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But people, a space station lacks the sort of long-term survivability we're going for. First, it has no magnetic protection, which would lead to us eventually being turned into a very overcooked pizza. Secondly, the lack of gravity means exercise, which I hate. And thirdly, It would make defense more difficult. Do you know how hard it is to put a hole in a space station? Riduculously easy.

A. How much of a magnetic field does Luna have? Besides, if the ISS can keep astronauts from turning into "overcooked pizza," why can't our space station?
B. Centrifuges, my fellow dwarf. I have this sketch of a space station for a story I am planning to write. Given sufficient energy--say, solar, supplemented by nuclear (fusion powered by gas-giant hydrogen or fission powered by asteroid-mined fissionables)--we could keep a fair amount of gravity. The one I designed had a gym at 1.2 G, to help optimize our not-bone-losing capabilities.
C. How will they shoot us if they can't find us? Besides, if we land on Olympus Mons or Luna, we're one nuke-toting warship from annihilation anyways. Space war, and even modern (read: Since Russia got nukes) war, tends to be an issue of "Who fired their weapons first?" Especially since they will probably have enough nukes to wipe us off the face of whatever world we settle on and we definitely won't, our best defense is invisibility and mobility rather than toughness. Especially if we convert all (or almost all) of the sunlight hitting us into electricity and direct waste heat away from Earth, we'll be really tough to see.

As the main martian here, I would like to remind you that mars has magma, and ice, rendering water and heat concerns null. Furthermore, digging underground could allow for us to turtle for some time, especially if we are self-sustainable. Large solar energy farms could power it, as theres not much competition for space on mars. Greenhouses could be used to farm, as well as provide air.

Let's be honest: We'd need to dig MILES (or at least most of one) underground for us to have a whole community protected from nukes. And, anyways, those solar farms would be vulnerable to attack. One or two nukes there? There goes our power! Same with greenhouses. Frankly, our best bet on Mars would be to tunnel down and make extensive use of geothermal power, and using artificial lighting to grow plants. And Mars is about the worst place to initiate an attack from; we could send some sort of attack craft, but we'd be outnumbered, and they could send spaceships with nukes to wipe out vital infrastructure if we were careless. So, in short, it's Mars or war. Ironic, no?

Weapons: We first need to focus on hand-to-hand weaponry, in order to establish our base of operations on earth. That would allow us to far more easily move supplies there, and if we pick a small country, we shouldn't expect any sanctions or hostilities from the space-faring nations.
THEN, we start on our interplanetary weapons, in order to strike a devestating first strike on their space-capabilities.

"Hand-to-hand combat?" That's suicide for DWARVES! We live in an era of missile launchers, snipers, and nukes. If we charge into battle, outnumbered, using axes, we will have lost 99%+ of our militia AND have a tantrum spiral at home. And unless we take out vital little nations, the big nations will be willing and able to wipe us out to stop us from bombing Paris and DC.
That's why I'm recommending the TMIaHM method: Settle on Luna, wait for something to distract Earthlings, fling rocks at them (starting in uninhabited areas, move on to military targets, threaten civilian targets if we must), defend our homes (which we could make ideal for hand-to-hand combat), declare independence, become a major economic power, go from there. Okay, those last two steps weren't in Heinlein's book, but still. In short: Interplanetary warfare first, hand-to-hand for home defense. Also, consider some kind of thingy (space station?) with centrifuges providing greater than Earth-level gravity for training our soldiers. Then, they will be stronger than the groundhogs.

Remember, mars has air, protection from solar storms, isolation to prevent earth from getting curious, magma, ice, iron, and a coolness facter.

Air? Well, kinda. A few percent of Earth's atmosphere and mostly CO₂, and anyways we'd want to stay underground if we wanted to attack Earth. Protection from solar storms? I'll give you that over space stations. Isolation? Also makes pretty much any kind of warfare except "Fly to them and hope they don't shoot us out of the sky before we can attack" effectively impossible, which isn't a problem for Earth because of their much vaster pool of resources and population. Magma? Cool, but aside from geothermal power, lacking in practicality. Ice? On Luna too, and you can also mine water from some asteroids and/or recycle waste fluids. Iron? I'm 99% sure that Luna has it, and 100% that there's some in the asteroid belt, which is a good place for our hypothetical space station to hang out the more I think of it. Coolness? I assume you are talking about the temperature of your body if we decide to go for style over substance.

