Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[numerobis]

I'm building an undersea fortress.  To do that, I need to drain the ocean.  Unfortunately, the bottom of the ocean is below my aquifer, so my idea is to pump the water up.

The question is: how much water is produced by the ocean?  Is it just the z=98 tiles on the boundary that produce water, or is it the entire edge?  And how fast do I have to pump to drain one boundary?  Is one pump sufficient for the production of a boundary tile?

I don't mind having to build a thousand pumps, I just want to know how big to size my pumping room.

[Lalandrathon]

I'm not exactly sure where the water comes from--the only sea construction I've done was smaller scale and involved cordoning off the area I wanted my fort to be in with a wall of floating pumps. With 2 pumps per 3 tiles, it barely was sufficient to drain the inner area down to a level where I could start construction, though I was only working in an area that was originally 1 z level deep, and I just dug it out a bit more to make the underwater parts more underwater. So I imagine that it is quite possible to do this on a more massive scale and drain the entire sea, and if you don't end up stopping the flow with the upper ocean, I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to build some stair and start a similar thing down on the level below.

[numerobis]

Your idea won't work, because of the way water teleports to simulate pressure (I tried; I flooded; I save-scummed).

From prior research, I know the water comes from the edge of the world; it stands to reason it spawns on every z-level, but I don't *know* that.  I also don't know how fast it generates water.  These questions are *critical* so that I know exactly how many dozens of pumps I need to build to pump the water from the bottom of the ocean up to the aquifer, to destroy the excess water.

[BurnedToast]

You can't drain the whole ocean, it sources way WAY too fast - even if you dump it straight into an aquifer it will drop your fps to 1 (or less!) and the instant you stop draining it to get your fps back it will refill. Pumps don't even come close to draining it fast enough.

You can drain small sections with LOTS of pumps (there are a few posts that tell how to do it) but it's really annoying and time consuming. If you have magma you can dump it into the ocean to make a magma wall then drain that, which is alot easier - when you are done building just carefully channel away the obsidian and it lets the water back in.

Easiest is to carve out a sort of a 'drydock' into the land, build there, then let the ocean in. It's sort of cheating, I know, but building in the actual ocean is a real headache (especially if you have no magma).

[ March 23, 2008: Message edited by: BurnedToast ]

[numerobis]

quote:Originally posted by BurnedToast:
<STRONG>You can't drain the whole ocean, it sources way WAY too fast - even if you dump it straight into an aquifer it will drop your fps to 1 (or less!) and the instant you stop draining it to get your fps back it will refill. Pumps don't even come close to draining it fast enough.</STRONG>

I get about 2 or 3 fps on this map.  I'm willing to live with that for a while.

[winner]

create a dam with magma and build on top of that and then claim the ocean section by section

[numerobis]

I have no magma.

In any case, I'm not asking how to do this project.  I have a clear plan; I just want to know how huge to make my pumping operation.

[Lalandrathon]

quote:Originally posted by benoit.hudson:
<STRONG>Your idea won't work, because of the way water teleports to simulate pressure (I tried; I flooded; I save-scummed).
</STRONG>

So that's why the floor's still sopping wet. I guess i shouldn't decommission the pumps just yet then.

EDIT: I did some experimenting and the water seems to stop "teleporting" in if the tile is counted as indoors. So it appears that building the roof before the sub-sea level constructions is the way to go. I'm not sure if this is expandable beyond a single Z-level of depth though. I'm too sleepy to figure it out right now.

[ March 24, 2008: Message edited by: Lalandrathon ]