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[Diacritic]

I cannot believe that there are people here seriously arguing that real-world steam power is unrealistic. I call either a) troll or b) I will burn the world to fix the stupid.

[veok]

It's dwarf fortress; Burn the world anyway. You know... just to be safe.

[G-Flex]

I cannot believe that there are people here seriously arguing that real-world steam power is unrealistic. I call either a) troll or b) I will burn the world to fix the stupid.

Unrealistic for fifteenth-century technology, not in general. Come on, give us some credit.

Heron made the steam engine as a toy, and called his device "aeolipile," which means "wind ball" in Greek.

That's not a freaking steam engine. It doesn't do work. It's just a ball that lets off steam out of little pipes on the side and spins around. There's a big, big difference between that and an actual steam engine of any sort.

[fivex]

I cannot believe that there are people here seriously arguing that real-world steam power is unrealistic. I call either a) troll or b) I will burn the world to fix the stupid.

Unrealistic for fifteenth-century technology, not in general. Come on, give us some credit.

Heron made the steam engine as a toy, and called his device "aeolipile," which means "wind ball" in Greek.

That's not a freaking steam engine. It doesn't do work. It's just a ball that lets off steam out of little pipes on the side and spins around. There's a big, big difference between that and an actual steam engine of any sort.

Which, if enlarged, can be used for generating power

[G-Flex]

Again, if it were that simple, people would have done it instead of waiting a millenium. A larger aeolipile would be much more difficult to heat (even per unit volume), there's really no way to get more water in the thing in the first place without stopping it, and any assembly where it actually does work would be a fair bit more complicated than the spinning ball on a simple mount. There are probably other concerns as well, but I'm not an engineer.

[gtmattz]

This argument is fucking stupid guys...

We all routinely use magical over-unity water-wheel+screw pump machines to power stuff, why is some kind of rudimentary steam engine such a problem or stretch of the imagination...

Hell, while I am on the topic of already rediculous and unrealistic crap... Linkages...  We have magical mechanisms that can link a lever or pressure plate to something all the way across the damn map, with nothing in between!?

If you are going to come up with an argument against steam power, realism is probably the worst tack to take...
 

 

[Vehudur]

This argument is fucking stupid guys...

We all routinely use magical over-unity water-wheel+screw pump machines to power stuff, why is some kind of rudimentary steam engine such a problem or stretch of the imagination...

Hell, while I am on the topic of already rediculous and unrealistic crap... Linkages...  We have magical mechanisms that can link a lever or pressure plate to something all the way across the damn map, with nothing in between!?

If you are going to come up with an argument against steam power, realism is probably the worst tack to take...
 

 

He only sees what he wants to see, clearly.

Again, if it were that simple, people would have done it instead of waiting a millenium. A larger aeolipile would be much more difficult to heat (even per unit volume), there's really no way to get more water in the thing in the first place without stopping it, and any assembly where it actually does work would be a fair bit more complicated than the spinning ball on a simple mount. There are probably other concerns as well, but I'm not an engineer.

It IS that simple.  Do you know why they didn't?  They had slaves to do all the hard work, and for the very few things they didn't have slaves for water wheels were sufficient. 

You can add water easily if the water is under pressure, which you can do with a pump or hell, even gravity.

All of the additional complexities are already possible in-game except a horizontal waterwheel, which would be simple enough.  It's all basic too.

Harder to heat?  Build a bigger fire.

So once again, it comes down to being this simple:  Yes, it works.  How do we know?  The same exact concepts (read: EXACT SAME concepts) work in the real world.  You not believing this is just you being a moron.

[G-Flex]

This argument is fucking stupid guys...

We all routinely use magical over-unity water-wheel+screw pump machines to power stuff, why is some kind of rudimentary steam engine such a problem or stretch of the imagination...

Yes, the simulation is lacking. That is not an excuse to include entire branches of technology to fall outside the level of technology Toady actually wants to include. We have thermodynamics-defying systems as an unfortunate but necessary side-effect of the fact that the simulation is currently flawed/limited, not as a conscious decision.

Hell, while I am on the topic of already rediculous and unrealistic crap... Linkages...  We have magical mechanisms that can link a lever or pressure plate to something all the way across the damn map, with nothing in between!?

It's called "abstraction", along with, as I said, limited simulation/implementation. Mechanics are getting an overhaul at some point. Will we see that being more complex? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. In the meantime, the fact that mechanical components link without anything in the intervening space is a video game abstraction that results in occasionally-weird behavior, not an indication of the amount of technology represented, or of dwarves actually having magical telepathic-lever technology. There is a difference here.

If you are going to come up with an argument against steam power, realism is probably the worst tack to take...
 

 

Then tell it to Toady, because more or less his argument: That it's just not realistic within the technological framework/time-period he's trying to establish. The unrealistic elements you've mentioned are due to suboptimal implementations and system abstractions resulting in weird/exploitable behavior. There is a big difference between "this feature is unrealistic as a necessity of being suboptimally implemented, or because a more realistic option is infeasible" and "this feature is unrealistic in concept, even if implemented in an ideal fashion". I can't speak for Toady himself, but I welcome you to ask him personally. There are many, many examples of Toady deciding to include/exclude a feature because it isn't realistic given the technological constraints, even going as far as to do research on things like mine carts, never mind entire technological paradigms like steam power or electricity.

Harder to heat?  Build a bigger fire.

I meant in terms of how things scale. The volume of it would increase proportional to the cube of the radius, whereas the surface area (i.e. the contact area you're actually heating) increases only proportional to the square. It's just not a very easily-scaled design.

So once again, it comes down to being this simple:  Yes, it works.  How do we know?  The same exact concepts (read: EXACT SAME concepts) work in the real world.  You not believing this is just you being a moron.

I'm also not saying that it would theoretically impossible or against the laws of physics to build a huge-ass aeolipile-like machine that provides useful power. However, I think it would be infeasible to the point of being a fairly useless contraption, especially given high-middle-ages technology, especially considering the fact that it needs a very significant power source (which is not an issue with the Segner-wheel since it's gravity-fed) and a way to feed it water in a manner that doesn't screw up the pressure (also not an issue with that design, since, well, you aren't doing that).

Also, can you please lay off with the personal insults? Thanks.