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[Economic Snake]

I recently started a new fort and started to build. I made some farms, workshops, a tavern, and so on. After a while I decided it was time to make a moat. I have never made a successful moat before, and I am not sure if I am using the right method. What I have been doing is making a channel leading from a river and then building a bridge. So I began my moat and before long, the channels were complete. I don't know how this happened, but after a little longer, I noticed that there was a bard, just sitting in my moat. The ramps from digging the channels are still there, so I would think he would be able to make his way out, but he just sat there... for a long time. The water level is at 6 where he is. So I don't know what the problem is, or if there would be any consequences if he drowned or starved. But, I realized, this could happen to an actual important dwarf, and that would not be good. So any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
EcoSnake 

[rjs71053]

The water is too deep for him to move, so he will slowly die unless you can drain the water.

As your thrust of the post is "will it happen again" I won't go into how to save him. 

Something like this could happen again if part of your moat has lower water levels then the rest some or all of the time.  This usually happens at a point where the water is entering or exiting your moat (watch a natural river exiting the map to see what I mean).  If your moat is filled with stagnant water, and it is all at least 5/7, nothing that can't swim naturally should try and path over the moat to get stuck.

If you want more control over where your dwarfs will try and path, please read this on the wiki http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Traffic and you will have a better understanding of why they would put themselves in danger like that and how to restrict traffic in dangerous areas.

[Starver]

The water is probably the problem, if the stuck figure doesn't already have enough swimming ability to try to swim, etc, and thus doesn't have a practical route to try to use to path out (even if you think an Adventurer would be capable of doing it, under your control) then they may not try at all. They may have moved there when they did have a walkable path through the handily slope-accessed moat, before it got too wet (or wet in the first place) but then the waters came in, maybe even pushed them away from the transit ramps they were trying to use.

Though I'd also suggest that wet-moats are more trouble than they're worth. Enough creatures with hostile intents can swim such that you're making it easier for them than if it were a dry moat with the inner edge made to adding to the difficulties of climbing whatever wall you may have lined up atop it. And accidents to friendly units finding themselves in there (over-eafer military climbing out of your fortifications, or some inadvertent wildlife-dodging) can't necessarily be recovered from.

I tend to make \_|ish moats. At least some of the outer edge climbable out of (you can plant a remotely-levered access/egress controlling gateway of some kind at the one or few actual ramps out into the open landscape, if you wish) and no ramps at all on the inner edge, which is usually three or more layers deep, has a wall lining/overhanging the inside edge which itself has a further overhang to extend the patrol/archery walkway out towards the landscape, with fortifications, and all roofed in as well.

Maybe flooding the (dry) moat with magma would be a better deterrent (also far less forgiving of accidents!) and/or digging multi-Z deep but making sure it's filled to at least one full Z less than that, to maintain the internal climbing challenge element to buoyant/non-breathing attempted intruders.


But TIMTOWTDI.


And, for this guy, I can only suggest that (assuming he isn't intentionally staying put, because sometimes thete's such weirdness) you remember if you had a way of draining/prevent-auto-refilling the moat in an emergency and try that. You could try to implement a drain/inlet-stopper after the fact, too, but it's often harder to bolt that sort of thing onto an in-use hydraulic system than to have put such measures in beforehand, as many a drowned fortress could testify to.

(Partly ninjaed.)

[Economic Snake]

Thanks for the responses, hopefully I can avoid this in the future.
Thanks!
EcoSnake

[Loci]

Visitors getting stuck is a known bug, but it shouldn't affect your citizens.

[Urist9876]

I had something similar. Visitors were getting stuck in ponds.
None of them died though.
They arrived with legendary swimming skills.
My newest fort looks similar to the old, but now it does not happen. I wonder what makes the visitors path through water.

[Pepijn]

This is happening to me now. Water is at a six  and I've got a most full of scholars nobles and bards. I feel obligated to resque them the only hitch I see is that my map has allot of aquifer water tables and I can't be sure whether they are feeding into the most or the nearly breached river. What do you think is the best bet at draining it?

[PatrikLundell]

Blocking the influx of water from all sources at the surface level should allow you to drain the moat down one Z level, and if the map is flat you should be able to drain it down another, as aquifers appear at a depth of 2, but with uneven terrain and slopes it can result in an aquifer immediately as you dig into the ground.

However, I don't know if you actually will get the morons out of the moat even if you drain it: when it happened to me (a few years ago now), teleporting them out of the pond did nothing, as they immediately returned, unless I teleported them a significant number of tiles away.

The best way to drain a moat is to pull the lever to the drain you installed when making it, but that requires that you foresee you might need to do so.

[Pepijn]

pull the lever to the drain you installed when making it

I think you overestimate just how compitent I am at this game! What I think I'll have to do is install a screw pump figure out how to harness the river and pump it out...

[PatrikLundell]

Well, the drain lever suggestion is really one for future fortresses.

It does work to pump water into rivers, but it's risky, as the water tends to slosh a fair bit, possibly knocking the pumping dorfs into the river unless protected by walls and a door. Pumping it into a channel or large (empty) pond is better. There you can let the water evaporate before you pump more into it.

