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[Winterbrass]

Alright, sounds good, but the only fire-producing animals exist around magma, if you had magma, you wouldn't need the fire from the creatures. Also, if you have no coal, logs, ect, how would you heat the water?

Dragons. *eyetwitch*

[zarmazarma]

Alright, sounds good, but the only fire-producing animals exist around magma, if you had magma, you wouldn't need the fire from the creatures. Also, if you have no coal, logs, ect, how would you heat the water?

Dragons. *eyetwitch*

I know, dragons, but places that don't have any magma, wood, or coal, are normally places that aren't exactly good to settle, probably tundras and stuff. This makes it dificult to generate enough wealth to even get your migrants to the point where you get a dungeon master, and after you get a dungeon master, it's possible that the dragon won't come until far later. Eventually you can have it, but it could take a very long time. It also means if you don't trap it right you're boned.

[Tlaon]

The point of the additions isn't to be useful, it's to be comprehensive.  Ideally, if there's a way that things could work in the imagined world of Dwarf Fortress, it would also work in the game of Dwarf Fortress.  Besides, I could imagine that a forge powered by dragonfire would have properties that a magma forge wouldn't be able to replicate, especially once magic is implemented.

[LegoLord]

Dragonfire would be useful anywhere you don't have magma.  Wood can be used to get a metalworking industry; a weak one, but enough to get a dragon to come.  Then catching the dragon would make it strong.

Someone mentioned lens-based heating.  That stuff is definitely post-1400s.  As is electricity.  Remember, there is a time-frame we're going for.  Any steam power aside from natural steam is tricky ground.  I'm pretty sure Toady is against steampunk, if I remember right, but there's non-steampunk steam-based stuff out there.  Hot springs as a visible sign of easier-to-access magma would be nice, though.

[BigFatDwarf]

Someone mentioned lens-based heating.  That stuff is definitely post-1400s.

Yes, but only because they only thought of it then. Technologically, it would be possible quite earlier.

[Starver]

No, a water wheel in no way could ever power any sort of fuel reliant forge. I mean to say that there is no possibility that a water wheel's energy could in any way, shape, or form generate the heat nesicary to melt metal products in a non-electrical forge.

I still say a creative use of friction could develop.  It would of course depend on the Creator allowing the concept, but as a parallel technology development it could be considered viable.  (Greater or lesser than nominally 'safe' magma-tapping?)

[Sean Mirrsen]

No, heating anything up with friction is not possible, or so cost-ineffective that it is completely useless. You can, in theory, heat up a bar of metal with friction, but the friction will heavily wear out the bar itself and whatever is used along with it, not to mention the amount of work required to do this would be far beyond reasonable.

A better way could be to just hammer the bar until it heats up and becomes malleable, but it still means a lot of potential damage to the tools. Like I said, the most probable use for purely mechanical forges is cold-forging soft metals. Gold only needs to be melted if you cast it, it will give in to hammerings without heating. Copper is less so, but can still be cold-forged. Cold iron is probably the best you can achieve without a heat source.

[Winterbrass]

Someone mentioned lens-based heating.  That stuff is definitely post-1400s.

Yes, but only because they only thought of it then. Technologically, it would be possible quite earlier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Sahl

Knowledge of how to focus light at a specific point using curved glass/mirrors was present in Iraq by 1000 AD. I think that's safe in the 'until 1400 AD' timeframe by a good 400 years, don't you think?

Also, as a side note - if you've embarked and you are on a map with no trees and no magma... here's what you do.

FARM PIG TAILS.

Put them through a Farmer's Workshop and then a Loom. Then you have pig tail cloth which should be worth 60 DB each on average. A log, on the other hand, should average out at 3 DB each. Meaning that for each pig tail cloth you trade, you can purchase twenty logs.

So, there is zero excuse for not having wood - the only way to not have wood is to specifically choose to not have wood, and then that's your own fault.

[Sean Mirrsen]

How about a frozen tundra with dire polar bears roaming beyond your walls? Trading isn't always possible, you know.

[Winterbrass]

How about a frozen tundra with dire polar bears roaming beyond your walls? Trading isn't always possible, you know.

Ditch the battleaxes and bring 200 units of wood. Also, if traders can't get to your fort, then you should be fine for sleeping arrangements until you can manufacture weapons enough to kill ALL of the bears, as immigrants sure as hell won't make it if armed and armored traders can't.

[Starver]

No, heating anything up with friction is not possible, or so cost-ineffective that it is completely useless.

In a world with waterwheel/pump systems that are perpetual-energy with some to spare, various other understandable approximations to Real Life^(TM) and no (as yet) wear-damage, never mind metal fatigue, I don't see a problem in the world of DF.

A better way could be to just hammer the bar until it heats up and becomes malleable

That's friction.  Just internal friction with materials, instead of along an interface.  A "heat mill" of the right materials (extremely hard but the components worn smooth enough to do rubbing than grinding, and with the right specific heat capacity properties across the device) could be the base of a crucible able to heat metals/alloys with sufficiently low melting points.  Again, in the world of DF.

[BigFatDwarf]

I have another idea (again), lightning. By wiring an copper or silver pole to the metal, once a lightning hits it it would get really hot. And, since it's not true use of electricity, it's good at that too.

Somebody correct me if I failed here.

[nutzy]

I believe, that to secure a metalsmithingful future for our posterity, we must limit our dependence on fossil fuels and magma. What do we do when there are is no magma, coal, nor trees? Our metalworking industry simply collapses, or worse yet, never forms.
We truly ought to look into forms of alternative energy. 3 waterwheels could surely power a forge, could they not? Yet we continue to burn trees that take forever to grow back or coal which never even grows back in order to fuel our industry. For the good of the dwarven race, we must limit our dependence on wood imports from evil radical elves for charcoal production!

This man is an elf in disguise.

[Luke_Prowler]

Using other burnables besides wood (like cloth or peat) is a valid alternative, if not quite as good.

also, using lens to burn things have been around since old Greece. True, Myth-busters did bust that, but the difference between nowadays and way back then is about 300 years of air pollution

[LegoLord]

Someone mentioned lens-based heating.  That stuff is definitely post-1400s.

Yes, but only because they only thought of it then. Technologically, it would be possible quite earlier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Sahl

Knowledge of how to focus light at a specific point using curved glass/mirrors was present in Iraq by 1000 AD. I think that's safe in the 'until 1400 AD' timeframe by a good 400 years, don't you think?

There's a difference between that, and applying that to make a mirror-based forge.  About a 1000 year difference, involving very advanced measuring and construction equipment, not to mention an unholy number of high-tech, modern mirrors that just can't be made with 1400 technology.  Now try weaponizing that.  Sorry, it just doesn't work.

Also, perpetual-motion is not going to be in DF forever.  Suggestions should generally aim to move things towards a balance between realism, fantasy/fiction, and balanced gameplay.

And pollution of the air with transparent gases (as most pollution is) is hardly sufficient to make it possible back in Ancient Greece and not possible now.  Light gets through our upper atmosphere; a hundred meters of polluted air is not going to make a difference.