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Author Topic: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting  (Read 8647 times)

Osmosis Jones

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Re: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting
« Reply #15 on: August 31, 2010, 04:55:14 am »

If you're taking suggestions, can someone confirm/deny that building destroyers like trolls etc (type 2 I think) can destroy non-wooden buildings?
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Quietust

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Re: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting
« Reply #16 on: August 31, 2010, 07:54:06 am »

[BUILDINGDESTROYER:2] creatures can destroy nearly anything, including non-wooden buildings (stone/metal/glass doors and floodgates, workshops, etc.) - it's only the [BUILDINGDESTROYER:1] creatures that only destroy specific things.
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It's amazing how dwarves can make a stack of bones completely waterproof and magmaproof.
It's amazing how they can make an entire floodgate out of the bones of 2 cats.

Hans Lemurson

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Re: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting
« Reply #17 on: September 06, 2010, 02:46:58 am »

A troll just destroyed the floor hatch I placed on a forgotten and neglected backdoor entrance to my fort letting in whole hordes of fun.  The hatch was made of the super-durable substance "Microcline", which doesn't grow on trees folks.
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Foolprooof way to penetrate aquifers of unlimited depth.  (Make sure to import at least 10 stones for mechanisms)
Toughen Dwarves by dropping stuff on them.  (Nothing too heavy though, and make sure to wear armor.)
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Quietust

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Re: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting
« Reply #18 on: September 06, 2010, 10:35:03 am »

Here's a myth: Creatures with [BUILDINGDESTROYER:2] will deliberately destroy supports, possibly resulting in cave-ins landing on their heads.

It was posted on the Trap design page on the wiki, so I tried a glass pillar (holding up a glass floor) against 2 forgotten beasts. Forgotten beasts all have [BUILDINGDESTROYER:2] in their raws (easily confirmed by viewing an uncompressed save), yet both of the ones involved were content to walk right past the support (and one even went right through it) multiple times without destroying it. In this case, I had also linked the support to a lever so that I could still drop the floor onto the forgotten beasts and kill them (one had deadly blood, and the other had undirected "deadly dust").

Anyone care to provide evidence that this myth may even be plausible?
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It's amazing how dwarves can make a stack of bones completely waterproof and magmaproof.
It's amazing how they can make an entire floodgate out of the bones of 2 cats.

antymattar

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Re: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting
« Reply #19 on: September 08, 2010, 02:25:22 am »

Ok here are a few myths:

1)If you compress watter in a confined space like a box using only pumps, you will be able to make a water canon that can literally smash you dwarfs against a near by wall with the force of a hammer blow.

2)If you make a downward shaft that is two spaces wide and drop a block of obsidian down one space then a dwarf standing in the other space will be propelled up out of the shaft.

3)If you mod a creature(THIS HAPPENED TO ME ONCE!!!) that is supposed to have undirected vapors or something and gas blood it will burn its self during sight opon an enemy and the prepare its self!!! The heat must have been so much! If possible to make this action stable and predicable then this would be an AWESOME way to make food for your fortress.

Protactinium

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Re: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting
« Reply #20 on: October 02, 2010, 11:22:30 am »

Ok here are a few myths:

1)If you compress watter in a confined space like a box using only pumps, you will be able to make a water canon that can literally smash you dwarfs against a near by wall with the force of a hammer blow.


We should really be having screenshots of tests in this thread, but I gotta say, this one is a strange one. There is no water compression in Dwarf Fortress. Water cannons in DF are simply about mass and gravity and force. Yes, you CAN literally smash dwarfs against a wall to injure them (and possibly kill them) if they are next to the bottom opening of a tall cistern of water (I used to kill orcs this way during invasions, or soften them up before drowning them), but if you have blocks of 7/7 water and pumps pumping into the area, there is no extra water being squeezed into the area. It has no effect.
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The thing that confuses me about dorfs is this. Dorf 1 dies in an avalance or somesuch. Dorf 2 is friends with dorf 3 and dorf 1. Dorf 2 berserks because of his friends death and kills dorf 3. also a friend. W. T. F.
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Shinziril

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Re: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting
« Reply #21 on: October 02, 2010, 04:17:17 pm »

The trick is to get extra flow by using a stack of pumps say, ten wide, with a single-tile-wide exit pipe.  This will cause water to flow down said pipe at ten tiles per tick (so long as the pumps stay supplied, which is harder than it looks without simply using a cistern stack), giving a highly convincing simulation of "high-pressure" water flow. 

