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[Athenspatch]

Hi All,
   I'm new to the forums but have been playing DF for a couple years off and on.  It just keeps getting better.  I'd like to know how to put together pumps, floodgates, fortifications, towers, siegeweapons, and grates.  Are there any archived threads with tutorials on building designs that work?  I know people talk about this sort of thing all the time on the forums, but I'd love to find some documentation all in one place.  
Thanks!

[DJ]

Have you checked the DF Wiki?

[Athenspatch]

Sure, but the flow of fluids, and channels and ramps and stairs and trap components and mechanics aren't very well documented yet.

I play around with things but sometimes stuff doesn't work, and I'd love to find a good tutorial.

[Kidiri]

Experience is the best tutorial. Especially with DF. But if you're about to start an immense project, save. That way, if you flood your fortress or have a massive cave-in, you can always load up that save and try again.

[Istrian]

The next best tutorial is the community. Feel free to ask any questions, I'm sure there's always someone who has tried what you are doing, or at least can predict what's going to happen to your happy fort.

[Trollvottel]

a) Pump: Haven't gotten around to it yet. Wouldn't even know how to place one.

b) Floodgate: Have the mason build a floodgate, and have the mechanics do a couple of mechanisms (I think you need 3).

b1) Dig a tunnel with an entrance near your front gate.
(You want the tunnel to extent to your water source. You'll fill it with water later making it inaccessible, but for some time it may be dry. I've used separate entrances for my water cistern digging since last time, I made a digging mistake and wound up with a direct access from the brook to my Housing Area... "Kobold snatcher? Where? *EEEEEK*")

b2) Stop digging one square from the water
b3) Place the floodgate at the very end of the tunnel (it should be surrounded by stone on 3 sides. That way, the guy who built it won't lock himself in.)
b4) Place a Lever anywhere, I found that meeting rooms are ok
b5) Check the lever, add task "hook up floodgate"
b6) Optional: Add a "Pull the lever!" task. Once someone pulled the lever, that floodgate should be raised ("invisible"). Lower it again.
b7) Channel out the tile(s) between the floodgate and the brook.
b8) Dig out an underground cistern way underneath your fortress. Avoid U-bends.
b9) From above that cistern, dig channels (and stairs) so from each well you're planning there's a clean path to the water (no floors, just channels all the way down)

b10) If you're paranoid like me, remove some stairs so there's no entrance from the cistern into your fortress. Also, place traps in the cistern system. I don't know if they are going to be of any use if HFS shows up, but in the meantime I'm happy that even if a squad of goblins should invade my sewers, the only result will be those goblins getting dismembered and then drowned.

b11) If your cistern system escalated into the kind where a 1-tile-wide feed is supposed to fill four large basins, each eight z-levels deep ... you could consider widening the path and/or digging more channels for the water to flow through, just to speed things up.  

b12) Pull the Lever and hope you're flooding the cistern, not the fortress.

c) Fortification? It's a wall that marksgoblins can shoot through, but your axedwarves cannot. Keep this in mind when designing your entrance :-)

d) Tower? Add some walls and an up stair case. Then add a down staircase one level up, and some floor tiles. Then repeat. *g*

[ March 25, 2008: Message edited by: Trollvottel ]

[Jayfrin]

Pumps are fun, you need a giant corkscrew and blocks and pipe section then place it next to open space (or over open space) that has water 2 z-levels down and make sure its pumping from that direction.

Fortifications, and liquid, projectile can pass through these but things like dwarves cannot can be shot through with seige equipment and arrows or bows or darts, also water and magma can pass through

and a side note floodgates can be made of anythign and only require 1 mechanism to build, to link it to a lever you'll need an extra 2.

[nahkh]

PUMPS: A Brief Guide

A screw pump is a machine for moving fluids up on the z-axis. It's basic function is simple: transfer fluid from the z-level below to the same z-level as the pump.

One screw pump needs 1 enormous corkscrew, 1 pipe section and 1 block for materials, and a pump operator or 10 units of power to function. (Power transfer will be explained later)
A pump takes up 1x2 of space, with one square being walkable and the other waterproof.

Pumps that are used only once in a while can easily be manually operated, but pumps that are frequently used or must absolutely keep pumping (such as when tunneling through an aquifer) should receive mechanical power. Mechanical power is created with windmills or waterwheels (we will discuss this later), which is then transferred to the pumps (or other devices).
Power transfer is relatively simple. Power can move from square to square in six directions or in three axis (west & east, north & south, up & down). Power is transferred through vertical axles (west & east, north & south), horizontal axles (up & down) and gear assemblies (all directions).

Connecting power to devices is fairly straightforward as well.

As you can see, power transfer can be attached to the pump in pretty much any way you please, and it will still work. You simply have to make sure that the power connector is in an adjacent square and is facing the device.

Power transfer is not without cost however. Every tile of axle demands one unit of power and every gear assembly will demand five. It is advisable to build the the pumps and power supplies as close together as possible, and minimize the use of gear assemblies. Gear assemblies are more difficult to make (they need a mechanism whereas axles demand plain wood) and more power-consuming, but they are very handy at times. As an added bonus you can connect levers to them, enabling you to activate or deactivate your pumps (or other devices) as you see fit.

Creating power is not as daunting as it may seem either. You can use either either windmills or waterwheels. Windmills must be places aboveground and waterwheels must be placed in flowing water. Windmills produce variably 40, 20 or even 0 units of power depending on the map, whereas a waterwheel will always produce 100 units (as long as there is flow)

A windmill:

A waterwheel:

I hope this was in any way helpful.

[The Other Bill]

Thankyou for making this post. Helped me understand pumps and machinery!

[Christes]

*snip*

Why is is people post these right AFTER I learn it the hard way?  This would have been sooo useful when I was building my water tower

[nahkh]

You will notice I posted this quite a while ago, it was simply buried in the forums.

[Awayfarer]

Who is D.F. Manuel?

[nahkh]

I think he's that portuguese guy. You know, the one who knows doctor Fragile?