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[piecewise]

Toady has pretty much declared that he doesn't want steampunk, but that doesn't completely remove steam from the table. There are plenty of completely realistic ways which steam may be used, such as a boiler to create power. It would be like the water wheel or the windmill, except it would consume resources to operate and maybe generate a bit more power. Basically the furnace operator could have one more subjob of boiler operation. The boiler would require a bucket of water and a log to burn every so often, so as to both consume resources and labor. The upside would be that you'd have a power source which is easy to use indoors and requires no natural or created formations to operate. If used in this strict sense I don't really see a problem with steam, but what does everyone else think? Can steam be implemented in such a way as to mesh with the overall feel of the game and not degenerate into steampunk?   

[Simmura McCrea]

Steam traps to burn the flesh off the elven traders goblins.

[Kilo24]

Steampunk's more about finding unrealistically effective ways to make robots and apparatuses out of methods that just don't work.  I don't think that steam is the problem with steampunk.  Merely taking a sideways glance at the laws of physics will cripple steampunk.

I'd guess that even if we didn't have explicit support for it, the game would still support steam traps in a roundabout way.

Wikipedia says that steam power has been around for a long while, but it's been experimental before the Industrial Revolution.  It's justifiable enough IMO to let the game have it if it had significant gameplay benefits, which I'd think the suggested alternate power source would have.  I'd support it.

It might have been a better idea to put this in the Suggestions forum.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[Morrigi]

Yeah, I think simple steam should be in the game. A simple windmill-type thing like the OP described should be fine for a while.

It would have to consume wood or coal regularly, which would make it kinda hard to use out in the desert without magma...

[piecewise]

Yeah, I think simple steam should be in the game. A simple windmill-type thing like the OP described should be fine for a while.

It would have to consume wood or coal regularly, which would make it kinda hard to use out in the desert without magma...

There could also be an option to use magma as the heat source, making the boiler into the "water wheel" of volcanoes. Just imagining what you could do with it makes me giddy.

[Diablous]

Steam traps to burn the flesh off the elven traders and the goblins.

Fixed it for you. But, yeah scalding hot steam traps would be great to have, but I am O.K. with just having steam as a power source. Dwarven Steam Engine!

[zwei]

Yeah, I think simple steam should be in the game. A simple windmill-type thing like the OP described should be fine for a while.

It would have to consume wood or coal regularly, which would make it kinda hard to use out in the desert without magma...

There could also be an option to use magma as the heat source, making the boiler into the "water wheel" of volcanoes. Just imagining what you could do with it makes me giddy.

Geothermal power sources, oh my!

(steam engine should produce smoke, and require player to design chimney if he does not want dwarves inhale smoke and suffer consequences.)

[Dasqoot]

I think they've found records of experimental Roman and Greek steam engines. Really small things, basically just a tea-kettle mounted on a swivel, the steam swung it in circles. It's not far fetched, or out of character at all, imo, actually it predates the windmill.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Aeolipile_illustration.JPG

There's a link to a drawing of a first century AD model.

I don't use power for anything in my forts, so I'd have a hard time trying to find a use for something like that, but it would still be cool to have as an option.

[alfie275]

I think that there should be no predefined boiler buildings, but rather the player should have to build it themself. Ie boiler = 3*3 metal room with water inlet and steam outlet with a heat source below/around it, pistons could be made when moving tile get implemented (long corridor with hatches on top, moving wall section attached to a large wheel and a switch that opens the hatches and closes the inlet when the piston is pushed as far as it can go).

[Arrkhal]

Steampunk's more about finding unrealistically effective ways to make robots and apparatuses out of methods that just don't work.  I don't think that steam is the problem with steampunk.  Merely taking a sideways glance at the laws of physics will cripple steampunk.

I always thought steampunk was just an aesthetic, and pretty much nothing more.  Basically like how soft sci-fi is some other story in spaaaaaaaace and with technobabble instead of magic.

I can occasionally ignore really bad physics in both, but what really destroys my suspension of disbelief is the complete absence of ergonomics in both.  Hands?  What are hands?  Our devices are not made for hands!  Butts?  Our chairs laugh at your butts!  Railings?  Hah, we never fall down here, ever!

[Bricks]

I think that the grandiose uses of steam won't ever be possible in DF, since things like trains, steamboats, etc. would require a great deal of new code.  Assuming that the custom-buildings (the ones coming up in the next version) are expanded to allow all sorts of building jobs, making a fuel-and-water-to-power reaction should hopefully be possible.  Granted, it would take a modicum of bending on Toady's part, since those aren't exactly vanilla features.

Designing and building a boiler sounds cool now, but it could be the subject of an entirely separate game.  To make it physically correct would take brand-new simulations, all for the sake of another way to kill everyone in your fort.

[Skorpion]

Sod steampunk, I just want boiling superheated steam in my obsidian farms.

That I can divert to roast things. Or steam plump helmets, or just create a dwarven steam bath.
Hell, I could even make an autoclave.

[Armok]

Personaly i think it shuld be posible to have magma runing under a steel floor and water above it boiling, and then funeling the steam out a tunnel with windmills in it, but nothing more than that. Basicaly, there shuldnt be any tools spesificaly for steam, but if the player with the help of stuff that is there alred/anyways manage to build something that shuld work, it shuld work.

[Puzzlemaker]

I too would like the use of steam expanded upon SLIGHTLY, but nothing that is physics breaking.