This is still just using the teleportation model of water pressure, of course.  I'm not sure whether fast water flow in this manner can crush people against walls, and would be interested to find out (particularly since the canonical hydrodynamics I remember indicates that teleporting water does not push creatures or items, only "flowing" (I.E. diffusing) water does). 
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why is Dwarven science always on fire?
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doomdome

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Re: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting
« Reply #22 on: December 19, 2010, 05:44:53 pm »

Questions like this make me really wish that Arena mode had a feature to let you place arbitrary items like it lets you place creatures.  There are several experiments I'd like to test without having to build a fortress to support them first.
For items, just add a reaction (with [ADVENTURE_MODE_ENABLED]) that has the item as a product and no reagents. For walls and pits and such, you may get somewhere by screwing around with arena.txt.
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GreatWyrmGold

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Re: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting
« Reply #23 on: December 20, 2010, 09:52:38 pm »

Quote
we should set up a booze stockpile and set it on fire.

Dwarven science! We do what we must, because we can.
For the good of all of us, except the ones who are dead...
Which our experiments will surely increase the number of...
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Re: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting
« Reply #24 on: January 16, 2011, 06:31:25 am »

Myth:
Bronze is better than iron. Many people still believe this yet i find it to be completely false. Only iron, steel and adamantine can damage a bronze colossus. And a dwarf in full bronze vs a dwarf in full iron doesn't win more than 50% of the time in arena.
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Lord Darkstar

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Re: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting
« Reply #25 on: January 24, 2011, 07:06:05 pm »

The forum wisdom is that bronze weapons are better than iron weapons, but bronze = iron for armor. That is, a dwarf using bronze weapons is better than a dwarf using iron weapons. However, for armor, both are equivalent at defending. (ie, 2 dwarves with iron weapons, 1 with iron armor, the other with bronze armor, will split a duel at 50%. But a dwarf with bronze weapon (and iron or bronze armor) versus a dwarf with iron weapon (and iron or bronze armor) will favor the bronze weapon wielder. The difference between bronze being superior as WEAPON and not an ARMOR versus iron is often left out.

I personally haven't run enough test yet to know if the forum wisdom is correct, and if that is further limited to certain weapon types.
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Osmosis Jones

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Re: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting
« Reply #26 on: January 24, 2011, 09:51:30 pm »

Extensive testing has in fact been done. Bronze and iron are actually fairly close, but which is better comes down each individual weapon and even what armor material each one is facing. It's really impossible to say which one is better in general, only in specific cases. Zagibu's data is here, you want something with the highest serious wound chance (highest red percentage) generally.
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Lord Darkstar

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Re: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting
« Reply #27 on: January 25, 2011, 07:10:35 pm »

So, according to that data--- iron armor is superior to bronze armor almost all the time. Bronze armor has a higher pass through rate, meaning more wounds. It has a higher critical wounding rate over iron overall. There are some cases where bronze protects from critical hits better, but which is better? Turning the blow entirely or lessening its damage?
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MarcAFK

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Re: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting
« Reply #28 on: January 30, 2011, 07:39:59 am »

Looking at those results it is obvious that iron weapons do better against bronze armour than bronze weapons do against iron armour...
However against steel armour bronze maces, hammers and spears are better than iron, but iron swords and axes are better than bronze...
Also from that table it's obvious that hammers are overpowered :s
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They're nearly as bad as badgers. Build a couple of anti-buzzard SAM sites marksdwarf towers and your fortress will look like Baghdad in 2003 from all the aerial bolt spam. You waste a lot of ammo and everything is covered in unslightly exploded buzzard bits and broken bolts.

scout890

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Re: Dwarven Science(TM) and Mythbusting
« Reply #29 on: February 11, 2011, 10:42:37 pm »

Can building destroyers destroy bridges?
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