Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Some suggestions for mechanisms  (Read 1740 times)

Da Spadger

  • Bay Watcher
  • WINDMILL!
    • View Profile
Some suggestions for mechanisms
« on: October 26, 2010, 09:27:01 am »

Firstly, letting them be made out of other materials than stone, like glass, wood and metal. To make a mechanism out of glass, the mechanic would require a glass block, a metal bar for a metal mechanism and a log for a wooden mechanism.

Secondly, leveling up the appropiate skill somewhat in addition to the mechanic skill. If you were to make a ton of glass mechanisms, you wouldn't just have a legendary mechanic but also a fairly proficient glassmaker. (Or mason/carpenter/blacksmith)

Thirdly, allowing mechanisms to be used as a weapon in traps. They'd spin and do blunt damage to anything caught between the cogwheels, breaking bones in the process.
Logged
While flooding by mining is done slowly, tediously and by accident, flooding by dwarven engineering is done with great speed, endless vigor and also by accident.

ungulateman

  • Bay Watcher
  • [PREFSTRING: haunting moos]
    • View Profile
Re: Some suggestions for mechanisms
« Reply #1 on: October 26, 2010, 10:26:28 am »

We can already make metal mechanisms at the metalsmith's forge.

Skill interconnection may or may not happen already. It's been suggested before.

Mechanisms as trap weapons could be modded to some point.
Logged
That's the great thing about this forum. We can derail any discussion into any other topic.
It's not an embark so much as seven dwarves having a simultaneous strange mood and going off to build an artifact fortress that menaces with spikes of awesome and hanging rings of death.

Da Spadger

  • Bay Watcher
  • WINDMILL!
    • View Profile
Re: Some suggestions for mechanisms
« Reply #2 on: October 27, 2010, 12:46:43 am »

We can already make metal mechanisms at the metalsmith's forge.

Woah, awesome. I didn't know that. :D
Logged
While flooding by mining is done slowly, tediously and by accident, flooding by dwarven engineering is done with great speed, endless vigor and also by accident.

Virex

  • Bay Watcher
  • Subjects interest attracted. Annalyses pending...
    • View Profile
Re: Some suggestions for mechanisms
« Reply #3 on: October 27, 2010, 05:11:53 pm »

I don't think you can transfer much power using a glass mechanism (well, technically a glass piston could work, but glass cogs and glass shafts are right out. Any lateral or twisting movement would shatter the glass)
Logged

Arkenstone

  • Bay Watcher
  • Perfect Clear Diamond
    • View Profile
Re: Some suggestions for mechanisms
« Reply #4 on: October 29, 2010, 12:39:46 am »

Everything you have asked here can be done by modding -except you'd need a seperate "spinning gear" trap componant, you can't mod mechanisms as far as I know. (Although you should be able to find the proper term in the string dump that will let you mod in new reactions to make them out of other materials.)
Logged

Quote from: Retro
Dwarven economics are still in the experimental stages. The humans have told them that they need to throw a lot of money around to get things going, but every time the dwarves try all they just end up with a bunch of coins lying all over the place.

The EPIC Dwarven Drinking Song of Many Names

Feel free to ask me any questions you have about logic/computing; I'm majoring in the topic.

Lord Shonus

  • Bay Watcher
  • Angle of Death
    • View Profile
Re: Some suggestions for mechanisms
« Reply #5 on: October 29, 2010, 09:30:16 am »

I don't think you can transfer much power using a glass mechanism (well, technically a glass piston could work, but glass cogs and glass shafts are right out. Any lateral or twisting movement would shatter the glass)
Wood would be nearly as bad with any kind of torque on it. I've done that experiment.
Logged
On Giant In the Playground and Something Awful I am Gnoman.
Man, ninja'd by a potentially inebriated Lord Shonus. I was gonna say to burn it.

thijser

  • Bay Watcher
  • You to cut down a tree in order to make an axe!
    • View Profile
Re: Some suggestions for mechanisms
« Reply #6 on: October 29, 2010, 12:49:17 pm »

And yet wood is the only usable material for axels.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2010, 12:57:01 pm by thijser »
Logged
I'm not a native English speaker. Feel free to point out grammar/spelling mistakes. This way I can learn better English.

Lord Shonus

  • Bay Watcher
  • Angle of Death
    • View Profile
Re: Some suggestions for mechanisms
« Reply #7 on: October 29, 2010, 12:53:06 pm »

Wood works fine for AXLES, but trying to put teeth on it doesn't work well. It deforms too much under the pressure.
Logged
On Giant In the Playground and Something Awful I am Gnoman.
Man, ninja'd by a potentially inebriated Lord Shonus. I was gonna say to burn it.

Arkenstone

  • Bay Watcher
  • Perfect Clear Diamond
    • View Profile
Re: Some suggestions for mechanisms
« Reply #8 on: October 29, 2010, 06:47:17 pm »

Remember: this is DF.  In DF, wood can be used to make magma reservoirs, I'm sure it can handle breaking a few more laws of physics...
Logged

Quote from: Retro
Dwarven economics are still in the experimental stages. The humans have told them that they need to throw a lot of money around to get things going, but every time the dwarves try all they just end up with a bunch of coins lying all over the place.

The EPIC Dwarven Drinking Song of Many Names

Feel free to ask me any questions you have about logic/computing; I'm majoring in the topic.

Sunken

  • Bay Watcher
  • Wabewalker
    • View Profile
Re: Some suggestions for mechanisms
« Reply #9 on: October 31, 2010, 04:23:29 am »

Wood works fine for AXLES, but trying to put teeth on it doesn't work well. It deforms too much under the pressure.
Not without exceptions, apparently. Also, instead of cutting teeth into a solid wheel, you can insert plugs instead; that seems more robust:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Edit: this isn't quite fair, perhaps, but do a Google Image search for "wooden gears" and "stone gears" and compare them ;-)
« Last Edit: October 31, 2010, 04:26:44 am by Sunken »
Logged
Alpha version? More like elf aversion!

Lord Shonus

  • Bay Watcher
  • Angle of Death
    • View Profile
Re: Some suggestions for mechanisms
« Reply #10 on: October 31, 2010, 08:38:22 am »

True. Most of what we were working with were much smaller gears.
Logged
On Giant In the Playground and Something Awful I am Gnoman.
Man, ninja'd by a potentially inebriated Lord Shonus. I was gonna say to burn it.