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[Vehudur]

Punched a 5x5 hole and it was insanely easy, unfortunately it hasn't done a damn thing to reduce the flow of the river.   I'll go bigger.  20x20 sound good?

Also, why is it that when I am mining for non-economic stones that THEN i find the native platinum and the gold and all the other economic stuff that I don't need yet.

[arzzult]

No mater how big a hole you punch it won't reduce the amount of flow. Water flowing onto a map from off the map has an infinite supply of water. If you want to stop the flowing water you have to dam it up. One way to do this with out magma, like I mentioned earlier, is to use pumps to pump the water back up stream which will trick the game into not sending any more water onto the map. The draw back is the water you pump back up stream will try to flow back down stream but the pumps will keep pushing it back up so it won't help your frame rate, but it will empty the down stream part of the river so you could then build a constructed wall dam. After you make the dam just remove the pumps and presto! no more flow once it fills. On a side note pumps move water unbelievably fast so you'd better put up some container walls on either side of the pumps.

[Mechanoid]

Side view of the initial setup:
~~~~~~~
#######
  #XD.. -> ACCESS
  #X###
  #X#
 DRAIN
X is up/down stairwell. D is a door. Probably a good idea to wall off the access door at the top to stop building destroyers from breaking it once the drain is operational too, especially if it leads directly back to your fortress.

The drain ends in something like this top down view when you copy the above along the entire length of the water feature:
########
.X.<<<<#
########
X is a floodgate. Width is for a 4-tile wide river. The space in front of the floodgate can be a bars /grate /fortification.

The setup the step before opening the river to drain it occurs:
~~~~~~~
#######
  #GD.. -> ACCESS
  # ###
  # #
 DRAIN
The stairs below the top level are removed to stop pathing. A grate or bar is placed on the top stairs, preventing things from getting washed down because of the 'openness' of the floor of the up/down stairs. Make sure the drain floodgate is open, then designate a 'down' stairwell on the level above the grate/bar secured up/down stairs.

The end result is:
~~~ ...
###~###
  #GD.. -> ACCESS
  #~###
  #~#
 DRAIN

Then you just place constructions on the dried side of the river, and close the drain floodgate. Water piles up to its source and then stops draining your framerate. Of course be aware that there is now an amount of pressurized water behind the floodgate, so you may want to use a pressure-breaking hallway design after the floodgate if you ever want to open it again:
#######
##..###
..##.X.
##..###
#######

If you're really paranoid about water creatures using it as an entry, you can use an unbreakable grate/bar U bend in the design before the floodgate:
#### #
.XG# #
##...#
######

Where the grate/bars is on the same level as the floodgate, because enemies can't break things on a different z-level (yet) so the grate/bars is basically untouchable, and will only move if you hooked it up to a lever (not the same as the floodgate hopefully) Again, you'll probably have to use an access door for the lower Ubend, and again, wall off the door to stop building destroyers from wrecking your shit.

[Emily]

I guess I'll play the "lets punch a giant hole in the riverbed" game by channeling under it, building a platform over it and then collapsing it.  Think that'll work?  Or do constructed things not punch holes?

Now you're thinking like a dwarf.

Constructions definitely punch holes.  They'll deconstruct at the bottom so you have to do the whole punching approach, as opposed to just dropping a wall into the river.

[Vehudur]

Of course, now 3 seperate Urist McStupid's are deciding they're going to idle on the construction I'm about to drop, despite it being high restricted.

[fivex]

Excuse me if this was mentioned before, but if you are willing to build 39 screw pumps...
Build this(Scaled to be wide enough and rotated if needed, of course)

Code: [Select]

RRRRRR
#RRRRRR#
#RRRRRR#
#RRRRRR#
#RRRRRR#
#RRRRRR#
 SSSSSS
 SSSSSS
 RRRRRR
They are all pointing north.
This will dam it temporarily so you can build walls/floodgates

[Shoku]

For punching a hole in it "bigger" isn't going to mean squat. In order to get the water to go through some alternative drainage path you just need to make sure that it tries to pass over 7/7 water below it. As such the kind of hole you'd want to punch would be a 1 wide strip over the whole thing (so 39 long.) It would only need to connect to a 1 wide tunnel with an opening wherever and a floodgate so you could close it after you had dammed up the river a ways downstream.

-

As for powering pumps you would have wanted to go with water wheels. It takes 4 logs to make a windmill but only 3 for a water wheel. Even on maps with the best wind windmills produce MUCH less power than water wheels so you really need a boat worth of wood if you want to use windmills but just a modest amount for the water wheels. Because you can build water wheels suspended off of other water wheels they also end up giving you more power in a much more compact arrangement as well.

[Xenos]

build a floor across it, then have the pumps pump into the upstream part.  the river should absorb the excess water   this creates a bizarre dam but IIRC it works.

[Emily]

Erm, with the draining option it needs to be noted that it will not improve your framerate, because there's lots of flowing being calculated.  It should be used to dry out the river enough to put up a dam, and which point you close floodgates over the drain to allow the river to return to its original course

(Also, because of pressure, I don't believe you'll need the drain channel to be very wide.  The whole will need to cross the whole river to completely stop the flow, but I'd just make a narrow tunnel straight across the river that goes off to the side.)

As for where to put the water, I'd stick it anywhere out of the way with a lot of room to give you time to work, hence my suggestion of the caves--it'll flow of the map or whatever and should be able to work indefinitely.  I think it might be possible if you just go straight to the edge of the map, then smooth and carve fortifications in the wall there, to route the water straight off the map.  I can't totally vouch for this.

But anyway, side view:

Code: [Select]

~~~~~~~~~~%%%%%
__________X____

Top view:

Code: [Select]

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%          X     
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

With that channel ultimately leading wherever works best for draining.  And the X floodgate starts open, and gets closed once you've put the dam in place.

[Krath]

Punch through that sissy little waterbed until it's hit the circus and is begging for mercy.

When you've had your fill of pleading as glistening tears of water fall into the unholy hole in the earth, stanch it with liberally applied magma and harvest it for weapons of war and beautiful black trinkets.

[Vehudur]

Yes, I have (currently still open) floodgates as I finish damming the river, but it's working.

Also, it works with just a few large holes punched even with the flow around it.  Why?  It's simple.  It doesn't need to be dry, it just needs to be less than 3/7, and it is.  Even with a gap of 10 tile still in place on the riverbed in one place, most of the flow is going back around into the hole anyways.

This was working well until the fortress burned out.