In this experiment I decided to set out and test what, if anything, would prevent the movement of creatures through water-filled areas. It's been common knowledge that fortifications don't block passage when underwater, and disputed if grates and bars do. Here I put together a experiment to test this.
Our experimental setup is as follows:
We have a corridor connecting to the ocean through a lever-controlled floodgate on the right. On the left we have five experimental chambers. Each contains a war dog locked behind a gem window, a cage with a tuna in it, a barrier of some sort, and finally a cage trap. Each experimental chamber has a different barrier. The five barriers, from top to bottom, are carved fortifications, constructed fortifications, a wall grate, vertical bars, and a statue.
The lever at the top is linked to the five cages containing tuna. When the chamber is flooded and the lever pulled to release the tunas from their cages, they will attempt to flee from the war dogs, passing through the barriers is possible, and then being caught by the cage traps if they make it.
The experiment begins by filling the chambers with water.
As you can see it's harder to tell what everything is underwater, which is why I included the previous pre-flooding image.
We now pull the lever to release the tuna from their cages.
The tuna in the first two chambers pass right through the fortifications and into the cage traps. The fortifications, whether carved or natural, seemed to present no barrier whatsoever to the swimming creatures.
The tuna in the lower three chambers madly swam back and forth in the two spaces available to them, but did not pass the barriers to reach the cage traps. This appears to demonstrate that swimming creatures will not intentionally swim through wall grates, vertical bars, or statues, even when fully submerged.
For the final experiment we close the floodgate and begin pumping the water out of the chambers.
As the water filling the chamber began to drain, the tuna in the fourth chamber, the one with vertical bars, reached the cage trap. The third and fifth tuna did not, and ceased moving as the water level dropped. Eventually they air-drowned.
From this it appears that, while vertical bars block the intentional passage of swimming creatures, creatures can still be forced through them by moving water. I suspect that the same is true of wall grate and statues, although I would need to run further tests with flowing water to be sure.
These experiments were conducted on 31.25, but I expect this behavior to be unchanged for 34.01.
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Topic: Minor bit of science: Submerged fortifications and grates (Read 770 times)