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[celem]

In other words, my idea won't work, but I won't understand why until I learn to mod?  Once again, ambition is struck down by lack of knowledge.

Here...yes a little bit unfortunately.  Im also very new to DF modding, but a step I made sure I took was to haunt this forum for a month flat so I knew what others were doing, how, and where all the big pitfalls were.

The things you are describing are awesome ideas.  But to make that sort of thing work you would not be writing a DF mod, but a completely independant game.  The things we can actually affect as modders are a tiny sub-set of DF's mechanics.  The rest is all hidden, and probably we wouldn't understand much of it anyway, thats what happens when you have a 1-man team coding a project for a decade.  By the end he's the only guy who gets it....and often then only kinda.  We cant add new features, we use existing ones to 'fake' it to the point where a player with no modding experience thinks its all legit.

 In this case there are a couple of issues with the flamethrower.  We cant mod seige engines at all, we cant really create custom liquids. Animal and plant extract yes, but pumps only work on water and magma, we cant mod pumps or either of those 2 fluids.  We cant really do an ignition interaction, most things that go boom in mods are caused by temperature change (you can make an arrow 'explode' if you have it boil at body temperature and it sticks in.  In practice it doesnt explode, just boils off harmlessly, the trick is adding a nasty syndrome to cause the target to die in such a way people think it was the arrow going boom).

My advice would be to trawl the modding questions thread, look through the release threads for some of the major mods.  The modders working on these often discuss the troubles and roadblocks they hit in the threads, and the modders question thread tends to be full of useful bits n pieces like this.

Ultimately you are often going to hear 'NO, never, impossible, cant be done' and variations on this.  Its not that we are mean, its just that theres a lot that we cant do.  Some of the most impressive stuff in major mods is done by some extremely ingenious and surprising behind the scenes ways.

The classic (and for me very ingenious) hack-about is the creature transformations everyone is playing about with.  Generally a custom workshop, special reactions.  Dwarf grabs ingrediants, heads to workshop.  *poof* hes a mage, or a steel golem, or a necromancer, you could even turn him into a cat.
Seems all very simple from the outside, until you realise that Toady's DF does not in anyway support this kinda thing in a logical way.  Most of these latest shenanigans revolve around reactions producing stones which immediate boil, are inhaled by the working dwarf and a syndrome actually does all the cool stuff.  Workshop and reaction are just there to create said rock and make you pay appropriately for it.

So...dont give up, lurk around this forum a bit.  Continue to post your ideas but dont worry too much about the fine detail yet.  Chances are DF doesnt work the way you thought it did and someone might suggest a way this can actually be done.

[Putnam]

celem is right here. Far too often have I had to say "no, you can't do that, it's impossible", etc.

I hate doing that.

[smakemupagus]

In other words, my idea won't work, but I won't understand why until I learn to mod?  Once again, ambition is struck down by lack of knowledge.

There are only two fluids in the game that obey the kind of "physics" that pumps use.  Water, and magma.  You cannot invent any new fluid that works like that.    Others already told you about difficulty of weaponizing contaminants in water because the pump would cleanse them.  ...  with the magma source workshop in Orc Fortress you have all the tools to make a nice magmathrowing pump.  although it removes the need for 100z deep pumpstacks, it still requires a bit of good old fashioned dwarf/orc engineering by the player, there's no "Create flamethrower" button   you're welcome to look through the code and borrow pieces appeal to you.

You can make a new material that gets distributed by various types of interactions.  But buildings cannot directly be the source of an interactions.

What you *can* do is make a building that turns your dwarf into a creature capable of interactions, by applying a syndrome that gives him abilities, or morphs him into a new creature entirely, in other words, what Celem, Putnam, Splint already suggested.

[soulslicerjames]

I never claimed anyone was mean, I am merely disappointed that my ideas are impossible to do (at least according to everyone here, but I'm gonna take your word for it, as you have a lot more knowledge on what is and isn't possible). 

Also, is there anywhere recommended to go to learn how to make DF mods?

[Putnam]

Right here.

[Meph]

Well, I plan to write a flamethrower and warpthrower for my mod, so...

You make a custom buildings, all it "advanced weapon forge" or somethings similar. You make a reaction that takes sulfur/brimstone/saltpeter, magma, again,whatever you think is senible, and create a tool: TOOL_FLAMETHROWER

This tool is the reagent for a reaction that creates a boiling stone that gives a dwarf a syndrome that either gives them a transformation, or, better an interaction, a display tile and a display name. Urist is then known as "flamethrower urist", has a blinking red exclamationmark on him (to show fire) and a interaction that allows material emissions: firebreath. This is timed on... lets say 1 month. Obviously this guy should be fireproof, but I do have fireproof/temp-proof materials for armor in my mod, so thats ok.

This is the best solution I can think of. Transformation would allow for a custom sprite (yeah), a custom body (like the flamethrower tank that explodes), but would make the dwarf drop his gear (meaning his armor and clothing as well) and make him a non-civ member, which means that he will be hard to control, and wont attack enemies without prone_to_rage.

Hope that helps

[celem]

I never claimed anyone was mean, I am merely disappointed that my ideas are impossible to do (at least according to everyone here, but I'm gonna take your word for it, as you have a lot more knowledge on what is and isn't possible). 

Nah I didnt mean to imply that you were hurt.  Just that I do recognise that the modding community here spends a lot of time telling players that stuff wont work and wouldnt want you to be put off.  I certainly dont have a lot more knowledge, but some of these other guys do.  Meph here ^ is something of a king on the boiling rock right now (at least in my eyes) and his mod makes some stuff happen that im sure Toady never considered in his wildest dreams (perhaps his darkest nightmares?).  Follow the link from Putnam, it'll outline basically what we can and cant do, and how to work with RAWs.  Once you have a bit of a grasp on things then check the DF wiki for lists of valid tags and tokens, then my advice is to grab someone else's mod and pick it to bits.  I learned much of what I know by dissecting Meph's MasterWork RAW files.

[Putnam]

I used Genesis.

[soulslicerjames]

Thanks for the help, I don't know why I didn't think of checking the wiki.  Still, I'm going to stick to what I've already bean doing in my games for now (removing all grazers, greatly increasing the number of tamable animals¹, and trying to increase the prevalence of flux stone²).
1:  I usually can get things like cave crocs and elkbirds on embark and through caravans, and they are awesome.
2:  my respect for how realistic the different types of stone are led me to creating new types of stone, but all were just renamed variants of existing ones that I never saw.  Once I understand stone RAWs better, I plan on things like having a couple of the added fluxstones also be sources of diamonds.