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[Brilliand]

PTW. These aquifer threads have the best !!SCIENCE!! around.

Water is inimical to !!anything!!. No !!science!! to be found here.

I'm pretty sure !!science!! involving water is actually possible.  You could, for example, test the use of fire to evaporate water.

Hmm, I wonder if burning lignite would help with clearing out aquifers? :p  It would kill dwarves too, but they aren't nearly as afraid of fire as of water, so they'd keep working.

[Patchy]

Burning lignite/coal in a metal bin has been proven before to evaporate water on a large scale. It is one of the methods to drain an ocean afterall.

[Sutremaine]

Hmm, I wonder if burning lignite would help with clearing out aquifers? :p

It probably would, but it'd clear out your FPS as long as it was active. Perhaps you could figure out a way of putting a !!bin!! in the aquifer and then taking it out once you were finished (cave-in or digging from beneath?), sealing the hole with a wall built underneath (if you can get to it).

[pisskop]

Bridges crush water,  yea?

[Brilliand]

Bridges crush water,  yea?

Yeah, but they also block water flow, so the water would start filling up after you smashed it.  Not sure you could run the bridge fast enough to get an advantage.  Try it, I suppose?

Come to think of it, you could atom-smash the !!bin!! after you were done with it.

[Tacomagic]

So far with my adventures in !!SCIENCE!! aquifers I've found that the optimal size for dinning out aquifer tiles (without needing to dig the entire level as up/down stairs) appears to be 6x6.  5x5 is faster by a fair margin, but the greater utility of the floor space provided by 6x6 tends to be worth the extra time, if you are planning on using the space.  7x7 is feasible with some tactical smoothing, but the time difference between that and smaller areas is huge.  7x7 isn't really worth the extra effort unless you absolutely need that size.  8x8 was nearly impossible to do due to how much pushing was happening, so I wouldn't even bother.

So far I've just been digging u/d stairs around 6x6 blocks of earth from the base of the aquifer up to the top level, and then digging out those 6x6 blocks from the top going down.

It has the nice side-effect of producing modular 6x6 areas that have a usable floor (54% of mined space is usable floor, which is slightly more than using a checkerboard pattern, and a lot more than just digging u/d stairs everywhere) where just digging everything with stairs requires channeling and re-flooring if you want to use the space, which you pretty much have to do with a checkerboard pattern too.  The downside is that it takes a lot longer to dig out the 6x6 grids than it does to just spam-dig stairs.

The positive upshoot of the 6x6 grid is that it pretty much turns the whole project into a grid of waterfalls, so your miners gain happiness like crazy. Once I was done digging out my practice area, all my miners were extremely ecstatic.

[Brilliand]

So far with my adventures in !!SCIENCE!! I've found that the optimal size for dinning out aquifer tiles (without needing to dig the entire level as up/down stairs) appears to be 6x6.  5x5 is faster by a fair margin, but the greater utility of the floor space provided by 6x6 tends to be worth the extra time, if you are planning on using the space.  7x7 is feasible with some tactical smoothing, but the time difference between that and smaller areas is huge.  7x7 isn't really worth the extra effort unless you absolutely need that size.  8x8 was nearly impossible to do due to how much pushing was happening, so I wouldn't even bother.

So far I've just been digging u/d stairs around 6x6 blocks of earth from the base of the aquifer up to the top level, and then digging out those 6x6 blocks from the top going down.

It has the nice side-effect of producing modular 6x6 areas that have a usable floor (54% of mined space is usable floor, which is slightly more than using a checkerboard pattern, and a lot more than just digging u/d stairs everywhere) where just digging everything with stairs requires channeling and re-flooring if you want to use the space, which you pretty much have to do with a checkerboard pattern too.  The downside is that it takes a lot longer to dig out the 6x6 grids than it does to just spam-dig stairs.

The positive upshoot of the 6x6 grid is that it pretty much turns the whole project into a grid of waterfalls, so your miners gain happiness like crazy. Once I was done digging out my practice area, all my miners were extremely ecstatic.

Yeah, but you didn't use fire.  !! means fire.  It's actually a Dwarf Fortress reference, not just a way to express that something is awesome.

[Tacomagic]

That I did not realize.  Retrospectively it does allow several posts make a lot more sense with that knowledge.

I'll have to get some magma up and use real !!SCIENCE!! then.

