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[ZetaX]

If you plan well, there is no danger of flooding anything. Thus that doors are unnecessary. Doors are by the way not that good as (without using glitches) one cannot span a corridor wider than 2. If you really fear the water, build an automated lockdown system: a water-triggered pressure plate that closes a drawbridge; much cooler and much more variable.

Even with no pump and just a floodgate, I think I've seen a tile of solid sand somehow get eroded away, flooding an area.

I don't believe that until proof (have lots of sand tiles with pressured water or flowing water nearby, never seen any of them vanish).

[Girlinhat]

To say that doors are useless is to say that coffins are useless.  If you're doing things well, no one should die and coffins are pointless, right?  It's not about doing things perfect, it's about insurance.  A few doors is a very very cheap use of defense, since a closed door will block water until something walks through it (or it's lever-pulled) and is so easy there's really no reason NOT to do it!  Pressure plated bridges are a bonus, but still, doors are easy!

The rule in DF is "It will break" by one means or another.  Somehow, some way, that one troll is going to get flung off your drawbridge, sail over your entire fort, and land directly upon the floodgate surrounded by fortifications.  Adding another layer of defense is always recommended if you're going for a foolproof fort.

As for drain pipes, I'm still waiting for pipes to be buildable, so you can make a 1 tile wide (or maybe in the floor?) pipe to push water through, allowing your fort to have real plumbing with pipes!

[Makigall]

I think I've had an ambush that contained a troll.  I say think because that fort was using a large number of serrated steel disc traps and I randomly discovered a mutilated troll corpse on it.  I suspect the rest of the ambush either also got hit by traps or just retreated.  But the point is I think I had a troll on my map in stealth mode, this could conceivably deconstruct things without me seeing it.  And it sounds like most of your dwarves were occupied elsewhere.  Is it possible something sneaked in and took apart your pump without you realizing?

[ZetaX]

I said unnecessary (= not really needed), not useless (= has no purpose), for the reason you gave. They definitely help if one didn't plan good enough.
Doors have disadvantages against drawbridges (can be blocked, cannot span everything, cause problems with animals), and automatic lock downs are much more fun.

And no, even if played perfectly, dwarfs should die by old age (but I never witnessed this myself)

[Girlinhat]

Oh yes, I'm much in favor of automatic lockdowns.  Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm gonna put stuff like that everywhere!

I've previously used a "soft wall" siege prevention which was a 1 wide drawbridge across my entrance, with pressure plates on the outside.  Any creature that tried to enter would have the door shut in his face, while any of my guys could pass freely.  It was very fun, even if it didn't work against [TRAP_AVOID]

[ral]

Even with no pump and just a floodgate, I think I've seen a tile of solid sand somehow get eroded away, flooding an area.

I don't believe that until proof (have lots of sand tiles with pressured water or flowing water nearby, never seen any of them vanish).

Well, like I say I'm not sure what happened. A tile just seems to have disappeared while I wasn't looking. It's possible that I just somehow had a dig specification on the sand and didn't see it because the yellow highlighting is almost the same color as the sand? Unfortunately there's no way to go back to see what happened to it... Might also have had something to do with a cave-in? There was no ramp so it wasn't channeled out from above...

As for doors being unnecessary, I suppose triple-redundant hydraulic systems on airplanes are also pointless as long as the plane is maintained properly....

[krenshala]

I didn't see anyone else mention it, but for the stacks that want to build from the top down, it sounds like you designated the pumps for construction from the bottom up.  In DF all construction orders are in a stack (not a queue) so they get built in First In Last Out (FILO) order.  Took me a while, and a few dwarves walling themselves into dark corners, to figure this out.  Once I did, however, it became trivial to set things to build in the order I wanted them to.

For the pump stack, designate the top-most pump first, and then work down the stack.  The dwarves should then build them from the bottom up.  The only potential flaw in this is if you have multiple builders and the lower pumps get delayed for some reason (food, drink, sleep, have to walk to other end of the map for the piece the idiot mechanic chose to use, etc).