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[NW_Kohaku]

Do you think gravity is magic?

Gravity Is Only A Theory.  After all, the man on the TV machine tells me there is no rational explanation for tides besides God.  He is (to the best of my ability to discern) a human being that lives in Modern Western Society, and he clearly thinks he is using Rationality, so his claims that Gravity Is Magic MUST be true!

[devek]

Haha, that guy cracks me up. That makes me wonder though.. it doesn't surprise me that "Papa Bear" would think things radically different than me, but what about people who have actual science degrees?

There are biologist that believe in intelligent design for example. They had to have gone to a school that drilled in their head what the meaning of certain words were, somehow passed, and then somehow managed to do their job while not believing any of it.

I can understand two different people thinking two different things, but how can a single individual think two different things? Blows my mind..

[Jeoshua]

Bill O'Riely is skilled in two arts: Self-delusion and Bullshit-making.

Also a master of the rhetorical question, which as we all know, doesn't actually have any content and doesn't require an answer.  But then he acts like our not stooping to his level to answer something as simple as Tides as a proof that he's right.

Anyways it's really not what I was saying, and please let's not bring up fundamentalism and/or religion into this discussion.

The funniest part about all this is that while Devek is defining Alchemy as "bullshit lies" and I'm defining it as "flavor text for science", fundamentally I think we'd both love to see chemistry in this game.

Dwarves are prone to fits of insanity, strange traces, bloodthirty rage, inscruitable moods and violent trantrums. Their greatest works come in a fit of madness and inspiration, where a dwarf demands to be given strange materials for stranger uses and produce works of surpassing greatness that cannot be reproduced by any mundane means.

Snipped where I started to disagree.  We don't know what these Dwarves are thinking.  In a fugue state, they could all of a sudden be having glimpses of how the world works, and what they could do with that knowledge.  In most cases Dwarves do bring this knowledge back and become Legendary at a craft.  So there is something to be said for the idea that they're not actually doing something "Magical" in that they do not understand what is happening... rather they're having a fit of genius which can be explained and partially reproduced in subsequent crafts... thereby "Science"

Although different rules could be at work for Possessed Moods

[NW_Kohaku]

EDIT:

Actually, I'll just PM this.

[Grek]

For the record, I have completely ignored the "Dwarves are Magic; No, Dwarves are Science" debate, as it was utterly pointless and unproductive. I would strongly urge anyone that wants this topic to be vaguely useful to do that same.

That said, the suggestion stands, regardless of if you want to call the process involved in strange moods "science" or "magic". Dwarven alchemy should make heavy use of alchemical artifacts that are opperated using the alchemy skill at an alchemy workshop to transmute one material into another. This doesn't have to be the whole of alchemy, there should also be things like mixing golden salve, distilling liquid fire and unusual extracts, but it should be one of the big, eye-grabby things that alchemy does.

[harborpirate]

This thread just keeps spinning its wheels with boring arguments over science versus magic.

I'm with NW_Kohaku here, lets get this thing back on track and try and discuss what Alchemy should actually do.

Here's my take on what would make for an interesting new component to the game.

Firstly, the settings include two new important things:
1. A setting on whether Alchemical reactions should be procedurally* generated by the game during worldgen.
2. A list of valid Alchemical reactions, which provides the only valid reactions for the Alchemists shop if procedural generation is off.

"Science only" players can just list all the reactions that they want in the raws and turn off procedural generation. Players that are interested in generating a magical or strange world that doesn't operate like ours can opt for the route that procedurally generates reactions and has no preexisting reactions. Other players could opt for a combination of both known and new reactions, by leaving generation on but adding some known reactions.

In either case, reactions will be unknown to the player and must be discovered; unless the player entered the reactions in the raws manually, or uses a mod which provides reactions that they're familiar with, in which case obviously they'll know what they are.

General rules of Alchemy:
Alchemy should be the combination of two or more substances, with the result generally being of a type of one of the substances used.

Some possible examples that could be generated:
A blood barrel combined with milk might result in a barrel of blood wine.
A vinegar barrel, water barrel, and animal hide could produce a gelatin barrel.
A bar of aluminum, a barrel of cockroach ichor, and a barrel of longland beer might produce a bar of gold.

