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[orbcontrolled]

I don't see why so many people are obsessed with vaults that are impossible to enter at all, or especially with traps that destroy the vault's contents...

Take note people^^^
We already have perfectly secure vaults. We call them atom-smashers.

[Uthric]

I don't see why so many people are obsessed with vaults that are impossible to enter at all, or especially with traps that destroy the vault's contents...

its what dwarfs do  get stuff and put it inside of a overly complicated fool proof vault and tell ever one its there but thay can never have it  just to watch as people try to get it just to see them burned to death inside of a magma fall

[Jyppa]

Building a wall or digging a ditch is a chore. Building a secure entrance is an art.

[TKTom]

 Quantum kitten spikes are a good defence against non-triggerers.

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 Down your access corridor. Upon the 1s and 2s there are spike traps connected to pressure plates in a 3x3 room in a kind of

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 Pattern, a kitten cage is placed in the centre (attached to a lever.) The kitten is released and wanders around activating spikes, killing anything walking down the corridor, regardless of its triggering ability.

 In order to turn off the traps, one should open a door (or floodgate) allowing a dwarf to recage the kitten. The door needs to be connected to a lever, not forbidden, otherwise the kitten will just seek an exit all the time, probably scratching at the door.

[The Architect]

As loath as I am to type this name...
(I despise pokemon)

"Supercharazad", your idea won't work. Magma doesn't pressurize that way. However, you could dig the hole in the roof or the wall and have it enter through either of those.

You don't seem to realise that magma pipes fill from the bottom up, your just building an extension to the wall that magma can flow into the same way it flows up to the top of a magma pipe. 

No, it won't. It will splash small amounts of magma on the floor periodically that will just evaporate. I'd go into detail about why and how, but if no one cares then I can skip that.

[100killer9]

The OP said he wanted impractical. In that case, a computer is needed. Program a Dwarven computer to play tic tac toe. Then, program it so that you must beat it thrice, and then it will open the entrance to your vault. Lose, and the room is flooded with magma, with the vault door closed.

[AnotherDwarvernDeath]

The OP said he wanted impractical. In that case, a computer is needed. Program a Dwarven computer to play tic tac toe. Then, program it so that you must beat it thrice, and then it will open the entrance to your vault. Lose, and the room is flooded with magma, with the vault door closed.

This... is awesome. I really need to program one of these. But is it possible to give a dwarvern computer AI?

[100killer9]

I believe it may be possible. You can use sets of doors as the output for no lag, and also connect the mechanism that operates the display to a pump that tells the computer what move you made. Then, have series of doors that serve as logic gates. Tic tac toe isn't that complex of a game, and could probably be modeled by an in-game computer.
In fact, I may try this on my volcanic island fort.

[Jyppa]

Hehe, I wrote an unbeatable tictactoe AI a while ago, and I actually think that I could transfer the algorithm to DF without using an actual dwarfputer. I think the easiest way to handle input would actually be using magma for one player and water for the other, with 3x3 tiles so you can fit in two plates, one magma sensitive and one water sensitive as well as individual pipes for both fluids. Easy parts: player input, win checking, turn sequence. Hard parts: AI move prioritizing (might require a multi-step repeater to act as IF/ELSE), draw check (unless you take the CHEAP route and count moves).

A quick calculation gives that with my "dirty" method, the computer would require approximately 2400 steps (two days) to make a turn, and perhaps double that for the computer's second turn (if player goes first) to fix a simple exploit. It shouldn't be too hard to reset the game either, as long as you're fine with having to reset player input levers manually.

[The Architect]

Tic-tac-toe comes to a stalemate 100% of the time unless one player makes a very stupid (or in a computer's case, mathematically incorrect) mistake. So you would either need to program your computer to mess up, or use another game. Connect Four might work, but it's prohibitively complicated for the kind of computerization you have to use in DF.
TL;DR: It's pointless to set up a challenge that mathematically cannot be won, and can only be lost intentionally.

When I suggested puzzles to get the correct answer for entering the vault, with the failure being a magma flood, I was hoping for something more subtle and inventive than tic-tac-toe

[100killer9]

Well, has anyone made tic-tac-toe in DF yet? We'll start there.
But the general idea of Dwarfputers seems sound to me in vaults. Overly complex to build.

[The Architect]

It's not difficult. It's just a series of conditions, and the computer's response to them. It would be stupidly long and fruitless to do in DF. If someone is going to program something, I merely suggest that it be something that has merit when they're done with it. There's no point in sitting for 10 hours in front of DF tediously setting up fluid logic to create a puzzle with no right answer, whose only wrong answer is "I'm too stupid or careless to avoid the easy pitfalls in tic-tac-toe".

We all know it can be done, and that it wouldn't take much intelligence to do now that someone else has designed the fluid logic. It takes long hours to program anything with DF logic, so let's make it something worth programming?

I think much better puzzles could be created other ways, like a 3d key to the puzzle, which only a very intelligent/perceptive player would notice while moving along the path that shoves it in his or her face.

How about the path to the levers leads down through a large chamber with a 3-d number, which would be revealed 1 layer at a time and simply look like something of unknown purpose to the adventurer, leading to a series of doors with numbers in front of them. One door leads to the next clue, the others end in certain death. To screw with them even more, the death isn't always immediate but comes from failing another puzzle that doesn't actually have an answer, leaving the first puzzle just as much of a mystery the next time as the first time they try it?

Submerged in the water several z-levels below the path the successful adventurer now walks, there is an engraving of the next clue...

etc. Creative, complicated and difficult to construct but with a good purpose and a good result. If you're going to spend hours making something, make something worth solving/admiring! Think like Orbcontrolled.

[LoneJedi7]

Stupid question: Are coins really worth making anyways?  i usually just have my stonecarvers make lots of stone mugs, should i start making coins?. 

[EDIT]: thanks, good thing i asked.  I have enough dwarfes that spend all day "storing item in stockpile."

[Foehamster]

Stupid question: Are coins really worth making anyways?  i usually just have my stonecarvers make lots of stone mugs, should i start making coins?.

NO! Don't make coins! The bugs with piles will cause you dwarves to not only waste more time hauling coins hither and thither for every purchase they make, but they will hall the coins one stack at a time (1 coin at a time!!!)

[The Architect]

Yea, coins are hell. Only make them if you have Economy turned off; and then they're for show. They are really cool in a lot of ways; they have contemporary images and faces along with a date.