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Author Topic: Absent pre-1400 technologies  (Read 46204 times)

MrWiggles

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Re: Absent pre-1400 technologies
« Reply #180 on: September 05, 2009, 07:09:02 pm »

Still, the point stands. He wastes time putting I things I neither want nor need. No matter how he does it, there will still be the pointless possibilities of dwarves making lye, cheese and soap. I don't want them, so should I oppose them?

I would rather be grateful for the fact that I can have what I want and other people can have what they want. Some of us might have to wait longer, but he can't do everything at once. It's desired by enough people to make it a forerunner in the race to get done.

The point is terribly weaken.

I think to the point of being moot.
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antymattar

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Re: Absent pre-1400 technologies
« Reply #181 on: May 17, 2011, 08:00:46 am »

Ne...Neeee.NEEEECROOOO!!!

I just had this funny idea of how the dwarven elevator works. A dwarf steps in and the elevator moves down. BAM!!! The dwarf keeps falling 1 z level down. Ok, the elevator moves up. *Urist McLazy has died after colliding with an obstacle!*

NW_Kohaku

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Re: Absent pre-1400 technologies
« Reply #182 on: May 17, 2011, 10:04:16 am »

Elevators are planned.  They are in the devlog under Improved Mechanics, near the bottom of the page as part of the moving fortress pieces under "lifts".

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GreatWyrmGold

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Re: Absent pre-1400 technologies
« Reply #183 on: May 17, 2011, 05:54:24 pm »

Guns, if implemented, should be powerful but inaccurate, but but should be easier to train than crossbows. They should also have less range.
Crossbows should be less powerful and less inaccurate, but but should be easier to train than bows. They should also have less range.
Blowguns should have little power, little range (<guns) if you want accuracy but up to somewhere between csossbow and bow ranges if you don't mind accuracy, hard to train up, faster than bows at high skill levels but between guns and crossbows at low levels and about on-par with guns for speed at early levels, but creating and poisoning large amounts of ammo should be easy, and enemies might not react to blowdarts as fast as they would bolts or bullets.

Dwarves should be ahead of humans in tech, humans should be ahead of goblins, goblins ahead of kobolds, and elves should be at early Stone Age tech except for bows and such, but be powerful at magic. Kobolds should also be good at magic but have chaotic (if any) formations and hierarchy, humans and goblins should have average magic, and dwarves should have little magic except for enhancing magic and a little "household magic."

[/$0.02]
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Re: Absent pre-1400 technologies
« Reply #184 on: May 18, 2011, 01:24:59 am »

Dwarves should be ahead of humans in tech, humans should be ahead of goblins, goblins ahead of kobolds, and elves should be at early Stone Age tech except for bows and such, but be powerful at magic.

This is a little hypersimplistic. Why should dwarves be better at all technology? I can see humans being far better at agriculture or anything else primarily above-ground-oriented, for instance. And who says there only can be one type of magic, or that elves have to be best at all of theM?
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alexgoss

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Re: Absent pre-1400 technologies
« Reply #185 on: May 18, 2011, 08:07:42 am »

Personally, I have no interest in guns being in the game; however I would like to see gunpowder being used for traps and remotely destroying walls via the use of a plunger.
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sockless

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Re: Absent pre-1400 technologies
« Reply #186 on: May 18, 2011, 11:29:32 pm »

Guns weren't very powerful in the 1400s, the main use was to scare people, as you can imagine, it worked. They were horribly inaccurate, due to the massive windage (difference in caliber of ball and caliber of barrel), this was because they usually used stone balls. Most gunpowder weapons at the time were actually cannon anyway, and they had a tendency to blow up.

Blowguns do nearly no damage physically, it's the poison on them that does the damage.

Bows often have greater range and power than crossbows (depending on the type). The only reason that crossbows were used is that to use a longbow requires huge amounts of training from a young age to get the strength and technique right. Crossbows, on the other hand, require almost no skill, all you have to do is wind up the crossbow, put a bolt in, point, and shoot.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Absent pre-1400 technologies
« Reply #187 on: May 19, 2011, 11:09:52 am »

Bows often have greater range and power than crossbows (depending on the type). The only reason that crossbows were used is that to use a longbow requires huge amounts of training from a young age to get the strength and technique right. Crossbows, on the other hand, require almost no skill, all you have to do is wind up the crossbow, put a bolt in, point, and shoot.

