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[Shurikane]

The situation: I dug up a very long, 5-tiles wide tunnel designed for a water wheel project.  The tunnel twists and turns this way and that, before coming down progressively down some Z-levels, thereby linking two underground caverns together.  Water flows into the tunnel, gets past a de-pressurizer (consisting of diagonal walls), through the water wheels, and finally into an already existing water basin in the next underground.  I assume the basin is connected to the map edge.

It's worth noting that among the design are several pipe sections linking together water wheels that would've rotated in opposite directions in the real world.  If I remember correctly, DF doesn't take that into account.

OK, so ready to go??

...The whole setup produces a measly 1300 power.  Sometimes it jumps to 1500 or even 1700 - but the thing is that the entire setup has a starting power requirement of 12,000.  That gives you an idea how many damn wheels I've put together.

I'm not sure where I screwed up.  Water flows through the tunnel as far as I can tell, though no animation indicates so.  The water level is always 7/7.  I can see it spread around when it arrives into the lower cavern layer, however I do not have any visibility on the map edge to prove the water ultimately flows off the map.

Is that off-the-map flow what I'm missing to make the setup work?

[Loci]

Is that off-the-map flow what I'm missing to make the setup work?

No. Water moving off the map edge may sometimes induce "natural flow", but it is completely unnecessary for "active flow" (see dwarven reactors, for example).

Water flows through the tunnel as far as I can tell, though no animation indicates so.  The water level is always 7/7.

"Active flow" happens when water moves to an adjacent tile. Because of that, water which is always 7/7 tends to have no "active flow". ("Natural flow" works fine at 7/7, though.) Yes the water is clearly passing through your pipes, but the game isn't registering the flow. Try limiting the inflow such that the average depth is 6/7 or 5/7 throughout the pipe and your waterwheels should start spinning.

[PatrikLundell]

This won't be of help to your current situation, but I use induced natural flow in aquifer slits for water wheel power. It's an exploit, but inducing the flow is probably more work than engineering an actual flow, and it should have zero FPS drain.

[Shurikane]

After looking around, I found a recessed bit in my lower cavern layer that I think I could easily access.  All I need to do is cut off the water supply to the tunnel (I already prepared something regarding this) and then dig a section towards the map edge that way.  If this guarantees a flow, then I think I'll go for that.

Otherwise, I wouldn't be so sure on how to achieve an active flow.  I get the principle, it's just that I'm stumped as to how I could reliably keep my water level around 5 or 6.  I could render the input pipe 4-wide and have it spill into a 5-wide tunnel, but if I screw that up, it's a lot of time lost.

[slashnul]

You didnt mention it, but are you using multiple pressure gauges in the route?  Or are you using an under/over-grate/hatch to protect the entrance?  Sometimes Ive have problems with backflows through pressure gauges from downstream messing up the upstream gauge or the under/over-grate/hatch.  Putting in a bridge or floodgate just to cavitate the water and kickstart the flow helped in those situations.

[Shurikane]

http://i.imgur.com/seCD4lo.gif

A first barrier serves to block off any water access when I don't want it.  Following that is a de-pressurizer, which I intend to take out and replace with raising drawbridges, allowing me to pressurize or de-pressurize the inflow as I please.  A rudimentary filter serves to hopefully keep some of the rabble out.  If a forgotten beast does pass through anyway, I can block off further access using Barrier #3, and then open up an area to go and fight the beast.  A U-bend controls the water level when de-pressurized.

http://i.imgur.com/15nN36C.gif

Several Z-levels down into the second cavern layer is the output tunnel, and right now the water goes into a basin that doesn't seem to have a good access to the map edge.  So instead I shall tunnel north, then west, into the small crease into the northwest corner of the view.  This should reliably and quickly get the water off the map.

[Loci]

Your U-bend operates via pressure. It "controls the water level" by teleporting any excess water farther down the channel--so far that the water skips your waterwheels completely, appearing at the end just in time to fall into the cavern.

To fix it, place a diagonal passage after the U-bend to stop the "pressure" teleportation from bypassing the waterwheels. You might also want to add some floor grates on the left side of the U-bend to keep out attackers; flooded fortifications won't block anything.

[slashnul]

I still have alot to learn... Im not sure how water passes beyond the bottom of your U-bend since it is diagonal-pressurized 1 z-level above.  But my god.... 12,000 power... are you trying to launch a dorf into space?

*edit* Oh I see, those images show collapsed z-levels.  Im not too familiar with that tileset.

[Shurikane]

Your U-bend operates via pressure. It "controls the water level" by teleporting any excess water farther down the channel--so far that the water skips your waterwheels completely, appearing at the end just in time to fall into the cavern.

To fix it, place a diagonal passage after the U-bend to stop the "pressure" teleportation from bypassing the waterwheels. You might also want to add some floor grates on the left side of the U-bend to keep out attackers; flooded fortifications won't block anything.

In other words, put my de-pressurizer after the U-Bend, not before.

One thing I had found out before I implemented the de-pressurizer was that the U-Bend just didn't work, the water simply flooded right back up.  The disadvantage to the de-pressurizer though is that it makes the water's flow slow down to a crawl...

So, my hope was to link up the tunnel to the map edge, and let full-pressured water flow on, hoping that the game would interpret the entire thing as a river much like the brooks and underground rivers of olde.  It's something I plan to try, after further modifications to the design overall to allow for more flexible solution changes so I can more easily experiment.

[Shurikane]

Update on the situation: still no flow. 

I tightened the tunnel's design a bit in hope to induce some sort of pressure, and implemented the alternate exit to guarantee the water flowing off the map.  I also widened the input port in order to help force more water into the tunnel at once.  No dice.  In fact, the game registers even less power than before, tapering off at a pitiful 200.

I'm doing a last-ditch effort that involves auxiliary tunnels that feed from every watery edge of the cavern layer as I can find, in the hope that this increases the input pressure enough somehow, but frankly I'm out of options.  If that doesn't cut it, I'll be forced to scrap this part of the project and instead shift my attention to multiple dwarven reactors, which I really don't want to do.

I don't notice any teleportation of the water per se...  I don't think water teleportation is happening right now anyway.  What I'm most puzzled about is why natural flow was not induced, despite the water being 7/7 nearly all across the tunnel and running off the map with no chance of spreading further out.  However, the water level decreases 3-4 tiles before reaching the hole leading down to the next Z-level, giving me a suspicion that the game might not be "connecting" all of the tunnel's water.

[Shurikane]

UPDATE: IT WORKS!

I'm putting the solution here in case anybody else runs into this problem.

The puzzle has an extremely simple solution: it is possible to carve fortifications into tiles bordering the map's edge.  Using this newfound knowledge, I was able to have the entire length of my artificial river on a single Z-layer, and simply have it pour through the fortifications at the end.  This, the game considered good enough to declare the water as flowing, and the wheels began turning then.

Total power generated: 76,800

I wasn't intending to, but maybe launching a dwarf into space isn't such a bad idea after all!

[Quietust]

I've used this trick before, plus an additional trick that can increase your FPS a bit: once the water is marked as having natural flow, block off the fortificiation drain and it will still be flowing, with the advantage of not having any moving water.

[slashnul]

holy cow thats alot of power.  A feat of dwarven engineering, cheers!

[Shurikane]

Eh, not much engineering went into this aside from "make this really really long-ass tunnel"

The network of screw pumps and gear assemblies, however...  More to come soon.