Ludeon Forums

RimWorld => Ideas => Topic started by: fatwilf on August 10, 2015, 09:33:47 AM

Title: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: fatwilf on August 10, 2015, 09:33:47 AM

the title says it all

except for stone and steel there is nothing to build with in the ice sheet. how about ICE? plenty of that around.

Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: b0rsuk on August 10, 2015, 09:44:59 AM
Interesting.
So far biomes only differ in fauna and flora. Both become marginal once you get hydroponics/hothouse running. You are pushed to establish hydroponics/hothouse by events like toxic fallout and manhunter pack.
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: AruBun on August 10, 2015, 03:56:51 PM
Igloos!
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: Songleaves on August 10, 2015, 07:01:50 PM
Perhaps the structure igloo can be made on areas where the terrain is snowy and don't cost any resources to build?
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: StorymasterQ on August 10, 2015, 09:07:55 PM
Well, if you could harvest snow, perhaps the stoneworking table could then pack it into blocks?
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: AruBun on August 11, 2015, 10:30:40 PM
Read some of the wikipedia article on igloos, it's really interesting. There were different sizes used for different purposes, one per family, and perhaps a 'town hall', perhaps a community dining hall, even hallways connecting them. Some of the smaller ones were made as temporary housing, didn't take long to make, and were only used for a few days, less than a week. Some had windows, and I imagine might have had vents for oxygen. Igloo as makeshift short-term shielding from the cold, wind and rain (snow, I mean...), built in less than a day, fits perfectly with the existing campfire as makeshift short-term heat source and means to cook - it fits perfectly with the story of emergency landing on a planet's ice sheet (or more realistically, a planet that's mostly unlivable with some 'ice sheet' areas, therefore an 'ice sheet' planet... if you have a planet like the ones generated by this game, with ice sheet, tundra, boreal forest, tropical rainforest, and desert, and the ship computer manages to pick out a livable planet and make an emergency landing on it, it is *not* going to choose the ice sheet area). And realistically, a small campfire in the open in conditions that cold is going to be hard to start, and won't really keep you warm, just from freezing to death. I think the article mentioned some kind of smoldering heat source used for cooking inside igloos, and combined with body heat and shelter from wind it kept the inside dramatically warmer than the outside. And if anyone didn't know, the entrance from outside dips a little under the surface and then back up through a hole into the igloo floor, like a U-bend or water trap in plumbing, so that the heat is trapped inside, just as how the air is trapped inside a diving bell with no floor... air floats in water, warm air floats in cold air. The same things that made it good for some humans to use igloos here on earth, would also make it perfect for the scenario of being ejected for emergency landing on a water ice sheet, totally unprepared except for dredging up survival information from the libraries in their pods... they'd dig up instructions for making ice bricks of the right sizes out of snow, and laying them into a hyperboloid, so that they can somewhat comfortably survive the night.
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: Toggle on August 12, 2015, 11:21:27 PM
Quote from: StorymasterQ on August 10, 2015, 09:07:55 PM
Well, if you could harvest snow, perhaps the stoneworking table could then pack it into blocks?
Yes. And have the walls, if heated enough, deteriorate from the heat. Mine a mountain, get a block of ice that goes to your junkyard, use the stonecutting table to turn it into bricks, make walls.
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: StorymasterQ on August 12, 2015, 11:48:12 PM
Or, try Pykrete (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete). It melts so much slower, although probably not at a higher temperature.
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: Toggle on August 13, 2015, 12:36:12 AM
Quote from: StorymasterQ on August 12, 2015, 11:48:12 PM
Or, try Pykrete (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete). It melts so much slower, although probably not at a higher temperature.
That's also a good idea. Having a long discussion in the rimworld slack about this.
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: Toggle on August 13, 2015, 01:04:03 AM
Talked with 100101 and Arubun, this could be the basis for a mod, who knows. Also using StorymasterQ's Pykrete idea. Do with this what you will.
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: killer117 on August 13, 2015, 03:55:17 AM
I was thinking bout this for desert regions too. Having all rocks in desert regions be sandstone, with same pockets of steel. Then hve the stuff be carvable and turned into walls that give higher beauty, like egyption mosiacs. And in ice sheets all rocks are ice, and it detiriorates with heat, and can be set to be repaired constantly. But u can make an ice freezer, and use blocks of ice from traders in othe biomes to have a power free freezer
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: Toggle on August 13, 2015, 05:09:00 AM
Quote from: killer117 on August 13, 2015, 03:55:17 AM
-Inhalt-