I'm going to have to ask for a source on this one...

The typical archer in a Medieval army was a conscripted farmer given a shortbow that was all but useless against armored targets, which was exactly how the knights of the era liked it.

The landed gentry who rode into battle on horseback in full armor hated crossbows because crossbows were actually capable of piercing full plate armor, unlike standard shortbows, which were only effective against the similarly conscripted leather-armored infantry.

Only a very few select types of bow were capable of competing with crossbows, and you're pretty much talking about Welsh longbows and maybe a few others at that point.  Few others were willing to spend the time to actually have trained archers, most other European nations considered archery a peasant's job, and other cultures that did have nobles with bows were typically horse archer cultures who had to use shortbows by the necessity of being mounted.

A Welsh Longbow with a highly trained archer was capable of piercing plate mail from relatively close range, to the point where either you had to stand your archer right up to a charge, or you had to ambush knights from a forest or put them on elevated ground or behind a palisade that you somehow tricked a formation of knights into charging. 

The main advantages of bows are their rate of fire.

Cheap crossbows aren't much better than bows, and are less accurate, but comparing a cheap crossbow with a conscript to one of the best bows ever made with an expert archer is a disingenuous exercise. 

Windlass crossbows were capable of piercing armor from a much greater distance than a standard bow, but took so long to load that they were essentially worthless outside of something like siege warfare, where you could take all the time you wanted to reload when firing out of arrow slits, or from behind pavise shields up onto the battlements to try to snipe off castle defenders. 

A stirrup crossbow, however, could still kill a knight in platemail armor at a range of 200 yards, which beats the range at which a longbow was deadly by quite a bit.  A longbow was accurate out to a greater range, but by that range, it had lost so much power that it would no longer be capable of piercing the armor of opponents, and could only be used as raining volleys that might get a lucky eye-slit shot, or maybe kill an under-armored horse.
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Techhead

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Re: Absent pre-1400 technologies
« Reply #188 on: May 19, 2011, 07:07:54 pm »

Since you guys insist on dredging up the topic, how about some items that haven't been mentioned a hundred times over:
Horseshoes, fastening buttons, universities, dams, tidal mills, (incendiary) grenades, force pumps, cement/concrete, sausages, tooth implants, gilding, paints & veneers, and Artesian wells.

Granted, the last is due to limitations on how the game handles pressure and aquifers, and some of the others are minutiae, but nonetheless...
...you can be a lot more original here.
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kylefiredemon

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Re: Absent pre-1400 technologies
« Reply #189 on: May 19, 2011, 08:39:25 pm »

I would love to see fireworks, use it scare whatever flying menace has your fort under lock and key, also gives happy thoughts to dwarves.

Urist has watched a fireworks show.
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Lord Zack

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Re: Absent pre-1400 technologies
« Reply #190 on: May 20, 2011, 10:47:21 am »

Yeah, concrete was invented long before the middle ages, so I've thought about it as well. The thing is, what advantages would it have in Dwarf Fortress?

Grenades would be cool, except... I don't exactly trust dwarves to not accidentally blow each other up with them.
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blizzerd

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Re: Absent pre-1400 technologies
« Reply #191 on: May 20, 2011, 11:51:15 am »

Bows often have greater range and power than crossbows (depending on the type). The only reason that crossbows were used is that to use a longbow requires huge amounts of training from a young age to get the strength and technique right. Crossbows, on the other hand, require almost no skill, all you have to do is wind up the crossbow, put a bolt in, point, and shoot.

I'm going to have to ask for a source on this one...

The typical archer in a Medieval army was a conscripted farmer given a shortbow that was all but useless against armored targets, which was exactly how the knights of the era liked it.

The landed gentry who rode into battle on horseback in full armor hated crossbows because crossbows were actually capable of piercing full plate armor, unlike standard shortbows, which were only effective against the similarly conscripted leather-armored infantry.

Only a very few select types of bow were capable of competing with crossbows, and you're pretty much talking about Welsh longbows and maybe a few others at that point.  Few others were willing to spend the time to actually have trained archers, most other European nations considered archery a peasant's job, and other cultures that did have nobles with bows were typically horse archer cultures who had to use shortbows by the necessity of being mounted.

