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[gchristopher]

But I'm not sure how to [depressurize] - and how will that help if the top level is still above the rest of my fort?

In case it wasn't already clear, I'll use PatrickLundell's design as an example:

WW..WW
W.WW.W
WWggWW
WWggWW
W.WW.W
WW..WW

For the explanation, let's assume the water coming in from the north and south is pressurized and with plenty of supply. (several pumps or a big cistern)

The water needs to pass through two diagonals to get to the grate. It can only do that by flow, since pressure can't move diagonally. This is worth noting because it will slow the rate of flow a bit more than a single diagonal, so by creating longer paths of unpressurized water, you can slow down the rate of flow.

Re: "how will [depressurizing] help?", if water is pressurized at the top and allowed to fall freely, the pressure will "push" water down, and then out the sides of the column of falling water. (and then starting a flood) Depressurized water should (I think) fall faster than it flows, so you'll never have water falling onto a 7/7 wet tile in mid-air and decided to then teleport sideways. If I understand it right, if you hook a cistern straight up to your waterfall with no depressurization, it will flood almost instantly. I'm not 100% sure of the pattern, but I suspect you'd get an expanding sphere of water starting at the top of the waterfall.

e.g. If you build a pump stack up high in the air with no walls and then, say, let it pump magma full speed, the magma will not just fall straight down, but the pressure will cause it to move into adjacent tiles in mid air.

I bring up that totally random example because if you didn't plan for that particular behavior of your magma fountain, it can theoretically get messy very very fast. Definitely not because it's something I did on accident once.

Also totally unrelated, 20-some z-levels of falling magma to burn/flood a valley is a great way to get below 1 FPS.

I'm currently building my fort and the cistern ended up in a sort of donut shape because I decided that since I want a curtain of water in a circle, it's pointless to have the water in the middle of said circle. Not sure if good idea? I was planning to make this donut 3-4 levels high and then bring water from below on the sides of it, and put diagonals there when it'll enter the donut. But I could build a cylindrical cistern inside the donut hole as it were, and make that diagonally attached to the donut in a few places?

Without seeing your design, the one thing I'd recommend considering carefully is that the path between the pressurized water source and the eventual place where it falls is equal length for each waterfall tile. (like in the diagram, they're all effectively identical.) Ideally, each tile of waterfall would have the same rate of flow and you won't have to spend time figuring out which ones are flowing too quickly or too slowly.

[PatrikLundell]

While I agree with gchristopher's description of how things would work if you tried to use the design references to carry water, that's not what it is intended to be used for: it describes the walking path, with the water intended to fall down on the grates from above, as it was intended to show how to prevent the water from spreading out from the falling water. The level above (where the water comes from) looks like this:

WWWWWWWWWWWW
WWWW.WW.WWWW
WWW.WooW.WWW
opP.WooW.Ppo
WWWW.WW.WWWW
WWWWWWWWWWWW

where 'W' = Wall, '.'= floor, 'o' = open space, 'p' = Walkable pump tile, and 'P' = impassable pump tile.
The water is pumped up from the open tiles at the two sides.

[Mrok Girl]

Right, I understand now! Thank you

So my cistern currently looks like this:

Spoiler: Z+1 - the donut with floor grates (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Z+0 - the level below (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Z-1 - just under the ground (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Z-2 - sleeping quaters (click to show/hide)

Etc all the way down to the underground water layer or maybe even further, you get the idea. So I thought, cistern of water in the middle in a separate container, connected to the donut with diagonal passages, and water delivered to it via 4 pump stacks around it. But you're saying I should do more diagonal connections? Have I made this too open-plan for it not to flood?

[PatrikLundell]

I'm not familiar with that tile set, so I may misinterpret the image, but it looks like there are grates in the bottom of the cistern with the water on top of it, which should result in an unrestricted drain of the water as quickly as it can flow onto the grates. The flow reduction (and depressurization) is not caused by there being a diagonal access, but by forcing the water through a diagonal access as the only way to reach the tile (i.e. the grates): it is the passage through a diagonal that causes the desired effects.

As it seems you're intending to use the water for the mist effect only (as opposed to being a dorf cleaner as well) it may not matter, but I found that when my dwarf washer was pumping from the aquifer it worked as intended, but when drawing from a body of water it pushed out too much water (i.e. at least 4/7 at times), and I gradually reduced the pump intake to reduce the flow until I ended up with a single diagonal access for it as well. Thus, if you want your dorfs to be able to pass through your curtains unimpeded you may need force the water through two diagonals, but it may be that the pressure generated by my pumps were the cause, and water flowing freely doesn't exert an excess pressure.

[Mrok Girl]

Right, that makes sense. I'll add some diagonal water breaks to the bottom of the cistern.