Region specific material is interesting, but you can't have ALL mountain in that region be one material, as it's just impractical, you won't be able to mine any ore if you mean no ore, and there would just be more materials then sandstone for desert or ice for ice sheets.
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: killer117 on August 13, 2015, 07:26:40 AM
1: i clearly stated that ores would be in these mountains. And have u seen ice sheets in real life. Nothing but ice. No mountains. Makes more sense for solid ice mountains in ice sheet. And sandstone mountains are most common in the desert
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: AruBun on August 13, 2015, 01:59:24 PM
In filling the niche of, landing with information but without parkas or building materials, and needing to survive the night, similar niche as camp fire, even something really simple might be adequate. Such as, 'construct igloo sleeping spot'. It takes a few hours, depends on construction skill, can have multiple simultaneous workers, requires no tools to pack snow and stack blocks, can only be built on deep snow, has a flat temperature increase vs. the outside, and has 3 adjacent sleeping spots. Using ice or pykrete walls, built of craftable packed snow or ice blocks, is kind of outside of the exact niche I had in mind. The realism of the igloo means it has to be hyperboloid in order to support a roof with discrete blocks, and the game is rectangular, so using manufactured 'blocks' of ice or packed snow to lay out a wall design is less realistic for the particular niche I had in mind. Even campfires and pykrete require wood (pykrete would probably be strong enough for actual structures, not just igloos, assuming temperature stays below freezing), but igloos don't require you to land with raw wood, and there's no trees to cut down on an ice sheet. (The idea, is to avoid frostbite and 'slept in the cold' when spawning with few resources and no parkas or leather clothing, and unable to construct rooms with campfires or heaters+power source before the first nightfall.)
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: AruBun on August 13, 2015, 02:12:35 PM
Quote from: killer117 on August 13, 2015, 03:55:17 AM
(omitted) But u can make an ice freezer, and use blocks of ice from traders in othe biomes to have a power free freezer

That's how freezers/fridges use to work. They used iceboxes, and had an ice block delivery guy, like milk bottle delivery, and you put it in your icebox to preserve food. Delivery person hauled it in with big metal tongs and dropped it where needed.

"Iceboxes date back to the days of ice harvesting, which had hit an industrial high that ran from the mid-19th century to the 1930s, when the refrigerator was introduced into the home. Most municipally consumed ice was harvested in winter from snow-packed areas or frozen lakes, stored in ice houses, and delivered domestically as iceboxes became more common." - Wikipedia "Icebox"
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: Toggle on August 13, 2015, 03:15:32 PM
Quote from: AruBun on August 13, 2015, 01:59:24 PM
-Inhalt-

Yeah, you discussed a lot about igloos. The no tools thing doesn't matter since we don't use tools for anything unless it's a table. Even with that idea, they'd still freeze to death if they couldn't produce heat using what materials they spawn on the ice sheet with on the first day or as they tried to sleep through the night.

Quote from: killer117 on August 13, 2015, 07:26:40 AM
-Inhalt-

As for this, balance matters more then realism. You need the resources that all maps have in mountains, the ores and such. You couldn't have pure ice mountains on an ice sheet, as you'd be completely devoid of resources except for ice and snow and what you start with.
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: killer117 on August 13, 2015, 03:44:24 PM
Ok. Ive said this three times now. Its a pure ice mountain, WITH the ores in it. All we replace is the stone. So u keep compacted plasteel
And steel. Ok. I put another post up saying this already
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: AruBun on August 13, 2015, 03:49:04 PM
Quote from: Z0MBIE2 on August 13, 2015, 03:15:32 PM
Quote from: AruBun on August 13, 2015, 01:59:24 PM
-Inhalt-

Yeah, you discussed a lot about igloos. The no tools thing doesn't matter since we don't use tools for anything unless it's a table. Even with that idea, they'd still freeze to death if they couldn't produce heat using what materials they spawn on the ice sheet with on the first day or as they tried to sleep through the night.

Quote from: killer117 on August 13, 2015, 07:26:40 AM
-Inhalt-

As for this, balance matters more then realism. You need the resources that all maps have in mountains, the ores and such. You couldn't have pure ice mountains on an ice sheet, as you'd be completely devoid of resources except for ice and snow and what you start with.

The 'no tools thing' matters for the sake of realism, for plausibility, and that's always an important aspect in any kind of science fiction. It also matters for the sake of the niche I was explaining. Also, igloos are warmer on the inside purely from the presence of people. It doesn't need a heat source to be warmer. If it did require a heater, that too would defeat my whole point.

I think you missed both the point and the niche.
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: Tynan on August 13, 2015, 04:19:28 PM
You know, that's actually a really cool idea. Not bad.
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: killer117 on August 13, 2015, 05:03:47 PM
Omg tynan. (Collapsing noise)
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: Toggle on August 13, 2015, 10:13:06 PM
Okay killer, just tell me how steel ore somehow ended up in a mountain of ice. And the ore would have to be edited to look like it's ore stuck in ice instead of by itself, because it would look bad to have a mountain of blueish whitish ice and then ore being randomly around it.
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: 1000101 on August 14, 2015, 02:54:29 AM
Well,

(a) it's not ore (there is no such thing as "steel ore" and plasteel is completely ficticious), and;
(b) the same way it's anywhere else, because the steel and plasteel deposits are from a collapsed structure or ship as the lore (and description of the deposits) state.  ie, Superman's fortress of solitude long after he died.

Not that "mountains of ice" is very accurate, the proper term is a glacier and they are not mountains themselves but cover mountains, etc.  So, exterior layers of ice and snow but it would still be a proper stone mountain otherwise.  Also, that gives the ability to tunnel into the softer glacial snow and ice before having to dig deeper into the harder mountain.
Title: Re: ICE SHEET - build walls using ice
Post by: Toggle on August 14, 2015, 03:36:35 AM
Huh, I didn't realize that's where the resources come from in the lore. And yeah, you could have it as an outer layer of a mountain, how capable would it be to code that though? I honestly don't know.