A Welsh Longbow with a highly trained archer was capable of piercing plate mail from relatively close range, to the point where either you had to stand your archer right up to a charge, or you had to ambush knights from a forest or put them on elevated ground or behind a palisade that you somehow tricked a formation of knights into charging. 

The main advantages of bows are their rate of fire.

Cheap crossbows aren't much better than bows, and are less accurate, but comparing a cheap crossbow with a conscript to one of the best bows ever made with an expert archer is a disingenuous exercise. 

Windlass crossbows were capable of piercing armor from a much greater distance than a standard bow, but took so long to load that they were essentially worthless outside of something like siege warfare, where you could take all the time you wanted to reload when firing out of arrow slits, or from behind pavise shields up onto the battlements to try to snipe off castle defenders. 

A stirrup crossbow, however, could still kill a knight in platemail armor at a range of 200 yards, which beats the range at which a longbow was deadly by quite a bit.  A longbow was accurate out to a greater range, but by that range, it had lost so much power that it would no longer be capable of piercing the armor of opponents, and could only be used as raining volleys that might get a lucky eye-slit shot, or maybe kill an under-armored horse.

you are talking about a shortbow, he is talking about a longbow

overall a crossbow is easy to train, slow to use in combat, high stopping power (mainly due to the fact that you pull the string with both hands or use a crank to pull it making it very easy to increase the output power, and once its pulled the mechanism holds everything in place all you have to do is point to the enemy and pull the trigger something that could be learned by trying it a few dozen times and even a child could do for most smaller crossbows)

overall a bow is hard to train, fast to use in combat, lower stopping power (is pulled with only 1 hand on the string, and has to be held "strung" by hand while aiming and the distance the arrow flies is not only determined by the angle you are firing but the power you strung your bow with)

accuracy is overall too dependant on specific weapons to clearly make out

there are some freak weapons though

like the short bow


very cheap to make (just a carved out peace of wood with a string the size of a mans arm stretched or sometimes smaller)
and very easy to use but useless unless used in large volleys from reasonably close distances... more a hunting tool then a weapon of war but used like one nevertheless

or the longbow


they have higher stopping power and range then an average crossbow but require really extensive training and maintenance,


the gastraphetes

(for size, that half circle buttstock is big enough to fit someone's belly in)

 a "crossbow" (more like, miniature siege weapon tbh) cocked by "leaning" on the butt stock while pointing the tip of the weapon in the ground and was fired faster or as fast as the average bow once you had the technique of placing the bolt "while" cocking it with your body weight and powerfull enough to damage small rock walls, as they where used (in large volleys) to destroy wall fortifications by the greek while keeping the defenders heads down in one go



« Last Edit: May 20, 2011, 11:58:44 am by blizzerd »
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tolkafox

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Re: Absent pre-1400 technologies
« Reply #192 on: May 20, 2011, 12:19:03 pm »

I don't understand the argument :/ Crossbows are used by dwarves, because it's what they invented. That's the reason they are used, because that's what they came up with. Bows are already in the game, and you can use them as well. If the bow doesn't perform to what you want it to, mod the raws.

In other words, what's the suggestion here?

Also, to end all arguments of this nature: It's Toady's game. He will design it as he sees fit, which as far as I've seen he has an excellent vision for it. Heaven forbid he tries to stray and give some people what they want, then you all come to expect him to bend for your every whim. Be happy that such a game even exists for you to enjoy.

Also also, no steam. It was theorized and made into a few toys, but it wasn't practical until at least the 1600's, if not the 1700's. It's modern age technology. How do you think nuclear energy creates power? O.o
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IT 000

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Re: Absent pre-1400 technologies
« Reply #193 on: May 20, 2011, 06:58:30 pm »

I don't believe that Toady has officially stated in game or out that Crossbows were invented by the Dwarves. Heck Goblins and humans use them to. Additionally you cannot Mod weapons to reload faster/slower then another, it's all based on skill. Which is the only major advantage of the Bow.

Personally I would like to see little details like this put into the game.
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tolkafox

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Re: Absent pre-1400 technologies
« Reply #194 on: May 21, 2011, 12:09:28 am »

Ah, I recall one of threetoe's story in which a human had gotten a crossbow from a dwarf, although it was vaguely hinted at and not plainly said as I have done. I believe the rate of fire between crossbows and bows is roughly half.
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