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[GTCapone]

Hey everybody,

I'm new here, I've racked up a few dozen hours of DF playtime, and finally have a fort that's well off and self sustaining, with very few attacks and easily defensible.  Therefore, I've decided that it's time for some Fun.

Since I don't feel I'm ready to go cleaning out some cave systems or finding the HFS yet, I thought I'd go for a super-project.

My plan is to make a dual-purpose super structure to both create insane amounts of mist on the map and (if necessary) cover the entire map in magma within seconds.

I am able to do this on my map since I have an easily accessible volcano that I have already tapped into, an ocean for unlimited water, and the majority of my map is obsidian.

I call it The Dwarven Weather Machine

So, here are my plans:



OO  = pump
#  = grate
*  = gearbox
X  = stairs
H  = hatch

Everything will be obsidian

A and B are the multi-pump stack I will use to pull magma up, I have them here as reference for myself.

C is the first level of the water pump station.  I'll position it over the ocean.

D is the second pump station level where the water is first pumped into

E is the roof of the pump station and the first level of the water pipe.  Assuming fluid dynamics work in DF like I think they do, using many pumps leading to a single thin pipe like this should increase water pressure and allow me to fill the water tank much faster

F is the water pipe, it'll go up about 50-75 z-layers, until its well above the mountain peaks.

G is a mini version of the water tank.  It will have walls about 5-10 z-layers tall, including the top of the pipe.  All of the hatches will tie to the same lever.  The stairs will either have another hatch over them, or be closed off.  G layer will cover the ENTIRE map.

If this works the way I think it will (which it probably won't) I should be able to open all of the hatches at once to create a map-wide water fall, covering everything with wonderful mist.

Should an attack come, I can drain the water, pump up some magma (which is right near my entrance) and shower the enemy with burning death, no matter where they are.  The magma will have a long start-up time, but the pipe will be right over my entrance, which will be closed off and roofed with obsidian to prevent a leak into my fort (probably).

If things get too dire, I can always permanently seal off the entrance with obsidian, and leave the magma rain running until the whole land is covered.  If that doesn't stop my enemies, we stop the magma and start the water, encasing us in obsidian, which we can mine out later.

I'm not sure if this has been done before, though I know Headshoots attempted something similar.  It's gonna take a while, as the pumps and pipe alone will need about 4-5K obsidian and 50+ pumps. (and double that for the magma).  Starting with my near-empty stores of raw stone, I'm going to have to strip-mine several layers of the map.

The only issue I see from here is that the water tank will probably make the whole map  "indoors" preventing any and all evaporation.  I figure I'll test it for a second, see where the water wants to go, and channel it off the map.

Thoughts?

[celem]

Im not seeing how this works.....ahhhh i get it.  Youre trying to suck water from the sea then you pipe it to the maps z limit and hold it there for....well, basically making a kinda hardcore rain.  I think thats what this is.  Its a very cool idea, but you need more pumps, heres why:

Assuming anything at all about DF fluid physics wont work.  You need to get to the wiki and do your homework, it doesnt work like water in the real world though you can do a lot of stuff with it.

All your pumps are on the level above the sea to intake which will give you a high flow rate, but you cant pressurize water and expect it to rise up a pipe, water doesnt do that here.  You will need another pumpstack like your magma one to pull water to top z, though in theory you could use displacement via a modified 'magma piston', but these are not resettable and impractical in your situation. 


Hope this helps!  Great idea, just needs adapting to DF's fluid dynamics.  This is a true megaproject, good luck.

[GTCapone]

Alright,  If positive water pressure won't work, I'll just use a pump stack like my magma to get it up.  I thought the big difference between magma and water flow in DF was that water could be pressurized to move up, while magma can't.

From what I can tell, this will have a different effect than rain, since the water will be treated like a waterfall, thus producing steam.

[celem]

The major difference between magma and water is that water ubends like you would expect....ish.
In general i always remember that a pump will fill to its output z-level, round ubends and all but no further.

Dwarf fluids are special

Also yes this will make mist, i just meant since you cover the whole map its like awesome rain.

