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Author Topic: Miner drowns himself  (Read 454 times)

Michael

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Miner drowns himself
« on: August 25, 2006, 02:27:00 am »

The game disallows floodgates outside of the mountain itself, so when doing outside-river farming, it is necessary to connect the channel directly to the river.  This in turn means that the channel will start to flood as soon as the Miner finishes.  There is no way to avoid this.

Normally, the miner hops away.  But in my last game, for some strange reason he hopped into the river itself.  He survived for several turns (with blue background), only one step away from safety, but he just wouldn't get out.  Eventually he drowned.

While I'm discussing outside-river-channels, I'll mention one other annoyance.  Because the channel cannot be "turned off", it makes part of the map hard to access.  A sensible thing would be to build a bridge over the channel before completing it, but the game won't let me do that until the channel is wet.

That makes no sense -- bridging a dry channel should be logistically easier than bridging a wet one.

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JT

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Re: Miner drowns himself
« Reply #1 on: August 25, 2006, 05:01:00 pm »

I actually think making part of the map hard to access is one of the best features of outdoor farming.  You can set up an excellent killzone right in front of your main entrance and line your entry with ballistae.
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Toady One

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Re: Miner drowns himself
« Reply #2 on: August 25, 2006, 05:08:00 pm »

Part of the bridging problem is a technical issue with how the buildings interact with the map.  I'd need to gut some stuff (and eventual will) to allow multiple buildings to exist at the same square.  When you connect a channel to a river, the "building" associated to the channel (which you could turn into a pond) ceases to exist, which frees up the square for a bridge building.
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Aquillion

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Re: Miner drowns himself
« Reply #3 on: August 25, 2006, 08:46:00 pm »

So, um, the inevitable question:

If I build a channel with a floodgate at its entrance, open it so it fills with water, build a bridge over the flooded channel, then close the floodgate to drain said channel, what will happen?  What if I open it again--will it flood out onto the bridge?  What if it was a retractable bridge and I opened/closed it at various points in this process?

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Toady One

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Re: Miner drowns himself
« Reply #4 on: August 25, 2006, 08:50:00 pm »

It should all be fine, theoretically.  Once the channel is ever filled with a fluid, or even just adjacent to a floodgate that touches a river, it becomes part of the landscape, under the bridge.  I use bridges over channels to create flood-proof farming by having the channel be the only entry to the room. (bridges are used so the channel doesn't disconnect the fortress horribly)

[ August 25, 2006: Message edited by: Toady One ]

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Gurney

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Re: Miner drowns himself
« Reply #5 on: August 26, 2006, 12:52:00 am »

Will that procedure also work for building aqueducts across a channel? Last time I tried that, the lava wouldn't go past the aqueduct's edge.
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Toady One

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Re: Miner drowns himself
« Reply #6 on: August 26, 2006, 02:16:00 pm »

Aqueducts are still buggy, and you probably can't get artifical flows going passed each other, since it doesn't keep track of which one is higher.

[ August 26, 2006: Message edited by: Toady One ]

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