Print

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

[Merthyn]

Prophetmirrored is looking for experts to aid in the coercion of our unruly running water to change its direction!

Our local brook staunchly refuses to freeze during our temperate winter, and I need it redirected away from my entrance and into my waterworks. However! I'm a noob at pumps and pump construction, so my first attempt with a few side by side screw pumps did not manage to halt the flow of the brook completely.

So here's me reaching out to all the pump experts of the community, can you help?! Here's the situation:



The gray area on the left side is the map edge, so construction is possible up to the river block next to the top red line.
Those that can give me a picture/pump design that can help me stem the flow of the insubordinate water shall be named and praised in Prophetmirrored!

[PatrikLundell]

What are you actually trying to achieve? Pumps might not be the right tools...
- Are you trying to block the brook and have it flow into your moat? Magma is the best choice, but pumps can be used to allow dorfs to work down in a channeled out brook tile, while a ramp on the adjacent tile is kept free of water by a by another pump (to allow the working dorf to get down there to do the cancellation spamming work).
- Are you trying to fill the moat with water without blocking the brook? If so, build a vertical pump where there is a two tile distance between the moat and the brook (between the ramp up from the moat and the brook south of it).
- Are you trying to join the brook and the moat? If so channel away the intervening tiles.
- Are you trying to use pumps to build something down in the brook?
:
:

[Dunamisdeos]

I'm no expert, but I've done the following.

1) Channel (yellow)
2) Build pumps at blue (a temporary measure to allow part 3)
3) Build wall in riverbed after flow of river has sufficiently been halted (green)
4) Finish channeling (purple)

I realize I'm assuming you want to permanently redirect this river and that you have somewhere for the constant flow to let out at?

Also my plan involves a lot of water being all over the area to the north of this screenshot. The idea is that the pumps should redirect a sufficient amount of water to allow you to build walls in the riverbed. My main thing with stuff like this is I want it to be able to be disassembled after so as not to ruin my project or landscape.

[Merthyn]

I realize I'm assuming you want to permanently redirect this river and that you have somewhere for the constant flow to let out at?

That's what I'm looking to do. Would this setup allow me to dam off the old flow of the river?

- Are you trying to block the brook and have it flow into your moat? Magma is the best choice, but pumps can be used to allow dorfs to work down in a channeled out brook tile, while a ramp on the adjacent tile is kept free of water by a by another pump (to allow the working dorf to get down there to do the cancellation spamming work).

This sounds like a good workaround if I could get magma there easily. That sounds more complicated than rerouting the river though.

[PatrikLundell]

If you want to reroute the river permanently you probably need fortifications in the remote end of your moat, at the map edge, to let the water out.

If you're going to redirect the river permanently, you can just channel away all the tiles in between (in a careful sequence so the miners don't get stranded). If you want to remove the ramps at the sides you need pumps for the tiles that are going to be flooded (the two leftmost ones in the top row and the leftmost one in the bottom row. However, that seems fairly pointless, given that the brook itself can be walked on (but you can channel that away as well).

To dam the river I'd do that before connecting it to the moat. Assuming I'm not using magma, I'd then channel out the brook tiles at a suitable location and use pumps to allow dorfs to build walls down there (you'll end up with a tile of channeled out brook or land at the end, to allow the dorfs access to the building site). To make it look "nice" I'd target the row of 5 brook tiles just south of Dunamisdeos' southernmost red line.

For pump draining, I'd use the fairly new discovery of a Portable Drain (PD). If you place a mine cart on track stop on the pump's output tile and have the mine cart completely enclosed with the track stop dumping away from the pump, water will magically disappear. The pump can pump unlimited amounts of water onto the tile, and the water depth will be kept at 5/7 (which will pour out once you dismantle the arrangement). One way of going about this is to build two pumps for the two west most tiles with a portable drain for them using a raising drawbridge to the west if you can't build a wall there), build a wall in the west most channeled tile, tear down the PD walls and move the west most pump to the east of the other one, rebuild a PD, wall of the next brook tile, etc. and repeat until you reach the east most brook tile. To block that one off you need to channel out the soil tile to the east to provide worker access and repeat the process (there's going to leak some water into the moat, which presumably isn't a problem). Once done you can then channel out the tile to the east of the previous one to access the previous tile for wall building, and then build a wall in the newly channeled out tile from the moat.

[Dunamisdeos]

Yeah essentially set up a spot where pumps suck the water out of the riverbed, build walls in the riverbed, then redirect it at your leisure.

The walls in the riverbed will block the flow of water to the riverbed and it will flow wherever you need it.

Just make sure you have somewhere for it to continue following off the map.

[Bumber]

I'm pretty sure you can pump the brook back upstream into itself to temporarily cut off the flow while you build a wall.

