagging.