Thanks! I've been thinking up a ton of things, and when you get stuck with a game and a lot of thinking, you get !!ideas!!. Not necessarily good ones, but it's good to separate the 'ones you can do with effort' from the 'ones that are not going to happen on your part'. I just figured I'd try not to splat my first post with a ton of random ideas, hee. (And naturally I then proceeded to sneak other things in anyhow.)
Various Cannons: Seige-engines-as-creatures seems the best way to go for the cannons and geyser, then - the web turret I already know and love (and use as a friendly welcoming committee to anyone who gets past a certain point in my defensive structure, in collusion with cage traps. Only problem is, they don't lock in one direction (well, not a problem for the defenders, unless you're worried about friendly fire...) Science will have to ensue.
Sprinkler System: Yes, I noticed how easily you can disappoint Smokey the Dwarf (and occasionally have started some myself quasi-intentionally, hence my thinking about it -- "Okay, that solved the problem, now how do we put the fire -out?" "You mean we wanted to be able to do that?") On one of my earlier games, I had a very bad habit of setting the first cavern on fire, which I 'solved' by washing out the fire with the water collected from the runoff from the archer practice arena / dance parlor that pooled at the bottom of the drowning chamber / pit of doom downstairs. Still... even though I've had a very bad habit of going overkill with water pathing, it occurs to me that maybe I should be trying to make something a little smarter, hence the idea of pressurizing water inside of a container. The tanker carts were my first inkling of 'yes, this should be doable as written', but the 'creature that can spray things all over' might also work, if they can generate water as well as steam. ("Warning: Water Landmine. Break in case of fire or uncleanliness or just because you feel surly.")
Custom Containers: (I won't ask, but I'll admit I'm curious.) This is the one thing I really want to get into -- and for much the reason you're discussing here, especially if workshops can use the battery and only take out the charges inside -- then dwarves (or gnomes, if Ms. Fenix does her civ for them, or whatever modern mod needs electrical power) could haul their steampunk battery over and plug it in to get things done using charge as part of the reagants, and the only other question would be to convert mechanical to electrical power. The millstone is what I was thinking of tying things to, precisely for that reason (I knew reactions can be added to it - didn't know you can rename it, which would be nice, if only for flavor's sakes). Plus, if I can get a handle on a single type of custom container, I can do it for other things (see also: the original idea about making a pressurized tank as a container, and loading it up with 'pressurized water', 'pressurized air', or so on for reagants' sakes.) And if capacity can be set to something other than 20 units... going to have to figure out how to do this, but the fact that it's been done is highly encouraging. If you happen to have an example somewhere (or can point me in the right direction), I'd really appreciate it, because it sounds like this'll be the linchpin for my electric mayhem.
Electroshock Therapy: Yes -- I've honestly been wary of trying Lobotomy out 'just to see what happens', but I'm going to have to root around in there to see 'how one does it' - and what it does. (And whether you can use it on someone specifically because they annoy you -- "Urist McDimwit has sealed himself behind the floodgate once too often" -- instead of having your psychiatrist run around electrocuting dwarves at random because he's been given a fresh battery and a barrel of dwarven wine. Or at least whether you can make the psychatrist pick on the ones that are 'too liberal' or something. This isn't no elf hippie commune! "Give therapy to suspected elf-lovers".) If I can get the psychiatrist position exclusively to get the right to shock the bejeezus out of people, bonus. (Mind you, it brings up another question - could one make a similar workshop to shock the bejeezus out of normally untameable things until they agree to be 'tame' to stop you from shocking the bejeezus out of 'em? Dwarven psychology: we have ways of making you think the way we prefer.) And, if Lobotomy specifically invokes the brainwash DFHack script, I'd have to tweak it to do something a little less... drastic and not necessarily beneficial to dwarfkind, since electrocuting someone's brain generally isn't always a good thing. (Second side question: can you make new thoughts? Urist McShockedBeard was unhappy to receive electroshock therapy lately...)
Electrocution: Will definitely have to take a closer look at that and use it for advice on the subject - it sounds like it should do very nicely and may give me ideas for some other weapon types, too. Bzzzap! (I'll worry about 'channeling electricity through water' some other time because I'm pretty darn sure that's a much nastier beast to slay, if it can be wounded at all.)