Build a row of pumps across the river, set to pump upstream. I'm pretty sure pumps can't pull water through brook tiles, so you'll probably need to channel out the brook tiles behind the pumps. Water should be able to drain into brook tiles, so no need to channel those. (Don't blame me if I've got this backwards. Test first!) Power it with windmills/waterwheels. (Have a plan for emergency shutoff.) You might want to build walls (or equivalent, since you're at the map edge) to the sides of the brook to prevent overflow.

I guess you'd want to pump into the red part of your diagram (after channeling it open) from the south edge of it. Diagonal brooks are a bit difficult to work with.

Probably put a drawbridge in both the artificial channel and the old brook (instead of sealing off with a wall) so you can divert back the old way in an emergency.

[PatrikLundell]

No, pumping water onto the surface of water results in a spreading 1/7 layer of water on top, just as if you pump it out onto land: water doesn't sink down into full water tiles (they're not aquifers), so pumping water onto water results in flooding (and a messy flow that tends to push any manual pumper into the water as well). Actually, water on water is worse than water on land, because the 1/7 tiles ripple around on top of water, while they stay put on land (where 2/7 ripple instead).

[Dunamisdeos]

Did it work? I've used the "mass pump onto land and build a wall" trick. Should do it.

[wierd]

Easy peasy solution:

Minecart dipper brigade dumps magma onto the exposed water at the area you want to wall off. Obsidian casting seals the river. Then divert.

This is a brook though. You have to channelize the top of the brook for that to work otherwise the magma wont seal the brook off.

[bloop_bleep]

Well, if you don't have a volcano on-site, you have to do some extra work for that solution because you have to construct water wheels to power the rollers. Also, how do you construct minecart tracks underneath the magma sea? That sounds difficult.

[PatrikLundell]

Magma hauling using mine carts doesn't require either rollers or tracks, as carts filled with magma can be carried and carts can be filled with magma using a screw pump. However, if you want to use the magma scoop method you should build a trench and carve tracks before connecting the trench to the magma sea (and you ought to have drawbridges to allow you to close off the magma sea access so you can lock it against critters. A wall grate to filter out magma crabs is also desirable).
If you want to do it the hard way you can use pumps to remove magma from the magma sea to allow dorfs to carve tracks (which probably doesn't work on SMR), but expect to get a few !!dorfs!! using that method.

[Fleeting Frames]

Heh. That's less "hard way" and more "btw, I decided to fill minecarts while conquering magma sea" way.
As for carving tracks into SMR - you can't smooth it, but if you dig a ramp into SMR it'll be replaced by layer material, which can be carved/smoothed.
Also, no, you can't smooth or carve Magma/Lava flow either, though the old "drop a bucket of water, then designate Construction in the step magma disappears" still works if you want to, I dunno, construct your minecart repeater in the magma sea for some reason.

Though that is little beyond the scope of the OP. For the OP, one option not mentioned so far, that doesn't break up the beautiful brook surface: You could also divert brook's waterflow from below, by using the "dig through bridges" feature. Diagram from the side:
⥳~~~
╬R▲▒
▒▲▒▒
First dig access tunnels to green ramp and stone map edge and construct retracting bridge R over green ramp, then smooth the map edge, then carve it into fortification(╬) so that you may have a drain. Then wall off the access tunnel to the level right below bridge, and then designate the red ramp for digging - dwarf will stand on green ramp while digging this. (You'll likely need to route the water to lower z-level so it can flow into map edge fortification, unless you're on a mountain, as you can't smooth soil.)

(Can't do four ramps at once without bridge due water flow pushing miners away.)

Afterwards, the water will just fall into hole and be unable to reach anything past the ramps.

PS: Also, on dipper, I'd add a downward ramp before/after wall grate to block Magma men from destroying it.

[Merthyn]

Easy peasy solution:

Minecart dipper brigade dumps magma onto the exposed water at the area you want to wall off. Obsidian casting seals the river. Then divert.

This is a brook though. You have to channelize the top of the brook for that to work otherwise the magma wont seal the brook off.

I'll give this a shot at some point! I've been lazy and put off the diverting until I finished the palace, but the minecart magmabrigade seems like a suitable solution! Fun awaits?

[Bumber]

No, pumping water onto the surface of water results in a spreading 1/7 layer of water on top, just as if you pump it out onto land: water doesn't sink down into full water tiles (they're not aquifers), so pumping water onto water results in flooding (and a messy flow that tends to push any manual pumper into the water as well). Actually, water on water is worse than water on land, because the 1/7 tiles ripple around on top of water, while they stay put on land (where 2/7 ripple instead).

Brook tiles aren't water. Not entirely sure how they behave, other than I noticed them absorbing water I was attempting to pump over them towards a map edge.

Moreover, rivers are pressurized, and IIRC that is sufficient to absorb water. I'm fairly certain the river remains pressurized when pumping back into itself.

In any case, the recommendation for a wall/barrier around the pump output stands.