Steam you will get where it 'rains' on the volcano, also cavein messages as the created obsidian falls to the lava sea....hmm, that could suck a bit, might wanna make it a little roof for your volcano.

[GTCapone]

I already made a roof over my volcano, it's where my magma forges are going (also to prevent magma creatures from giving me early Fun)

Any idea what kind of output I'll get from a pump stack?

[celem]

Now I read a thread once about maximizing the flow of a stack, i'll see if i can dig up a link.

But the basic premise was that pumps take 7/7 water from the tile below the intake, then try again before it has had time to fill completely from adjacent tiles, so pumps actually run faster than most of them appear to as they move incomplete water blocks.

The author of this thread built the first intake of the pumpstack at the bottom of a reservoir rather than the surface (as you would realworld with submerged intake pipes) and the flow was dramatically improved.  For your purposes though you need a lot of water, I would be expecting to build 2x such water stacks i think to get a decent fill rate.

I'll try and find that thread for you

[GTCapone]

Well, that's better than I thought.  I was planning on 5x pump stack at the surface.  I don't really want to risk mining into the ocean, since I could risk a major flood.

[celem]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=86680.0

the idea seems to be that the first fill is always a bit slow, but if you build in such a way that the pumps stay submerged/primed then after that it will be fast.  some good ideas in that thread.

[GoombaGeek]

What would be cool is alternating "tubes" of water and lava (only called magma when it's underground ) each hooked up to a separate lever.

So, a top view would be something like

Code: [Select]

OOO OOO
OWO OLO
OOO OOO

OOO OOO
OLO OWO
OOO OOOand a side cutaway view would reveal something like

Code: [Select]

*pumping apparatus*
OWO
OWO
OWO
OWO
OWO
OXO
~~~
Your Enemies
This way you could have both fluids on hand without needing to drain an entire reservoir half a kilometer up.

[Urist Da Vinci]

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Pressure

[GTCapone]

I thought about doing something like keeping both lava and water at the ready, but it causes too many points of failure.  I know it's more dwarvenly to be overly complicated, but I want to at least get to the point of mild success before burning my fort to the ground.

That reminds me, has anyone ever tried having a water pump and magma pump in mid air positioned so the water and magma combine while falling?  I'd like to think that would cause a constant rain of obsidian below it.  Though I suppose that would cause a constant rock-fall, preventing the game from continuing...

[GoombaGeek]

I thought about doing something like keeping both lava and water at the ready, but it causes too many points of failure.  I know it's more dwarvenly to be overly complicated, but I want to at least get to the point of mild success before burning my fort to the ground.

That reminds me, has anyone ever tried having a water pump and magma pump in mid air positioned so the water and magma combine while falling?  I'd like to think that would cause a constant rain of obsidian below it.  Though I suppose that would cause a constant rock-fall, preventing the game from continuing...

Put a drawbridge at the bottom of the endless obsidian rain, and point it towards your entrance.

When you want to summon the wrath of bridge shotgun just open the bridge.

If it can drive a sock through a child's skull then I shudder to think of what it can do with five hundred obsidian boulders.

[SuicideJunkie]

I thought about doing something like keeping both lava and water at the ready, but it causes too many points of failure.  I know it's more dwarvenly to be overly complicated, but I want to at least get to the point of mild success before burning my fort to the ground.

That reminds me, has anyone ever tried having a water pump and magma pump in mid air positioned so the water and magma combine while falling?  I'd like to think that would cause a constant rain of obsidian below it.  Though I suppose that would cause a constant rock-fall, preventing the game from continuing...

Definitely not Dwarfy enough... go for a full 3D Printer!

[celem]

Yes its been tried with water and magma jets intersecting in midair to make a cave-in gun.  Unfortunatly the lack of pressure on both fluids makes this less very hard to manage and I never heard of anyone making major progress.

Im tinkering with a setup where I auto-shotgun magma and water into a hallway, going to see if i can get it to form obsidian before everything settles to the ground (i.e. mix in the air)