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[NW_Kohaku]

This is a fairly small and simple suggestion (especially considering it's me).  I'm surprised I didn't see something exactly matching this in the searches I did, although I did certainly see plenty of suggestions for explosives use.

The basic gist of this is that we get a new designation type ("sap wall"?) that lets a dwarf carefully undermine a wall, and prop up the holes with small collapsable supports (possibly taking a wood or bar or stone, like with a full support).  These supports are then capable of being attached to a lever.  The lever, once pulled, like with a full support, will collapse that wall, while keeping your dwarves from a safe distance.

This idea comes from my general reaction to the almost suicidal way you have to engrave fortifications in the side of magma pipes to gain access to them from lower levels, and the fairly dangerous way you might otherwise "break the dam" by channeling right next to the places where you are about to channel water.  Collapsing walls like this wouldn't require any explosives, and give players a safe, if time-consuming way to bust walls next to dangerous areas. 


While I'm talking designations, though, even though I know it has been suggested several times before since .31 came out, I would like to reiterate that I would really like to see a "remove construction from above" command.  Even if this is only usable with stairwells, this would be a useful remedy to the problem of having ramps down in all your pits.  You could just remove the ramps (from the lower floor), build a stairwell up halfway through that, and destroy the bottom of the stairwell from above, so that the pit has a smooth bottom without the absurd extra steps of collapsing a floor onto it, or digging an escape route you then have to wall back in.  After all, if we can build stairs downward (as a replacement for a rope ladder), why can't we deconstruct the same object downward, as well?

[Askot Bokbondeler]

how could this be realistically possible without explosives?

[NW_Kohaku]

how could this be realistically possible without explosives?

The same way that invaders would sap underneath walls - you cut away a portion underneath a wall, and place a support there.  You cut away more, and place a support there.  You cut away more...

If the supports are collapsable/removable by lever, it would work just the same way that deconstructing a support by lever works to cause a cave-in in the macro scale, but only reduced to the scale of a single tile.

EDIT: Or, since this is really meant for walls near water or magma, think of it like this: In real life, if you were digging through stone to get to someplace with water, then as you made the wall thinner, it would start buckling under the water pressure.  If you kept building more and more supports holding the wall up, and the water back, you could keep weakening the wall itself, and placing more and more pressure upon the supports.  You just make those supports collapsable, and pull the lever that collapses those supports from far away, in a safe place.

[Starver]

[Slightly ninjaed by KW_Kohaku]

I see it as being something taking up a material (e.g. logs, for props) and a special digging designation whereby natural rock is essentially 'replaced' by "propped up rock".  There might be a horizontal version (for 'almost digging away' rock walls facing onto lava or water on the same Z-level) and a vertical version (a bit like an "up-ramp" intrusion, without the ramp, which gives you a bridge-like separation between the lower dug area and whatever is above, although for that version I could see a 'special case' of Support usage).

Add lever connectivity, pulling that lever, and the wall or 'floor above' disappears.  It may need the weight of liquid behind it.  Or it may collapse with the usual cave-in results.

It cuold perhaps only be possible to apply to established liquid-holding walls (in the horizontal version) and collapse of its own accord (i.e. outward) if there's less than 7, 6 or 5/7ths liquid being propped against.  (Vertical version seems harder to contingencyise

I can see it being modelled, but I'm a bit unsure about the ascii representation.  Especially given if needs cardinal-direction differentiation.

[NW_Kohaku]

In order to keep coding for it simple, I'd rather it just be "the wall dissapears when you pull the lever".  Frankly, current mining is "the wall dissapears when you have a dwarf with a pick stand next to it, although maybe a stone appears in its place".  Having walls collapse in themselves as part of a very slow, careful version of mining wouldn't be anything odd by the standards of the mining we already have.

As for ascii representation... tile 223?  (The one that is a block with the bottom of the tile blank)

[Starver]

Liking the general idea of the character 223 (aka U+2580 in unicode), how about the other 'half-blocks' of 220/U+2584, 221/U+258C and 222/U+2590 as well.  Except that the 221 and 222 are broken pipe and i-grave (I think) except under certain IBM standards.  Not that it'd matter with bitmap representation, of course.

But, that way, it can represent a wall 'braced' in a certain direction.

