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[Thief^]

It's not electricity, it's mechanical motion. Also, I personally (and many others) consider water reactors an exploit, as they somehow produce more power than they take to run...
A magma or fuel-powered steam engine I'd be fine with.
(I also wish pumps weren't quite so powerful... Screw pumps are very very very very slow in real life)

In the next version we will also have powered boosters for minecarts, which will make two uses

[Miuramir]

I suggest reading up on the History of the Steam Engine.  DF is intended to have a fantasy / medieval setting, with technology no higher than around 1400 AD European.  This is a date picked to be pre-Renaissance; in particular, it's well prior to moveable type, to Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance-era gadgeteers, and to practical use of steam; and only barely into the early use of gunpowder (although IIRC Toady One has generally ruled that out; militarily, the setting is probably closer to a 1250-1350 feel). 

Note that while various toy and one-off craft examples were created by legendary artisans, the first vaguely useful application for steam (turning a spit for roasting meat) was not until around 1550, and the first arguably practical industrial use was not until around 1700.  This is with an enormously larger pool of talented people with strong incentives for improvements. 

I'm not against steampunk in general, but it's completely out of context for DF's feel and setting; and given how many systems actually present and important for simulating a medieval economy and society Toady One still needs to work on, I think that steam power discussions in the main forums or requests to support steam physics are not terribly helpful. 

(As an amusing side note, for many industrial uses such as weaving the early steam engines were considered to produce low-quality power, so were used to pump water up to supplement the flow of waterwheels which provided the actual power used.  Roughly simulating this should be possible with some light modding already; a custom magma workshop requiring a metal barrel that you place next to each wheel of a pumped water reactor would give something that looks and acts close enough to early steam for simple purposes.) 

[kaenneth]

Well, the steam engine was invented to pump water out of mines.

I could see Humans not having them, but it's reasonable for dwarves to be a centuries ahead in mining technology.

i.e. no overland railroads, but minecarts on tracks.

[Leatra]

I don't really understand why everyone hates steampunk.

[Dragula]

I don't really understand why everyone hates steampunk.

Where did you get that from? I just think people wants DF to have a coherent historical feel. Even if I would love to have dwarves like those of Arcanum.

[Jake]

Where did you get that from? I just think people wants DF to have a coherent historical feel. Even if I would love to have dwarves like those of Arcanum.

Nobody's asking for this to be included in vanilla DF, at least not so far as I can tell. All we really need is a minor extension of what's already planned for the mechanics/traps overhaul, so that those of us who really want steampunk can do the legwork ourselves.

Also, not everything featuring steam-powered machinery counts as steampunk. I for one don't plan to mod in anything that wouldn't have been wholly plausible for the first half of the 19th century.

[MarcAFK]

I just want scalding steam to be produced when you add water to magma is all :/

[Moonshadow101]

A necro conversation that's actually progressing. How odd. Anyway...

I'd quite like for steam to play a role, it seems like it could be a key part of a larger expansion of mechanical elements. I've often toyed with the idea of having the mechanical equivalent of a power grid running through my whole fortress, but there are obvious issues: Firstly, there's nothing useful for that power to do, and second, the only way to generate enough power to run it would be to either have a totally obnoxious number of windmills or use magical trans-newtonian water reactors, which are stupid. Pressurized steam pipes seem like a generally better way of transmitting power over a distance than a huge spinning axle, though I can't really say I know exactly what I'd use the power for. Maybe every (or nearly every) workshop could have a mechanized version that requires power but works better. Or faster. Dunno.

I tend to shy away from historical realism, of course. Realism in the sense of modeling battle damage is great, but I don't see what we gain by pretending that Dwarves existed in late-medieval Europe and trying to suppose what technologies they might or might not have had. Dwarves are clever and industrious: in the areas in which they excel, such as metalworking and mechanics, I think it's better to lean a bit towards fantasy and away from medieval simulation.

And it's incredibly silly to bring up "Steampunk" in this context. As some of the older posts said, proper steampunk is about goggles, tophats, british accents, and occasionally giant fighting brass robots. A rational application of steam to mechanical purposes is as much steampunk as the presence of vampires makes DF into Twilight.

This thread is very carefully treading the line between a suggestion, a mod and a discussion. 

[Kilroy the Grand]

(I also wish pumps weren't quite so powerful... Screw pumps are very very very very slow in real life)

No no, you get it wrong. pumps are slow when humans do it, but dwarves can pump and screw much faster

[BigFatStupidHead]

...dwarves can pump and screw much faster

And that's why your fortress is overrun with children!

A bit obvious, but I couldn't resist.

[Leatra]

I don't really understand why everyone hates steampunk.

Where did you get that from? I just think people wants DF to have a coherent historical feel. Even if I would love to have dwarves like those of Arcanum.

That's the thing I don't understand. I don't think we had things like dwarves and goblins in medieval ages.

And we are going to have spells other than necromancy eventually.

[xmakina]

I don't really understand why everyone hates steampunk.

Where did you get that from? I just think people wants DF to have a coherent historical feel. Even if I would love to have dwarves like those of Arcanum.

That's the thing I don't understand. I don't think we had things like dwarves and goblins in medieval ages.

And we are going to have spells other than necromancy eventually.

It's a common trope for technology to adhere to our ideas of history whilst the rest of the game spirals into madness. It's best not to care. In a game as modabble as DF I'm sure someone will add in these kind of things as soon as we get moving fortress parts or w/e technical requirements we're missing right now.

[Leatra]

I find magic worse than that and not dwarfy at all.

[Jake]

It's a common trope for technology to adhere to our ideas of history whilst the rest of the game spirals into madness. It's best not to care. In a game as modabble as DF I'm sure someone will add in these kind of things as soon as we get moving fortress parts or w/e technical requirements we're missing right now.

In fairness, there weren't a lot of guns around DF's stated historical period of circa 1400AD, and the ones that were in existence were only a marginal overall improvement on bows or catapults. That's the main reason I skipped over about two hundred and fifty years of weapons technology development with my Black Powder Firearms mod.

[newbonomicon]

I find magic worse than that and not dwarfy at all.

Even if magic is opposed to science, once we have useful spells, they will forever go hand in hand with !!SCIENCE!!.