Triggers: As IndigoFenix also said, unfortunately, they're missing that 'force use this as soon as possible' bit that'd finish the job, which makes it more a game of AI roulette, if I understand right -- but then again, that just means you have to make a network of 'insecurity cameras' to deal with each other's potential lack of immediate response. Or (and this is what got me thinking of building such) a series of additive (or subtractive) triggers so that if a few go off accidentally due to the dumbs of the system, the system has a numeric threshold before it goes and releases magma on the world. (A lazier way of implementing those complex self-destruct systems, or just activating the yearly hall-washing system.) Or something. So probably best for my sanity to start with things like 'shiny weapon' and 'new critter' and 'dear god why does that have claws', but good to hear that it's not exactly impossible, and that gets me thinking about condensing things like repeaters and operators into single-entity triggers... So -- just to be clear, would any of these be capable of being connected to a door, a hatch, or a weapon trap (similar to how a pressure plate currently can be)?
Adding more of my thoughts to the list regarding electricity - I'm actually sure now that most of these are doable, I just want to note them down and refine a few points:
Steam Generator: Basically, just a custom workshop. You put in water, fuel, and a (custom container) battery that has room in it (is not full). The reaction gives out a decent charge for the effort, and probably trains machine operator. Should be made from firesafe materials. Requires a corkscrew, two copper barrels, and iron bars. (Tempted to require magnetite, but...)
Dwarf-Power Generator: Another custom workshop. You give it a (custom container) battery to charge, and your dwarf starts peddling. (Would probably borrow from the weight bench.) Trains Athlete and other weight-benchy attributes to a small degree, and provides charge (though not nearly as well as the steam generator would). Requires a corkscrew, two copper barrels, and iron bars.
Dwarf-Brew Generator: I'll stop with the generators after this one, I swear. Same general concept - except you give it a battery and it charges it a little bit on each reaction. Why? Because it's a chemical battery that generates a constant but extremely low voltage. (Realists might point out that chemical batteries wear out. To that I say, 'dwarves sleep only a couple times a year and you didn't complain about that...' Besides, the concept could just as easily be used for future/modern mods for post-modern nuclear reactors and the like. Working out concepts and how to make them first; finding appropriate places for them later.) Anyhow. The chemical generator version would probably require the corkscrew, copper barrels, iron bars, and the most sacred of things to dwarves, two barrels of alcohol. (If I could require masterwork brew, I would, just because it's that much of a sacrifice to be using up the booze on something to fry goblins.) Modernists/futurists could extend this to a solar generator that doesn't require the booze, and may require different materials to make, but must be built on a Light tile. (The fact that Light tiles underground frequently end up covered by floors because otherwise things fly in is an exercise in 'do we care?' If you're worried, make it a glass floor; if you're not, make it out of lignite and light it on fire every now and then as part of the traditional welcome to beseigers... okay, so that wasn't the best idea, and forgetting to un-designate all the trees for chopping was also not wise... I've learned things.)
Electroplating: This, I suspect, isn't quite doable from what I understand... or more accurately, if I wanted to do it, I'd have to create new materials for things - but here's the basic idea. Essentially, you have a workshop. You take your iron longsword to it along with your units of electrical charge and a bar of silver, a reaction happens, you get back a silvered iron longsword. Effects: if silver does any good in your world, great, now your iron longsword can hurt it, without the whole thing being made of silver. Problems: I don't think items have 'layers' like creatures do, so essentially I'd be creating 'silvered iron' as a material, for example. Also, there's the question of 'is one silver bar burned per weapon too much', but eh, if it is, make more weapons at once, I would suppose. Silvered iron bolts would be more practical anyhow.
Electric-Powered _____: So, let's say we rename the millstone to a dynamo, but it still requires mechanical power to get things done, and people want millstone reactions using electrical power. Or whatever. I imagine that one could build a 'Electric-Powered Millstone' that takes units of charge to get things done that would normally require mechanical power. Not strictly necessary, just throwing it in under the 'why not' category. After all, if I can get some of those axles out of the way, I have more room for ridiculously elaborate deathtraps.
(And yes, I freely admit some of the things I'm thinking of won't fit in a vanilla DF world, or may be 'too techno/too steampunk' for some people's vision of dwarves. Again, lore later, function now, fun most of all.)
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Topic: Newbie modder pondering Seige Defense Surprises (Read 2069 times)