I see your other point, though.

[Pilsu]

Does this make any kind of mechanical sense though?

[Starver]

Well, alongside actual sapping, as already mentioned, it also bears resemblences to some ancient methods of pre-explosives mining.  Though usually accompanied by fire-setting, rather than lever-controlled, we're talking dwarfs here.  Maintain magmaducts and a complex magma-pumping systems? Yep actually know how to handle anything on !!fire!! without burning up their own alcohol stockpiles by accident, no...

[Muz]

It doesn't really make sense. I'd support some kind of portcullis, but I think those are what floodgates and those metal wall bars do. A "wall" is something more complex than what could be collapsed by a lever.. anything less would probably be modeled a floodgate.

Or perhaps make a weaker wall type that could be collapsed, but again, that might be modeled by a floodgate or some bars.

If you can destroy the thing under the wall to collapse the wall... then destroy a pillar under the wall? But let's leave that question until more realistic cave-ins are implemented.

[NW_Kohaku]

It doesn't really make sense. I'd support some kind of portcullis, but I think those are what floodgates and those metal wall bars do. A "wall" is something more complex than what could be collapsed by a lever.. anything less would probably be modeled a floodgate.

Or perhaps make a weaker wall type that could be collapsed, but again, that might be modeled by a floodgate or some bars.

If you can destroy the thing under the wall to collapse the wall... then destroy a pillar under the wall? But let's leave that question until more realistic cave-ins are implemented.

I think maybe you're a little confused by what I'm attempting to accomplish, here.

This isn't meant to be a repeating operation.  (If you want repeatable use gateways, floodgates would be what you want.)  The purpose of this is to make dwarves mostly mine out a natural wall, leaving just a little left standing by some collapsable supports, so that the final act of actually removing the wall (as if by mining) is accomplished from a distance, by a lever. 

In game terms, this is just a special type of mining that is slower, and lets you use a lever to actually make the wall tile dissapear from the map.  The only advantage to doing this is when you do not want your dwarf standing next to the wall when it dissapears. For example, when breaching a wall holding back a body of water, magma pipe, or even to the HFS, if you know where it is (or had previously breached, and re-sealed). 

Like I said previously, I have used the method of simply engraving fortifications into a wall holding back magma, and just made the dwarf who carved it run for safety behind a door after carving it.  While such a thing can work, manually carving a hole in a wall to let magma through before trying to outrun the magma to a safe place seems just a little too suicidally stupid to me.

[Pilsu]

I really see nothing wrong with dwarves having sapping charges that can destroy a wall remotely. I'd use a fuse though, levers are stretched too far as is. In fact, I'd prefer if all cave-in traps involved stuff blowing up. At the very least some kind of log pendulum that smashes through the pillars when released.

[NW_Kohaku]

I really see nothing wrong with dwarves having sapping charges that can destroy a wall remotely. I'd use a fuse though, levers are stretched too far as is. In fact, I'd prefer if all cave-in traps involved stuff blowing up. At the very least some kind of log pendulum that smashes through the pillars when released.

I'm more interested in the effect than in the explanation/rationalization, myself.  I used collapsing pillars in the description because it was something that I know is already in the game, works, and would not bring up any discussion about what sorts of explosives would be technologically or thematically appropriate for DF.

If people want it to be small quantities of explosives (or just low-yield explosives), and people don't argue about what would be appropriate, it can be small quantities of explosives.

[Pilsu]

Certainly beats magic levers.

[Hyndis]

Can be done remotely easily enough. Just mine it out, but in such a way that it is unstable. Leave a wood support in place propping the whole thing up. Tie a rope to the support.

When everyone is at a safe distance yank on the rope really hard, pulling the support out, causing the section of wall to collapse. No explosives needed.

[NW_Kohaku]

Certainly beats magic levers.

The thing is, though, all dwarven technology is based upon magic stones called "mechanisms" that can transmit mechanical impulses across theoretically infinite distances, these impulses even being powerful enough to lift or lower massive stone drawbridges with enough power to completely annihalate any matter (excepting those with mighty "megabeast tag" forcefields) that might possibly impede its progress. 

Like I said, I'm not trying to invent something new, I'm trying to give players a function using the same technology we already currently take for granted.