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Author Topic: Draining a freshwater lake - Can it be done?  (Read 2186 times)

ghosteh

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Draining a freshwater lake - Can it be done?
« on: September 22, 2010, 11:56:15 am »

I've dammed off the tributaries into the lake, however the lake was too big to fit in my embark area, so some of it touches the edges of the map. Will the lake refill itself from the edges or do I have to build a giant dam around the north and east sides of my spot so that the lake can fully drain into the caverns below?
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Urist McMick

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Re: Draining a freshwater lake - Can it be done?
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2010, 12:18:44 pm »

AFAIK it will refill itself indefinitely from the edge.
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ghosteh

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Re: Draining a freshwater lake - Can it be done?
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2010, 12:24:05 pm »

While this dashes my easy solution to a city under a lake, this opens up all new opportunities
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Urist McTaverish

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Re: Draining a freshwater lake - Can it be done?
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2010, 12:49:59 pm »

While this dashes my easy solution to a city under a lake, this opens up all new opportunities

Breach magma and pump it into the lake.  Or get DF Hack Bin and use the liquids tool to create large swaths of obsidian in the lake.
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Shoku

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Re: Draining a freshwater lake - Can it be done?
« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2010, 04:04:05 pm »

With the dfhack tool you can actually erase whole blocks (16x16 or something) of water with a few keystrokes and drop magma on the edges to seal them up for good. Or like not quite the edges if you'd like to let the flood back in without just spawning blocks of water to drop into it.
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Hans Lemurson

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Re: Draining a freshwater lake - Can it be done?
« Reply #5 on: September 22, 2010, 05:10:53 pm »

Build hovering walls next to the place where the lake connects to the edge of the map, and then collapse them into place.  That's the only way I know of to get walls into submerged areas.  Once you've cut the lake off from all of its sources of water, you can then proceed with your various draining schemes.
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Urist McMick

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Re: Draining a freshwater lake - Can it be done?
« Reply #6 on: September 22, 2010, 05:15:56 pm »

I don't think you can build on the edge of the map. Or is that just for channeling/mining?
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Sphalerite

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Re: Draining a freshwater lake - Can it be done?
« Reply #7 on: September 22, 2010, 05:17:01 pm »

Build hovering walls next to the place where the lake connects to the edge of the map, and then collapse them into place.  That's the only way I know of to get walls into submerged areas.  Once you've cut the lake off from all of its sources of water, you can then proceed with your various draining schemes.
Constructed walls deconstruct into their raw materials when they collapse.  To make this work you need to use cast-obsidian walls.

I don't think you can build on the edge of the map. Or is that just for channdling/mining?
Can't build walls within 5 tiles of the map edge, but with some cleverness you can make cast-obsidian walls in that space.
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