[Pepijn]

I really do appreciate this, maybe I'll do some human farming with it? I have to dig channels for that too right?

[PatrikLundell]

I really do appreciate this, maybe I'll do some human farming with it? I have to dig channels for that too right?

Eh, what? "Human farming?" Do you mean somehow "farm" humans by catching them, or do you mean real world type surface farming?
For the latter you don't need any channels. Currently water isn't factored into growing crops (water is used to muddy rock to provide for farming, but that's underground and it's a one time task).

I do surface farming by channeling down a "courtyard" which I then roof over, but that's really abusing the game's ability to grow surface crops even though they're under a roof (and the roof means the area isn't accessible to hostiles, rendering the area safe for the farmers).

[Starver]

I do surface farming by channeling down a "courtyard" which I then roof over, but that's really abusing the game's ability to grow surface crops even though they're under a roof (and the roof means the area isn't accessible to hostiles, rendering the area safe for the farmers).

I do this for that reason (though walls and a floor- roof overhead do the same), but additionally:

• Surface boulders that 'spoil' fields don't exist in the Z-1 earth layer, so I get 'pure' soils and no disconnections.
• The fields link directly with the dug-in-soil subsurface field-rooms (and can be converted from them, if I need another 'plot') simplifying the management[1] of the farm/farm stocks/farm-related workshops.

For drainage purposes, I'm wondering if the best idea is to arrange a 'well' (or more than one), if you can handily punch through a spot where the pump(s) will discharge away from the sucking zone.

My wells tend to be dug as a series of vertical 1x1 channels into a cistern. The well-site is designated a channel, the Z-1 is designated a channel too (once a miner has done these two, they are commited), these days with priority of designation to encourage staying there (and maybe an enclosing burrow assigned to just the single miner currently being observed to be fed/'water'ed/bedded recently enough to be an imminent need) and they can then keep making a well-shaft down to the cistern level(s) without creating an awkward stairwell down which anybody/thing will path (if they didn't jump in at the wrong moment!). If you wish, you can even have the miner be an engraver, too, to smooth the walls from the inside (mostly aesthetics, for my situation) between each new channel down.

Depending on whether I'm doing a multi-level cistern (I typically would if it's for water supply, but for you you'd just want a place to fill and spread out) I'd do something like ensure the bottom of the channel-tower leads to a (lower priority) 'escape tunnel'/upward ramp out to the side where the well-miner can finally (being released from the ęgis of this task burrow and confinement) go off and deal with hunger/thirst/tiredness they accumulated, and it lets in the other miner(s) to carve out the full rock-cistern in whatever way I wish to pursuade them to (and actual engravers to smooth off  the edges and floor, because I'm like that).  Then you put your pump feeding from river to 'well' hole, wall around the well-head (to prevent splashing) without preventing pump-dwarf access or as part of the structure you overlay your levered-gear, the gear that supports the windmill (if you have wind!) and the windmill above that.

Properly constructed, with enough cistern space (which you should have arranged a further side-drain from, while dry, or possibly a water-smasher) pull (or repull, as you deactivated the levered-gear as soon as it was connected to not be pre-emptive) and water is slurped away from the sucking end. Hopefully enough of it, if it's being still fed from aquifer/river, to establish the floodgate(s)/barrier(s) you now know you need.

When all is done, successfully, dissassemble your pumphead (maybe reassemble a couple of tiles over if you have another slurp to do, above the prepared 'well' sink you had also dig into that cistern, or into another one - assuming you didn't multi-pump from the start) and seal it off unless you want an outdoors well.

The underlying wellshaft may even be useful for putting underground wells in, by side-tapping your vertical shaft (at a level not itself flooded, NB!) and installing the block/bucket/chain there, to sup from the cistern. If you planned that far ahead, you can probably just remove the wall you used for a mid-well escape-hatch (if you had to send your miner down an uncomfortably long shaft, and thus extract them for a rest/replacement 20Z down or so...), but those a fiddly details right now...

You could also (intentionally or otherwise) empty the water down a shaft into caverns. Knowing your underlying geology helps in working out whether you can do this digging without dropping your miner into previously unknown voids in the rock[2].

Oh, and because you have an aquifer, there's always just the drain-into-aquifer method. Or "portable drains" of various kinds.

Your big problem might be if you've already dug under and through the zone you might want to send water down. Dismantle anything in the way and then strategically wall off the vertical chute, then, perhaps, with the aim of reinstating t all back to normal rooms once you've done the emergency draining.

So many ways. Not sure what you would feel most capable of/happiest doing from scratch. But experimenting might be fun!


[1] Though vertical-farming (stacking) does make some efficiencies. I may lay the stockpiles/etc in rock-dug rooms in the footprint below the soil layer(s) with stairwell access and if I have deep soil I can still have Z-(2+) soil-floor. Can't remember the time I last wetted rock!

[2] I tend to worldgen with several times more Zs between cavern layers, which gives me a lot of leeway to ensure its solid rock I'm creating my own voids in, occasionally I get caught out by an inter-cavern 'natural' tunnel, but sufficient ceiling-penetration of caverns tends to give me full visibility across my developmental footprint to know where's open...