Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sean Mirrsen]

Behold, the very latest in dwarven engineering!

The Magma-powered Magmabomber!

(with precision-strike funnel addon installed)

Sure, it ain't much of an aerodynamic design, but it's incredibly compact for the multiplication ratio it manages. And it's flying!

Spoiler: Huge sloppily slapped together image (click to show/hide)

The ratio it gives depends entirely on how you measure it. A single whole bucket on the input will fill about 20 tiles on the output, but two consecutive buckets will get ~25. It does better multiplication with smaller quantities over a long time, since it has a more or less fixed output rate.

Now all we need is custom mobile terrain section support. I.e. "true" flying islands that crash to the ground when some part of them is mined out. Then this monster could actually be a good idea.

[hemmingjay]

what does everyone do with all of their metal?

[Darvi]

You're insane, you know that?

I approve d('_')

[Sean Mirrsen]

If you want insane, consider I built it over the course of two blood moons and one goblin invasion. I eventually had to come down and handle the invasion on the ground, because the mages kept spawning around me while the infantry mostly fell down.

[Frumple]

what does everyone do with all of their metal?

Iron gets made into chain, to support copper and gold chandeliers, and occasionally buckets. Gold also makes the occasional candle.

Silver, uh. Um. I occasionally make buildings out of the ore. I guess. Silver doesn't do much outside of (quickly outclassed) weapons/tools/armor. I like the way the ore looks, though. Not gold, but shinier than raw iron or stone. I guess you can make brick out of it, hum...

A+ on the orbital magma cannon. Now knock out all those unsightly walls

[Shadowlord]

When I tested pyramid-like interspersed blocks, I found that in no way did lava get duplicated by falling onto blocks and splitting apart; it was only duplicated by buckets. X blocks of lava on the input, dropped into a contraption which split and reconcentrated the lava repeatedly, resulted in X blocks of lava at the output.

The thread that was linked to earlier had a design similar to mine which was claimed to duplicate lava, but which didn't actually do so for almost everyone who tried it and reported their results.

So, what I am wondering is this: How exactly is your design supposed to duplicate water or lava? What principle does it operate under? How thoroughly have you tested it? Does it work in both singleplayer and multiplayer? Have other people attempted to replicate your results?

[nenjin]

From what I've seen (I posted that link and haven't tried it) the duplication of water and/or magma happens when server lag, of a sort, occurs and effects large amounts of moving fluids. I've seen water falls freeze in mid-air for 3 or so minutes, then the server just shits a brick or another block gets knocked out and the whole thing comes cascading down. It's for someone else to do the science and document it. But there's definitely something funky going on with the fluid mechanics, whether it's a blockage, lag or duplication issue.

[Wolf Tengu]

Wish i'd kept those purple blue blocks.

It was fun still. Back to farming magmy.

[adwarf]

Sean I give you 100000 points for that truely dwarven construction.

[Sean Mirrsen]

When I tested pyramid-like interspersed blocks, I found that in no way did lava get duplicated by falling onto blocks and splitting apart; it was only duplicated by buckets. X blocks of lava on the input, dropped into a contraption which split and reconcentrated the lava repeatedly, resulted in X blocks of lava at the output.

The thread that was linked to earlier had a design similar to mine which was claimed to duplicate lava, but which didn't actually do so for almost everyone who tried it and reported their results.

So, what I am wondering is this: How exactly is your design supposed to duplicate water or lava? What principle does it operate under? How thoroughly have you tested it? Does it work in both singleplayer and multiplayer? Have other people attempted to replicate your results?

Try to replicate it and see for yourself. I've been doing some "proper" research on this, and have, too, found the "pyramid" splitter ineffective, because you can't split the liquid indefinitely. It eventually just fails to flow or disappears, as my larger experiments showed. What's needed is a way to sustain multiple streams, strengthen them as they split. The single-tile "staircase" has proved to be able to do that.

With the setup on the Magmabomber, one full bucket of input lava gets me about 20 tiles of lava total on the output (i.e. 20 buckets). This is not a direct multiplication by 20 - two consecutive buckets yield ~25 tiles. It's dependent on the duration of the flow, not its strength. And since the bucket-duplication method results in a long series of small half-bucket drops, this multiplier is perfect. When one operation per second is sustained on the input (i.e. two clicks per second, one to fill, one to empty the bucket), the rate of output tops out at roughly 1 tile per game tick, as seen by the lava level in the little wooden "beaker" with a one-tile hole staying at roughly 1 full tile while lava constantly flows out.

As for other questions, it hasn't been tested in Multiplayer (I foresee a lagfest), and you may feel free to replicate the design and try it for yourself. No need to go for such a large scale, even a small replicator with a four-lane output will give results, I'd expect.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Doubleposting for the bump, since this is a demonstration of the operation.
(feel free to disbelieve everything you see)

Spoiler: Phase 1 (click to show/hide)

As you can see, I've prepared a simple test. Nine full tiles of lava sit above the input of the multiplier. Shortly, the single separating tile will be mined and the experiment will commence. Note that the Multiplier works best with numerous small quantities - a single large volume will get a lesser effect.

Spoiler: Phase 2 (click to show/hide)

With the lava underway, I immediately notice a blunder on my part - the little hole used in the bucket-replication process was left open, and lava splashed into it. This effectively leaves only 8 full tiles in input, but I'll disregard it since it will likely be offset by the same reduplication bug.

The first splitter block separates the input stream into two.

Spoiler: Phase 3 (click to show/hide)

Skipping ahead to the third segment of the machine (I barely had time to run away - that was a rather bad place to be at the time). The staircases are doing their work. After this step, liquid will be split into 16 streams, and it'll still be going strong.

Spoiler: Phase 4 (click to show/hide)

The splitting is done, and it's now the job of the funnel to recollect all the falling drops into the central container for final measurement. With the funnel removed, the magmabomber creates a very effective (and impressive) "magma rain" effect.

Spoiler: Final Phase (click to show/hide)

The last drops are falling, and we have our result. In a five-wide output container, the lava occupies 7 and a half levels, which gives us a total volume of about 37 tiles, from the 9 we started with, for a total multiplication value of about 4.(with that little mishap at the beginning accounted for)

So, there you have it. It works even with larger volumes.

[adwarf]

That might be quite effective in a PvP match just rain lava down upon them.

[breadbocks]

Hmm... That's a very interesting principal, Sean. Have you tried it with water?

[Sean Mirrsen]

Hmm... That's a very interesting principal, Sean. Have you tried it with water?

Yes, it gets about half the multiplication value of lava. The principle relies on duration, and water flows much quicker. In a similar experiment, 12 tiles of water on input turned into ~29 tiles of water in output.

[adwarf]

Then if you wanted to multiply water you would really need to increase the size of the structure, and set it up to split the water more. Yet is quite an effective system