Bay 12 Games Forum

I'm not finding much in searches other than "it's super broken lol." Below, I list known things, and desired information. I plan on investigating these things myself using !!Science!!, but if you already know an answer or mistake, please chime in and save me the trouble and I will try to update.

What I can gather:
1) Only things resting on solid ground OR gases (?) seem to transfer heat between co-occupying objects or tiles. Maybe not on the gases - this might be a special hardcoded thing, rather than tile by tile basic thermodynamics. But the behavior of magma mist makes it seem like tile-by-tile.
2) Heat transfers through unmined tiles or constructed things, as well as through at least 1 z layer of floor.
3) Materials can have fixed temps and specific heats (amount of heat required to change temperature) in the raws controlling how quickly they heat or cool off, but this doesn't seem to be the case for unmined rock (or it's hard coded if it is? Might be wrong about that), only objects.
4) Underground seems to have a sort of fixed temperature, always being habitable for instance even when outdoors is absolute zero or as hot as dragonfire.
5) [HOMEOTHERM] tags in creatures appear to give them an active buffer - they create that temperature with some amount of influence, but it can be overwhelmed by external influences. (Is there a way to modify the weight of that influence? As in, homeotherm = 10067, and it REALLY sticks there? Versus it sort of tries to stay there but not very hard? I suspect you may be able to use specific heat of body tissue materials to do this if not some other parameter). Removing HOMEOTHERM from a creature will put it at the mercy of its environment, i.e. make it cold blooded, and it will melt on floors above magma, etc.

Things I want to know and will conduct !!Science!! to investigate, but only if nobody has a quick answer:
1) Is any of the above wrong?
2) Is there a limit on how many tiles heat will transfer through, or is the falloff simply sharp enough that it is effectively 1-2 for anything important (like magma tubes in the middle of your fort)? I would imagine there is not limit, and that each tile just affects its neighbors, thus it could chain along, but it doesn't because the ambient underground temperature rapidly outweighs the influence of the magma through the wall.
2.5) Heat seems to transfer further horizontally that in z levels. Is this simply because each floor and each wall counts as a layer to pass heat through? Or some other reason?
3) If no hard limit, then can the radius be changed in any way? E.g. by changing the specific heat of unmined rock or the underground contributing temperature, or whatever? Or can we not do anything to unmined rock properties. I am not optimistic. Doing a search in the raws folder shows results for things like fat's melting point, but not for, say, underground temperature, making me assume it is hard coded.
4) Do things heat up outdoors even if they aren't touching any hot tiles? Like if you build a constructed floor of nethercap in a boiling hot atmosphere, and stand on it, would you be A-OK?
5) Are tiles "exposed to light/surface" the temperature of the biome?
6) Does fire spread heat in any special way? Or does it essentially just temporarily make the temperature of the burning object higher and then heat transfers as normal? I.e., is there a difference between a burning object versus a fixed-temperature material at a standard burning temperature?
7) Can HOMEOTHERM be used on inanimate objects?  Easy to answer, haven't gotten around to it yet. It would be like nether cap, but less absolute. Merely "preferring/tending toward" that temperature.
Even if you can't change the "weight" on homeothermal strength, I would still like to know what that weight IS. In order to be able to calculate where the equilibrium point is for a given homeothermal temperature and environmental temperature combination. This could be figured out through painstaking research.
8 ) Is there any way to CONDENSE a gas into a liquid or solid? Similar to how a glob of molten rock will recondense back into the rock boulder type (actually, I'm not 100% sure I remember seeing that happen either. It does happen with metals though yes?)
10) Speaking of which, what determines whether a material melts into a glob, versus melting into a contaminant like the water that comes from an ice boulder?
11) Do contaminants transfer heat? Like the blood of a super hot clown sprayed on the wall?

I'm aware that most of their caravan goods might burn/evaporate/freeze, that's fine.
I just want the caravans themselves to come anyway, so that for instance, I can provoke them to war. Or sell rock crafts to them, or whatever is possible with the temperature.

I assume wagons are an issue (I don't want to make wood invulnerable to temps, because that would make things too easy). So I figure I need to:

1) Make all the civs come without wagons, like elves do.
2) I guess make the draft animals and the races themselves resistant to cold/heat? I think this is the main reason why it says "NO TRADE" on embark. (Also this allows sieges where they don't die as they stand around, but I will if I go outside).
3) Make the civs show up in the first place. Like for instance making elves no longer require forest, so I get them on an all tundra/glacier map, etc.
4) Also, is there a way to make my own dwarfs not resistant to cold/heat, but visiting dwarves yes?
5) Get the civs to carry weapons and armor that are temperature resistant (like more metal less clothing and wooden armor in frozen games).


A) Am I missing anything?
B) I think I can handle #1, #2 (except for I don't know where to define which animals are used as draft animals), but am unsure about the rest.

I second the theory of magma crabs. They are almost omni-present in volcano maps, and will routinely snipe random dwarves every year or two if you have a lot of unprotected activity around volcanoes.

Continue building INTO the magma.

1) build automated pumps abutting right up next to the magma 20 or so z levels further down. I think about 5 is enough, spread them out away from one another around the circumference.
2) Build drainways off the edge of the map (dig a fortification in the last undiggable spot to let liquids drain off)
3) sacrifice a dwarf each to dig the last spot.
4) Turn them on and the magma will drain from the volcano.
5) Build stuff in the new airspace, liquid-tight.
6) Turn off the pumps and magma will re-fill in fairly quickly.

Ta da! submerged volcano rooms.

 I    I     I     I     <---1x1 rooms with supports in them , and with the ceilings not linked to anything.
 F    F    F    F     <--- fortifications
--C----CC---C--C     <--hallway dragons will path along, full of cage traps
 F    F    F    F
 I    I     I    I

Get the dragons to path through there, then pull the lever on the supports.  It will be impossible to kill the dragons outright, because the ceilings fall in on the rooms which are out of reach.  However, dust will flow through fortifications, knocking the dragons around and stunning them.  Falling is not necessary here, though, so hopefully there would be few injuries.

Quote from: jcnorris00 on May 02, 2012, 10:41:34 pm

No, no, it's just temporary.  Cast a huge cube of obsidian, one layer at a time.  Hollow it out so that a one-block-thick wall is all that's holding back the water.  Then build your glass dome however you like.  Once you're done, undermine the obsidian seawall so that it collapses completely into the sea floor.

how do i undermine only the obsidian and not the buildings (domes are boring)

He means that you would carve out the ceiling of the cube too, so it is just 4 straight walls in a square, holding back the ocean.  Then youd collapse it by digging a wall height hole under the wall and collapsing it so it slots in perfectly.

Honestly, I think draining the ocean with a bridge (tells you how on the wiki) and some pumps to the map edge i way the hell easier.  <1 year project to do that

no i have not done it.  I was working off of an observation in the slade mining thread, where the guy mentioned that one of his dwarves was killed while hauling a demon body to the butcher's shop.

I have also heard mention of earthworm demons being butchered.

It may be the case that they did some odd modding beyond ethics and such =/


are we sure the decorating with mroe than one kind of bone doesnt work?  If it does, you can still do the 400 million thing.  Or with teeth (you can go around punching out demon teeth), though that rules out a few types of demons so maybe only like 100 million.

Also, demons wander in off the edges of the map, so you could get all those types eventually.  AFAIK the game never ends.  World gen stops at year 1050 but it wouldnt after youve started a fortress, right?  So you could go for 20,000 years if necessary to keep getting new demon types to add to your item...