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[Moosey]

I may have stumbled upon a form of atom smashing that's completely non-mechanical and has no risk of accidental death (yeah, yeah, un-dwarfy, I know).  It involves no drawbridges or siege engines, just a mason and a door or window.  I don't know if this is entirely new science or not, but a casual search didn't find it in the wiki or here in the forum.

The idea is to set up an obstacle that keeps items placed above it from falling down into its square but doesn't register as a floor on the Z-level above.  So far, I've found this can be done with windows and closed doors.  We can then construct a structure in this square above the obstacle.  When the structure is completed, anything that used to be in that space will vanish, completely removed from the game world as far as I can tell.

I've illustrated how this works:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I discovered this in version 31.14, so I can't speak for other versions.

[Eagle_eye]

This is cool, though not nearly as efficient as conventional atom smashing.

[BigJake]

Thank you for your !!SCIENCE!!

[KaguroDraven]

'safe'? That word sounds elfy to me! DAMN YOU ELVES! Always trying to turn us to your evil elfy ways!

On a less silly note, this is cool but I would rather go the normal way myself.

[Moosey]

This is cool, though not nearly as efficient as conventional atom smashing.

If you use a garbage dump zone, you can eliminate as much crap as you want with a single order.  You could even have a garbage pit on the next Z-level up that you can use at any time, and just redo the floor below occasionally.

[Moosey]

'safe'? That word sounds elfy to me! DAMN YOU ELVES! Always trying to turn us to your evil elfy ways!

Hey man, relax!  Let's have a sip of prickleberry wine and talk this out. :>

[BigJake]

Is the initial floor necessary?  Could you just drop them onto the doors?

[Vicid]

Have a pit to dump in. At the bottom is a walled off ised drawbridge. Done

[Eagle_eye]

the thing is, it takes considerably longer to execute. admittedly, its the difference between 30 seconds and 5, but still.

[Moosey]

Is the initial floor necessary?  Could you just drop them onto the doors?

You could indeed.  But you can't actually walk on top of a closed door or window, is the thing that makes this work, or else the mason would move the junk out of the way.

[Moosey]

the thing is, it takes considerably longer to execute. admittedly, its the difference between 30 seconds and 5, but still.

But it's something you can do without a mechanic..  y'know, if you ABSOLUTELY NEED to smash stuff right at embark.  Like for instance..  uh.....

Okay, I got nothing.

[Diacritic]

It's pretty cool for when I don't want to waste three mechanisms just for smashing stuff, at least.

[Pan]

Hey man, relax!  Let's have a sip of prickleberry wine and talk this out. :>

 I lol'd. (if that was an intended joke)

It's pretty cool for when I don't want to waste three mechanisms just for smashing stuff, at least.

Good if your short on stone. (although 98% of the dumping is usually to get rid of stone.) The method is pretty awesome, too. Maybe someone should post it on magma wiki?

[Shoku]

I see a major issue with this: the items still existing.

You weren't especially specific about ways you've checked to see if the items still exist but I highly suspect that they still show up on the stocks screen. You can also make items seem to disappear by freezing them in ice and then melting the ice (they fall out if you mine out the ice instead.)
Well, that just might have changed since 40d but I don't see why it would have gathered much attention.

The problem though was that the items still registered as existing with a whole location on the map you could zoom to and such. This still takes up memory so you don't free up any computer resources. Atom smashing is a special case where the game flat out says "ok, we squished that so it's off the lists." I don't it fully frees up the memory of smashed things either but it definitely frees up part of it whereas this? Well, if you get an FPS boost after getting rid of something like 20,000 stone like this then it's actually valid, maybe.

[Moosey]

You weren't especially specific about ways you've checked to see if the items still exist but I highly suspect that they still show up on the stocks screen. You can also make items seem to disappear by freezing them in ice and then melting the ice (they fall out if you mine out the ice instead.)
Well, that just might have changed since 40d but I don't see why it would have gathered much attention.

No, I did this to all the wooden bolts that were laying around my training yard, and now they're not listed on the stocks screen anymore.

And yes, a bunch of iron bolts fell in the river and froze, and they have the behavior you describe of being gone from the world but still in the stocks screen.