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[Yolan]

*ahem*

MAGMAAAA!!!!!! 

[rant rant rant...]

Now thats out of the way,

Some benefits of water.

1) is common
2) can be pressurised
3) freezes
4) 

I'm interested in knowing what people do with the ol' non-magma fluid in their fortress designs. Anything very cool to share?

To kick off, I've experimented on a small scale with a draining lake entrance to my base. I started off with making a pond/small lake like shape next to a river, a few z-levels deep, with my main base entrance at the bottom. A few floodgates, levers and a _large_ underground holding tank came next. With a couple of switches, by by base entrance, hello innocent looking lake. Another couple of switches, and gurgle gurgle, hello base entrance again. One downside was that you need to leave it unconcealed most of the time for resource collection/caravan visits. Another was that I didn't have access to a bottomless pit or some such, so my holding tank could quickly get rather full. It was useful as a farming source though.

[Starver]

Re: Need for bottomless pit.  Apparently fortifications carved into the natural bedrock at edges of the map serves as a handy infinite drain.  Except where that's below sea level, where it might well be an infinite source of (salt) water.  (NBT, NDT, NGTTs.)

Alternatively, apply advanced hydoengineering towards the end of creating "evaporation" beds.  Tunnels/caverns which are designed to be filled with anywhere from 1/7th[1] to almost 2/7ths[2] of a water on average.  You could even automate the process to empty your initial drainage reservoirs into the evaporation areas with pressure-plate controlled floodgates/similar.

Tune it correctly, with automated re-filling and shutting valves, and you could use the evporation of the water as a long-term trigger that (especially if you have seasonal weather helping you out, e.g. winter freezing that can predictably stall the process and stop it drifting over the years) can even floor/de-flood your entrance at just the right times for the caravans/etc.

Not easy, but doable.


(There's also the atom-smashing method.  And the burning-lignite-in-container method.  And others I have certainly forgotten.)

[1] Although while filling any large enough corridor/area of water with water, some leading 7ths will evaporate spontaneously anyway, so you don't have to design it to so close a tolerance.

[2] You could make it so that it's 2/7ths on average, minus a single 2nd 7th on one tile, and eventually that solitary 7th would evaporate, allowing another 2nd 7th into that 1st 7th slot, and exposing the original 2nds primary 7th so that there's two evaporations on the way (wherever the brownian motion of water-level takes the lower levels) ...  And so on.  But that would be slow at first.  And probably a slower rate overall, even though you're dealing with nearly twice the quantity of water in one cycle.

[Vayre]

I have plans for a pit, this will be 5 z levels deep, 3 of which will be filled with water, in this pit I will keep war crocodiles/alligators (modded to be trainable) and then see what kills enemies first, the drowning or my crocs.

In my aboveground fort I provide each house with a multi layered sewer system, giving them a safe dump place and a water source in each house (incase a siege traps them inside

w = Well
# = Wall
~ = Water
. = Hole
+ = Floor


Floor 0

#####
#.#w#

Floor -1

#~#.#
#~#.#
#~#.#

Floor -2

###~#
###~#
###~#



And of course, if you want to at least pretend to the mountain homes that you aren;t killing off nobles then water at least provides a corpse.

also this
W = 4/7 water
--- = floor
M = Magma


WWWWW
-----
MMMMM

Dwarven hot springs! ^_^

[Yolan]

Something I would like to try in my next fortress is an intensive working of water into the aesthetics plus defense.

As a central design idea, I envision a large, multi tier central dining room, maybe in a '+' shape, with a waterfall coming right down through the center, and then dispersed below to the mushroom fields. Which field is currently receiving the water can be swaped with levers, for rotation. Make them big enough, and evaporation should take care of all the water.

For defense, I would like to experiment with highly pressurised water, using it to not only creatively drown enemies, but to push them off of ledges into deep pits.

[atomfullerene]

I made an efficient fortress once, z levels about 20*20 stacked directly on top of each other, with a central well of stairs.  Everything was close to everything else.  Anyway, the central stairs were arranged in a + shape, and a waterfall dropped down the middle of the +, so any time the dwarves changed zlevel they got a happy thought.

[Vayre]

 By combining pumps and hatches you could make a geyser (spell check?)


www%%w#
www##w#
www##w#
www##w##H#
www##wwwww
www########


With H as Hatch and Pressure plates surrounding it

oh and for the waterfall set it up so that the water is reused, for a constant waterfall simply putting it down into fields will flood you're fortress in a matter of minutes, unless you're thinking a pathetic one tile waterfall and a 100X100 room, its best to set up a reusable system

# %%wwwwwww#####
#w%% #----w----#
# %%w#----w----#
#w%% #----w----#
# %%w#----w----#
#wwwwwwwwwwwwww#

With dwarves dining in the - areas

If its not clear that wierd thing to the left is a pump stack

[Lemunde]

There are a lot more aesthetic things you can do with water.  I always go for an underground cistern.

With my current fortress I'm designing some aquariums inside the nobles' rooms using gem windows and flooding the other sides.  I don't think it affects the value or generates any happy thoughts but they're cool none the less.  If I planned it properly I could have some alligators or crocodiles swimming around in some of them.

[Vayre]

With my current fortress I'm designing some aquariums inside the nobles' rooms using gem windows and floodgates ...... I could have some hungry bloodthirsty alligators or hungry bloodthirsty crocodiles swimming around in some of them.

Fixed

[Crowbar]

Since I finished my big silo project (glorious green and ten stories high, 10 x 10 size, I'm quite proud of it), I need something to do while waiting for the next elven caravan to show up.  So I was thinking of building a waterfall.  It'll be one big pumpstack that carries the water several levels up before dumping it back into my brook.  I might try a smaller model first, see how that goes.

Anyone else built something like this before?

[o_O[WTFace]]

Drowning chambers that double as sucking-enemy-into-pit chambers for water resistant enemies.  Also don't forget to turn your central staircase into a perpetual motion waterfall.     

[Urist Imiknorris]

I water the elves.

Maybe it's just because I modded all pack animals to have a trade capacity of 100000, and don't want to get rid of all that delicious Gnomeblight...

And wooden short swords, as practice for my obsidian ones...

And food and booze. LOTS.

And large clothing and armor, to pawn off to the humans.

And caged animals.

And, after some time, *elf bone bolts*.