Actually, the strategic use of said magma may overcome the issue I have with wanting to utilize the space after strip-mining.  Since I'll have aquifer tiles around the entire edge of the mined area, I should be able to slowly pour quickly pump huge quantities of magma into the cavity on any given level and then unsmooth/unwall an aquifer on top.  Then I'll have a nice floor to play with.  Really, it should solve the need to have any kind of coherent water dumping system in place.

I'd never actually considered building an obsidian plant inside an aquifer, but it does conceptually simplify a lot of the logistics of water movement.

And, with some tactical channeling, I might be able to do some kind of progressive obsidian mining that slowly replaces an aquifer level with obsidian as I mine.  And there will be plenty of water around to put out all the inevitable flaming dwarves.

Hmmm.

[Brilliand]

And there will be plenty of water around to put out all the inevitable flaming dwarves.

Don't count on it... dwarves caught in magma die fast.  Pouring water on a magma-immersed dwarf won't really help, either. :p

On the other hand, I doubt there will be any need to put dwarves and magma in the same place.

[gchristopher]

Actually, the strategic use of said magma may overcome the issue I have with wanting to utilize the space after strip-mining.  Since I'll have aquifer tiles around the entire edge of the mined area, I should be able to slowly pour quickly pump huge quantities of magma into the cavity on any given level and then unsmooth/unwall an aquifer on top.  Then I'll have a nice floor to play with.  Really, it should solve the need to have any kind of coherent water dumping system in place.

Think very very carefully about that and plan some savescummed experiments. There's lots of ways to have too much/little of one liquid or the other and create a major cleanup problem.

But yes, if you dig all the way from the surface, you can then obsidian-cast the former aquifer, flood it for mud, and get surface trees on vertically stacked tree farms all the way down to the lower caverns! Uh, I don't know why I was so set on doing that, but it can be done.

I'd never actually considered building an obsidian plant inside an aquifer, but it does conceptually simplify a lot of the logistics of water movement.

I think the aquifer has more value getting rid of excess water from obsidian casting then it necessarily does as a convenient water source. Getting water there, once accomplished, is a success. Avoiding/dealing with too much water can be more Fun.

And, with some tactical channeling, I might be able to do some kind of progressive obsidian mining that slowly replaces an aquifer level with obsidian as I mine.  And there will be plenty of water around to put out all the inevitable flaming dwarves.

That'd be neat! Please post if you find a nice way of doing that for very deep aquifers.

[hiroshi42]

But yes, if you dig all the way from the surface, you can then obsidian-cast the former aquifer, flood it for mud, and get surface trees on vertically stacked tree farms all the way down to the lower caverns! Uh, I don't know why I was so set on doing that, but it can be done.

Unfortunately above ground plants do not grow on muddied tiles. and above ground trees need a solid soil tile beneath them to grow.

[laularukyrumo]

Fairly certain neither of those things are true. Have you ever actually tried it? Because I've gotten it to work.

[Brilliand]

Above-ground trees definitely do not need a solid block directly beneath them to grow - I have trees grow directly above mined-out tiles all the time.  However, the wiki does bear out hiroshi's claim to some extent:

Above-ground trees will only grow in areas where there is sufficient soil 1 Z-level beneath them (currently observed to be at least one unmined tile within a two-tile radius, similar to [WET] trees and shrubs near rivers and ponds); underground trees not only ignore this restriction for dry subterranean soil but will also grow on muddy subterranean stone.

So above-ground trees do need a soil tile somewhere somewhat close on the layer below them.  For soil aquifers, you can achieve this with cave-ins.  For stone aquifers, I suggest you settle for above-ground farm plots.

[Ruhn]

Above-ground trees definitely do not need a solid block directly beneath them to grow - I have trees grow directly above mined-out tiles all the time.  However, the wiki does bear out hiroshi's claim to some extent:

Above-ground trees will only grow in areas where there is sufficient soil 1 Z-level beneath them (currently observed to be at least one unmined tile within a two-tile radius, similar to [WET] trees and shrubs near rivers and ponds); underground trees not only ignore this restriction for dry subterranean soil but will also grow on muddy subterranean stone.

So above-ground trees do need a soil tile somewhere somewhat close on the layer below them.  For soil aquifers, you can achieve this with cave-ins.  For stone aquifers, I suggest you settle for above-ground farm plots.

This makes me think that this rule is used for new surface tree saplings, and doesn't affect the existing trees and saplings on the surface.

I can't say that I understand everything in this topic yet, but it seems we are close to a point where this should be linked on the wiki.