Print

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

[alfie275]

A meteor strikes the ground (must be in sand?) creating a hemisphere crater
coated in glass, this heats the tile in the center ( in the air) to the heat of all surface tiles combined (counting of course only sun heat), this should be reflectable with mirrors and lenses to create a laser beam effect.

[Lord Dullard]

Kind of a neat idea, but sounds a little too high-tech for Dwarf-era technology to me.

[Stray Elvis (Tame)]

Yeah, they'd be much more likely to worship it as a worldly manifestation of Armok and never go any nearer than absolutely necessary for tossing in sacrifices.

[Silverionmox]

A meteor strikes the ground (must be in sand?) creating a hemisphere crater
coated in glass, this heats the tile in the center ( in the air) to the heat of all surface tiles combined (counting of course only sun heat), this should be reflectable with mirrors and lenses to create a laser beam effect.

If a meteor strikes sand, you'll get sand everywhere, but not melted in a perfectly round crater. It won't occur naturally, and I doubt we'll ever be able to exactly define the curvature of the walls we want to dig out.

A laser beam effect is unattainable, due to lack of precision, as well as energy availability. Mirrors would shatter a large part of the light, and even when concentrated it would still only burn the focal point, not the whole length of the beam. Not to mention that the amount of energy necessary to get a laser beam going is huge, even with 20th century technology.

[Derakon]

This doesn't mean that it's impossible to build a solar oven, though you'd more likely do so by using black paint and constructed (silver/bronze) mirrors. I'm not certain what use it would have, though. Such things will never have the kind of range needed to be useful as a weapon; they'd be more "go into this tightly constrained, no-exit 1x1 room and you'll die from the heat" type of things.

[bjlong]

Might be a good way to bake bread in the desert. Other than that... the uses are limited, even today.

[Exponent]

they'd be more "go into this tightly constrained, no-exit 1x1 room and you'll die from the heat" type of things.

My mind went immediately to the thought of a new type of noble death chamber.  I'm assuming (and hoping) I'm not the only one.

[Silverionmox]

This doesn't mean that it's impossible to build a solar oven, though you'd more likely do so by using black paint and constructed (silver/bronze) mirrors. I'm not certain what use it would have, though. Such things will never have the kind of range needed to be useful as a weapon; they'd be more "go into this tightly constrained, no-exit 1x1 room and you'll die from the heat" type of things.

Using it to heat water, for a sauna or so might be feasible. Or a moat that's kept close to the boiling point will have some appeal too, undoubtedly.

[Rysith]

I'd definitely go with solar ovens using constructed metal mirrors (or clear glass lenses), possibly even as a substitute for magma power in suitable terrain. Probably as a 5x5 building rather than a 3x3, or something, since you'd need a lot of mirrors/a really big lens. Look at the temperatures that focal solar power plants are able to achieve, for example.

I could also see them as potential siege weapons, similar to catapults without ammunition, again in suitable terrain. I'd refer to the MIT students that busted the Mythbusters busting of the Archimedes death ray with links, but I can't dig them up right now.

I can't see forming a natural solar oven with a meteor, though. You'd need something much more reflective than impure glass, and much more carefully engineered than a meteor crater. Fortunately, dwarves are good at shiny things and careful engineering.

[Derakon]

You know that after the MIT group busted the Mythbusters, the Mythbusters invited them onto the show to set a wooden ship in dock on fire, right? And nobody was able to do so using reflected light, even given a massive array of carefully-aligned mirrors. Archimedes death ray: re-busted.

You might be able to make attackers very uncomfortable with reflected light, but you aren't going to be able to actually damage them. At the worst you could blind them temporarily, but given the instinctive reaction to looking at bright light, I doubt it'd have much effect.

[Urist McDetective]

I could well imagine fortifying a desert biome fortress with something like this. Being so reliant on the local weather, it's not something that should work everywhere. Mundane uses have been pointed out. Melting ice/boiling water/creating steam, starting small fires, baking goods, heating areas, etc all seem like reasonable concepts in DF and good uses for placed reflective surfaces.
 I like the idea of meteors, but disagree that simply having something fall out of the sky should be enough to construct anything. Making a hole without dwarven intervention should be enough. (or even too much)

[Aldaris]

A boiling moat is a neat idea, maybe by routing the moat water through a glass tube/pipe thats being bombarded by solar over heat? The higher quality glass ( as in green - clear- crystal.) the hotter the water.  Although it would be easier to just route the moat water through a pipe suspended in magma.

[praguepride]

Since when did dwarves have the MIT degree needed to create a heat ray?

[alfie275]

It's not that complecated, sunshine = hot so more sunshine = more hot. Maybe implement it as mirrors, when you have built it or designate it for building you can chose from the 24 different directions then it checks for a light beam and redirects it, of course if you chose any of the Z-level below directions you have to support it from the top or sides, side diagram:
___/----
___|

_ = ground
/ = mirror facing right-down
- & | = light beam.
Then make it so sunlight warms things up.
oh and lenses would just do this, top/ side diagram:
\
-)----
/

- & / & \ = light beams
) = lense
Maybe the elves could get really annoyed and bring some mirrors and lenses
to the trade deopt then direct a beam of sunlight to the main hall causing tall the dwarves to vomit then get annoyed because of all the vomit.

[Techhead]

A solar mirror array has a serious limitation as a weapon because of the fixed focal point. Two Frensel lenses might be better for use as a beam weapon.

On constructive small-scale uses of a solar forge, see this link. (DIY-sized)
http://www.charm.net/~jriley/energy/solarforge.html
On large scale uses, you can click here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_furnace