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[Madmonkey24]

The addition of chemistry is a great idea. The possibilities for great dwarfy fun are endless. You have acid, explosions, explosions, what's not to like?

[Sphalerite]

If black powder is beyond the target tech level of DF, then nitroglycerin is clearly out of the question.  I just find the idea of a fortress going up in an explosion because a kitten got into the nitro stockpile very amusing.

[DanielLC]

So you could distill large amounts of mercury, then use the still to brew booze, which you could then put into lead barrels and ship to the elves?

[LegoLord]

Yup.

@ Montag:  Don't take things to extremes.  No matter how much discussion about it there is, Toady is not going to add in muskets.  He has said that time and again. 

As for the acids and Pitchblende catapults of which you speak, you have clearly not taken much chemistry.  For one thing, uranium doesn't make A-bombs, plutionium does (which is made in uranium reactors, in small amounts.  Pitchblende is also only part uranium oxide).  Also, there are a number of factors that affect how corrosive an acid (sulfuric acid) or base (lye aka NaOH) depends on type, whether it dissociates completely or not, the concentration of the solution, and possibly other things I can't think of at the moment.  Now, all that is too complex for 1400 knowledge or for gameplay, so in game different acids would have varying strengths and uses.

As for mercury, well, it was a popular substance in alchemy, which fits right in DF.

So chemistry = yes.  Just because we have some crude explosives doesn't mean we'll get rapid fire guns.  Oh, and about that;  Rapid fire crossbows are a bug in the current game.  Firing rate in game is something that should be completely ignored when considering the addition of new ranged weapons.

[DanielLC]

Some nukes use uranium, for example: Little Boy. Fat Man wasn't. So half of nukes that have been used in wars have been uranium. Also, he said dirty bomb, which just means that it releases a lot of radioactive materials with conventional explosives.

[G-Flex]

There's still a difference between refined uranium of a highly-fissionable isotope, and rock containing a very small percentage of a mineral which contains a percentage of a much less radioactive form of the element. Seriously, regular old uranium (the type you'd find just lying around naturally) isn't nearly as dangerous as you might think, and pitchblende is only a small percentage of it.

Of course, you can always use pitchblende to make UV-fluorescent uranium glass. That stuff rocks.

[profit]

There's still a difference between refined uranium of a highly-fissionable isotope, and rock containing a very small percentage of a mineral which contains a percentage of a much less radioactive form of the element. Seriously, regular old uranium (the type you'd find just lying around naturally) isn't nearly as dangerous as you might think, and pitchblende is only a small percentage of it.

Of course, you can always use pitchblende to make UV-fluorescent uranium glass. That stuff rocks.

You can also use it in gas lantern mantles to create far brighter flames.

[cerapa]

No player is going to spoon feed their dorfs mercury when there are much more dramatic ways to kill them off.

This is dwarf fortress not China. Over here we drown dwarves in mercury.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Yup.

@ Montag:  Don't take things to extremes.  No matter how much discussion about it there is, Toady is not going to add in muskets.  He has said that time and again. 

As for the acids and Pitchblende catapults of which you speak, you have clearly not taken much chemistry.  For one thing, uranium doesn't make A-bombs, plutionium does (which is made in uranium reactors, in small amounts.  Pitchblende is also only part uranium oxide).  Also, there are a number of factors that affect how corrosive an acid (sulfuric acid) or base (lye aka NaOH) depends on type, whether it dissociates completely or not, the concentration of the solution, and possibly other things I can't think of at the moment.  Now, all that is too complex for 1400 knowledge or for gameplay, so in game different acids would have varying strengths and uses.

As for mercury, well, it was a popular substance in alchemy, which fits right in DF.

So chemistry = yes.  Just because we have some crude explosives doesn't mean we'll get rapid fire guns.  Oh, and about that;  Rapid fire crossbows are a bug in the current game.  Firing rate in game is something that should be completely ignored when considering the addition of new ranged weapons.

Actually, Uranium can indeed be used in atomic bombs.
Little Boy used Uranium, in fact. I'm not saying it's common-place, of course, but it has been used.
Acids are fun unless they get on your skin. This is a vital lesson to learn.

[SomGuye]

Getting off the topic of Uranium Bombs!

Uranium has been used to color glass.  http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/consumer%20products/vaseline.htm

I would LOVE to be able to make various types of colored glass in the game.  Gold (oxide) produces red glass, iron can produce blue glass (you know black sand in the mountains is actually iron heavy), carbon produces amber/brown, tin creates white, copper makes light blue and red.

http://chemistry.about.com/cs/inorganic/a/aa032503a.htm   Scroll down a bit to get the table.

I want to make my armor so gaudy that the 1980's would say "Damn"

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

This is a *Uranium Glass Goblet*

[Michael]

In the unlikely event nitroglycerin gets in, dynamite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamite) would be a simple next step.  It's less likely to accidentally detonate, and is simply nitroglycerin mixed with clay.  That should be much easier to do that to produce the nitroglycerin in the first place.  (Although it took people awhile to come up with the idea -- the guy who patented it became rather rich...)

Perhaps there should be an alchemist noble who, 1% of the time, comes up with a useful invention such as the ones mentioned in this thread. The rest of the time, he demands all kinds of resources in his foolish pursuit of a method to convert Microcline into Adamantine.  (They're both cyan, how hard can it be? )

[Odin]

I always wondered why pottery was so out of fashion among dwarves. Perhaps because carving stuff out of pure rock is more dwarfish (dwarvenly?).

Anyway, I thought that pottery might be something that could either be added as its own workshop, or as an addition to the glass works. Just collect clay instead of sand.

Then you could use stuff like cinnabar to make glazes to decorate your pottery, increasing its worth.

Basically, pottery could make stuff like crafts and toys I suppose. And buckets. Save me from making copper buckets all the time.

[Derakon]

Buckets and barrels would both be reasonable things to do with pottery. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that firing clay gets harder as the object increases in size. It'd be nice if the creator's skill determined capacity or something along those lines.

[LegoLord]

I always wondered why pottery was so out of fashion among dwarves. Perhaps because carving stuff out of pure rock is more dwarfish (dwarvenly?).

It's because it's an alpha game, and pottery hasn't been put in yet, or possibly even had a method of implementation planned out.  That said, details are definitely still open to discussion.