Print

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

[Wayward Device]

Hi everyone. As you may have guessed already, I need some help with Water Reactors. Not with building you basic, bog standard reactors, I can do that fine. I've actually got eight double-reactors in my current fort and they do their job as intended. The trouble I'm having is with turning them on and off and the associated water loss. I've been building an above-ground arcology on and off since 31.25 came out. Its a sweet embark, perfectly flat with a volcano/volcanic sinkhole slap bang in the middle and all the sand, gold and marble I need. Perfect. The only downside is  that the only water come from the caverns. I've got a pumpstack to bring this to the surface with its own mini powerplant at the bottom. This fills up my larger surface powerplant. Basically, I'm eighteen years into this fort and its time to start the serious obsidian casting. However, the main powerplant is going to have to be significantly improved if I'm going to have any chance of raising both magma and water 40 and 77 z-levels respectively. Since I'm going to tear the thing down and rebuild it, I may as well do it properly. What I'm looking for is advice/designs that will give me a powerplant that I can turn on and off at will and which has the lowest  possible water loss. Having to run the cavern water stack every time I want power on the surface is just to much of a drag on both my fps and my sanity.

Here's what I've been thinking so far:

1. Having a series of classic double reactors with a floodgate in the input square. Boring and same-ey, and still prone to water loss when you shut it down. Seems the simplest and best solution, but there must be something better out there.

2. Making an artificial cavern river. My cavern lake is on a high plateau, if I make it secure and arrange for it to flow off the edge I should be able to get a hell of a lot of power from it. But I worry that it will be way more work in reality than in my head and I've never tried this before. Plus, I'll have to run a power line to the surface. Grrrr.

3. Something like a 10x10x2 room with a floor with a hole in it separating the two levels, water wheels on the top level and a dwarf operated pump to bring water from the bottom to the top. This one would of course be terrible for water loss, but by far the most controllable since I can just tell the dwarf to stop pumping.

Anyway, give me your ideas and thanks in advance.
     

[orrey]

I think building the actual power plant near the cavern levels and running a power line is the best idea, in the long run.  It's a very simple design too; make a dry channel from your water source to the map's edge, then smooth/fortify the end of it so the water drains off the map.  Make your reactors on the z-level above the channel.  You can then turn it on/off quickly with a single floodgate, and it'll rapidly drain.   The power line is annoying, but its much less work then setting up pump stacks.  I had something similar in an older fortress, except that it channeled a surface river down ~30 z-levels into a power plant and off the map. It worked great while hardly being a burden to the fps, and could be brought to a stop by closing a single hatch.



Alternatively, if you have any remaining murky pools, you might be able to engineer a system which refills with rainwater on the surface.

[lanceleoghauni]

if the plant was at cavern level, couldn't you use the pumps themselves to transfer power?

[Karakzon]

use hatches will reduce water loss, also making sure your reactors pump put into thin air instead of onto a bit of rock might work, since then you dont lose a tile of water to evaporation.

as for fps issues: standard stack but with a 3x3 square they pump into at each stage cuts fps loss.

[Wayward Device]

I think building the actual power plant near the cavern levels and running a power line is the best idea, in the long run.  It's a very simple design too; make a dry channel from your water source to the map's edge, then smooth/fortify the end of it so the water drains off the map.  Make your reactors on the z-level above the channel.  You can then turn it on/off quickly with a single floodgate, and it'll rapidly drain.   The power line is annoying, but its much less work then setting up pump stacks.  I had something similar in an older fortress, except that it channeled a surface river down ~30 z-levels into a power plant and off the map. It worked great while hardly being a burden to the fps, and could be brought to a stop by closing a single hatch.

I've basically gone with this, only instead of reactors I built 5 secure 2 wide channels from the lake to an off-the map drain blocked by a floodgate, lined with waterwheels (5k of power and room to expand, good times). I've just got to do a little more lake obsidianization to make things settle down sooner when I turn it off. I've never used the drain-stuff-off-the-map-with-a-fortification trick before but now I'm a true convert and will be using it for all my fluid removal needs  . 

if the plant was at cavern level, couldn't you use the pumps themselves to transfer power?

Yeah quite easily, but then I'd have to be careful about whats running when and stuff. Don't want to accidentally flood the world with water while I'm carefully watching the level of magma for casting or the other way around. Now on the other hand, deliberately flooding the world...

use hatches will reduce water loss, also making sure your reactors pump put into thin air instead of onto a bit of rock might work, since then you dont lose a tile of water to evaporation.

as for fps issues: standard stack but with a 3x3 square they pump into at each stage cuts fps loss.

Since I've got about 800 spare clear glass blocks, I think I'll build a redundant surface powerplant, cos y'know, clear glass powerplant. I'll definately make em pump into thin air, this is going in my mental list of design improvements for sure. By using hatches do you mean above the pump input square or on the square itself? I'll probably use this as well. Also, isn't the 3x3 improved stack only good for magma? I thought it worked by cutting down the number of temperature calculations needed when magma passes through it. I've got temp off at the moment anyway, but I should probably be getting into the habbit of building them like this, for when its time to melt people again. Anyway, thanks again everyone for all the advice, I couldn't be more pleased with my new power arrangements.