How is ghost babby formed?

Kill a baby, wait for a ghost to form, watch in astonishment a year later when the baby grows up.

Quote from: Firehawk45 on July 14, 2012, 06:21:25 am

Quote from: WanderingKid on July 14, 2012, 05:46:15 am

Dear Urist McHunter (and your two brothers),

Please, I KNOW I breached the caverns and you can't find the path.  Honest.  Now SHADDUP.  I'm in the middle of building a magma forge and I really don't need the distraction.  There's a Blind Cave Ogre down there anyway, if you COULD find the path, you'd be dead already, I still don't have armor for you.

- Your (rather spamfilled) Overseer.

Dear Overseer,

You told us to hunt, and there is something to hunt down there, so WHY DONT YOU LET US DO OUR JOB?

Your Hunters.

Dear Hunters...

A) Because you're morons and half the time you go hunting you do it without your ammo!
B) Because I hooked you up as a military unit and told you to always wear your armor.  Why are you wearing those socks instead of these nice leather high boots?
C) Because there's a frickin' Ogre down there!

- Your exasperated overlord!

(On a side note, apparently I have no idea how to properly get cages back to animal storage.  Still working that one out.)

Dear fellow overseer,
I can't help but notice some issues you have.
A. Ammo is an issue that dwarves have especially when combined with
B. Uniform issues. Hunters have a uniform (leather armor, crossbow, quiver, bolts), and militiadwarves have a uniform (varies). Dwarves can only wear one uniform at a time.
C. Dwarves may not realize they can't eat ogres until they've killed them, and they don't think that they're a danger until it's too late, AND it's possible that something else was attracting the dwarves.

Quote from: Mimodo on July 16, 2012, 08:46:09 am

The number of times I've experienced number 1.
"Hey, Marksdwarf! You're out of ammunition, go get some more. No, don't run at him, he's fully armoured, and you've got leather and a crossbow. Dammit, I've stationed you inside, GO INSIDE!"
*Urist McMarksdwarf has been struck down*

If you can't make sure your marksdwarves can't path to the enemy at all, try modding crossbows to be more useful as a melee weapon. I ended up giving them a bayonet.

Hm...How reasonable would it be for dwarves to add blades to the sides of a crossbow to make a crude axe?

Dear "Legendary Weaponsmith" Avedrimtar... Mayor of Channeltools.

Up until this moment, you've been reasonable.  Make a few bucklers, don't sell doors.  Okay, we're fine there.

Now, you want a Bismuth Bronze door in your dining room.  First, I'm trying to decide how you even know they exist.  Second, even though I have a magma vent and a full-bore Magma fueled operation ready to go, in case you haven't noticed, we've been having a little trouble finding metal ore veins.  In particular, the necessary components for Bronze, nevermind Bismuth Bronze.

So don't take this the wrong way when I start preparing the magma pump stack to warm your room.  You twit.  We can't even armor the frickin' military.

- Your (no longer) benevelant overlord.

For the curious, my DFHack of Ores for the entire embark:

Code: [Select]

Ores:
             TETRAHEDRITE :      3946 Z:  85..104
                   GALENA :       781 Z:  98..123
                MALACHITE :       570 Z:  98..104
             BISMUTHINITE :        38 Z:  85..90
               SPHALERITE :         1 Z: 122


That's a demand, not a mandate. You can safely ignore it.

Dear Urist McCondomless,

Our fort, PurplexedMansions, is 240 dwarves strong.  However, 25 of them are babies and another 58 are children.  If you don't want to see your infants 'assisted' to play with the toys under the atom smasher, knock it the hell off.  We have enough problems with the yearly Goblin Siege playing havoc with the dwarven traders and FPS concerns.

