85 lines
3.5 KiB
ReStructuredText
85 lines
3.5 KiB
ReStructuredText
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steam-engine
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============
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The steam-engine plugin detects custom workshops with STEAM_ENGINE in
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their token, and turns them into real steam engines.
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The vanilla game contains only water wheels and windmills as sources of
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power, but windmills give relatively little power, and water wheels require
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flowing water, which must either be a real river and thus immovable and
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limited in supply, or actually flowing and thus laggy.
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Compared to the :wiki:`water reactor <Water_wheel#Dwarven_Water_Reactor>`
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exploit, steam engines make a lot of sense!
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Construction
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------------
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The workshop needs water as its input, which it takes via a
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passable floor tile below it, like usual magma workshops do.
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The magma version also needs magma.
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Due to DFHack limits, the workshop will collapse over true open space.
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However down stairs are passable but support machines, so you can use them.
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After constructing the building itself, machines can be connected
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to the edge tiles that look like gear boxes. Their exact position
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is extracted from the workshop raws.
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Like with collapse above, due to DFHack limits the workshop
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can only immediately connect to machine components built AFTER it.
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This also means that engines cannot be chained without intermediate
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axles built after both engines.
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Operation
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---------
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In order to operate the engine, queue the Stoke Boiler job (optionally
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on repeat). A furnace operator will come, possibly bringing a bar of fuel,
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and perform it. As a result, a "boiling water" item will appear
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in the :kbd:`t` view of the workshop.
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.. note::
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The completion of the job will actually consume one unit
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of the appropriate liquids from below the workshop. This means
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that you cannot just raise 7 units of magma with a piston and
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have infinite power. However, liquid consumption should be slow
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enough that water can be supplied by a pond zone bucket chain.
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Every such item gives 100 power, up to a limit of 300 for coal,
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and 500 for a magma engine. The building can host twice that
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amount of items to provide longer autonomous running. When the
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boiler gets filled to capacity, all queued jobs are suspended;
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once it drops back to 3+1 or 5+1 items, they are re-enabled.
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While the engine is providing power, steam is being consumed.
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The consumption speed includes a fixed 10% waste rate, and
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the remaining 90% are applied proportionally to the actual
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load in the machine. With the engine at nominal 300 power with
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150 load in the system, it will consume steam for actual
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300*(10% + 90%*150/300) = 165 power.
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Masterpiece mechanism and chain will decrease the mechanical
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power drawn by the engine itself from 10 to 5. Masterpiece
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barrel decreases waste rate by 4%. Masterpiece piston and pipe
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decrease it by further 4%, and also decrease the whole steam
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use rate by 10%.
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Explosions
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----------
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The engine must be constructed using barrel, pipe and piston
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from fire-safe, or in the magma version magma-safe metals.
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During operation weak parts get gradually worn out, and
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eventually the engine explodes. It should also explode if
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toppled during operation by a building destroyer, or a
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tantruming dwarf.
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Save files
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----------
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It should be safe to load and view engine-using fortresses
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from a DF version without DFHack installed, except that in such
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case the engines won't work. However actually making modifications
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to them, or machines they connect to (including by pulling levers),
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can easily result in inconsistent state once this plugin is
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available again. The effects may be as weird as negative power
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being generated.
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