The furnaces have already assumed the role of creating most metal alloys, but perhaps exotic alloys and electroplating could be possible at the alchemists shop.

In addition, this would be a great place for players to be able to create intriguing substances like greek fire, gunpowder, poisons, and the like. (Commonly suggested stuff that doesn't fit elsewhere)

*In this case procedurally meaning "randomly with certain constraints".

[Jeoshua]

This whole discussion came out of the fundimental difference between randomly generated effects vs preset ones.  And I am strictly against having effects that you can't learn no matter how hard you try.  There needs to be a process one can go through to get results, even if it's not 100%

[harborpirate]

You could always spoil yourself by checking the raws. I believe for the reactions to persist, worldgen will have to write out the custom reactions there.

There needs to be some indicator that a reagent to a reaction was found, even if the dwarf didn't have all the components, as well as possibly some sort of hints system that gives obscure pointers on a complete reaction.

Moods were mentioned earlier, and those should probably be valid means of reaction discovery as well. That way players not interested in the reaction discovery part of the game could still get a few freebies to mess with.

[Grek]

This whole discussion came out of the fundimental difference between randomly generated effects vs preset ones.  And I am strictly against having effects that you can't learn no matter how hard you try.  There needs to be a process one can go through to get results, even if it's not 100%

Under my proposed plan, all of the procedurally generated alchemical processes have an attached artifact. The recipe(s) it is used in could easily be placed in the artifact description. Anything that isn't procedurally generated will be in the raws and have what it requires be listed there. And, of course, you still get the Job Cancelled: Needs Firefly Brain messages when you try to do something you don't have the reagents for.

[Grek]

Bumping this to point out that, if you go with my suggestion, you could end up with an alchemical philosopher's stone that produces an extract that causes the unaging syndrone when you drink it and also turns lead into gold. But you could also get one that turns ale into liquid fire, or water into blood. Food for thought.

[Naryar]

Would like to see gunpowder made by alchemists. Really, mix coal, saltpeter and brimstone.

[Karakzon]

why not just treat alchemists like reaserchers?
i mean, youll not know how to manipulate steel straight from the bat if its just year 5.

make an office and let the little buggers use it when its assigned as a lab.

could have it so that they also reaserch stats about each metal or such, so the player can see them ingame.

[Crioca]

This is redonkulous. For one, dwarves have already mastered quantum mechanics. How else can you link up a lever and a bridge over any distance with nothing more than two rock mechanisms? The ONLY possible solution is quantum entanglement. (What I'm saying here is that given the large number of inexplicable things in DF, declaring arbitrary limits on dwarven technology makes little sense, all that matters is that it fits the setting of the game)

Another thing people seem to fail to realize is that their world is not our world. The rules aren't necessarily the same, what might be impossible in our universe might be as simple as banging two rocks together in theirs, we simply have no reliable information about the atomic or subatomic structure of matter in the worlds of DF, so any assumptions made on those subjects are baseless.

The notion that alchemy is a binary choice between magic and science is also absurd. This is a world that HAS magic. It's word of god and we have fucking undead. And no world can function where science cannot be applied. So inevitably, alchemy is going to include both these things. A dwarf alchemist will probably be able to create black powder by combining charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre, he might also be able to transmute lead into gold by melting it with dragonflame and adding powdered unicorn hoof. With the knowledge we have about the rules of physics within the game, both scenarios are entirely plausible.

[Naryar]

Did I forgot Greek fire flasks to be thrown/syphon projector (AKA middle age epoch flamethrowers) siege weapons ? Yes I did.

[Bohandas]

(What I'm saying here is that given the large number of inexplicable things in DF, declaring arbitrary limits on dwarven technology makes little sense, all that matters is that it fits the setting of the game)

I've actually given this some thought, and I've come up with a proposal for a research system that would not have this limitation. Basically instead of reserching new metals, dwarves would research improvemens to existing metals. Each breakthrough would marginaly increase (maybe by one to five units at a time??) one of more the yield and/or fracture values, or else decrease the strain-at-yield values, for new items made locally from the metal being researched.