Either that, or I'm going to strap ropes onto that baby, hook it to the nearest boulder, and have them drag some stuff to the quantum storages.  They'll start growing their beards a little early.

Oh, yes, and my psychopathic warrior maiden Captain of the guard... you're the worst offender.  For the love of all that's holy, what the hell is happening during archery practice?  That was NOT the bullseye you were supposed to be teaching your squad to AIM FOR with their 'wooden bolts'! 

Also, how do you shoot while holding two infants?  Did you make a carrying pouch out of your beard?

- Your overseer, who's starting to wonder if small children can be turned into soap products and an alternate food source.

Babies don't drain resources (I think that dwarven ladies put their babies on their heads when they can't carry them), and children do such useful tasks as hauling and harvesting plants. If you feel like cheating, you can use DT to assign the kids more labors. Killing kids leads to tantrum spirals. Tantrum spirals lead to destruction. Destruction leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

Entropy, Caprealis. Some sort of waste-heat-disposal is vital for any spacecraft or -station.

Corpses don't freeze. Also, not all evil biomes have undead.

Wait...Sarvesh Warmtreasures...the SILVERY GOLD?

No grazers? Rhinos. They're big, tough, and hor...this is going to come out wrong.

Nothing. That bug was fixed.

What would Urist do if a goblin escaped, stealing one of Urist's masterwork bone bolts? (FYI, dwarves still care about if a stuck-in bolt leaves the map. I guess they're annoyed that the marksdwarves didn't kill the goblins before they left.)

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on July 25, 2012, 10:48:41 pm

How will we get rockets, colony-building equipment, agricultural materials, genetic engineering equipment, etc? Space colonization isn't just a "pick and an anvil" deal, you know.

Booze. Its rocket fuel, fertilizer and weapons grade explosives all in one. Plus it can be moulded into any form of equiptment needed. Self-sustainability and ☼Booze rockets☼ here we come!

It wouldn't be very good at any of those. For instance, do you know what people put into hand sanitizer to make it kill bacteria? Alcohol. Not a good fertilizer if it kills stuff. Explosives? Well, for weapons, we can always throw rocks. Rocket fuel? Um, no.

We could genetically engineer hemp to grow on the Moon or Mars.

Mars, maybe, but Luna is airless.

Quote from: misko27 on July 25, 2012, 11:25:35 pm

We realize that its not a pick and anvil affair, but the primary plan is to utilze all the resouces available to everyone in DFm and in addition use some hapless government (the chinese might be willing, they want to expand their space agancy) for more funds and materials, then declare ourselves independant as soon as we get there.

And if they don't like our declaring independence, we can throw rocks at them using a very Dwarfy solution. How much escape velocity do we need to launch a minecart filled with boulders from the moon?

Low-tech. This is the SPACE AGE, man! We would probably use some sort of electromagnetic thingy like in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Anyways...2.4 k/s. That would be around 1.5 mi/s, and therefore 5,400 mph if my math is correct. That's pretty fast, so en electromagnetic catapult thingy would be good. Of course, it would also be easier if we had some kind of moon-orbiting bombardment craft to take some of the strain of velocity off the last step. Also remember that, as long as our Mike works, the rock will get a lot of energy from accelerating in Earth's gravity, so as long as it enters Earth's "gravity well," we'll be fine. Unless it hits somewhere that no one cares about, like [insert place you hate here].

We would need to set up something like the magma piston, Using the force from that to propel a cart full of goods to where ever they need to go. So.. Maybe a large tower built on the Moon/Mars filled with a liquid of some sort would do the trick..

Putting aside that magma pistons work on principles that would not work IRL, we'd need to be on Mars for us to have magma, and there's no way that that could propel much of anything at over 5,000 mph.


Again, self-sufficient space station. Low on rocks, high on mobility. We could probably compensate for the former by harvesting the Asteroid Belt or something. Solar panels would be a must, as well as some way to get rid of our waste heat. Thoughts?