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[nwob]

As the title states:  at present, vast areas of any generated map are off limits due to the presence of aquifers, and I was wondering what purpose they were intended to serve.

Is it a 'realism' thing?  Or a coding artefact?

I know some people enjoy the challenge aquifers might bring, but why are they there in the first place?

[Sergarr]

Because there are aquifers in real life?

[Lich180]

Aquifers just give players something else to struggle with weaponize after they become familiar with how to bypass them. Sure, aquifers are a pain in the butt when you first start, but once you've learned the dual-slit and/or cave-in methods, and that the layer directly under the aquifer also produces water from the roof, they just become a source of unending water and fun.

They aren't really realistic in terms of RL vs. DF, but at least they are present in some way.

[nwob]

Okay, that makes sense.  I guess for me it just crosses the line from !fun! to a pain, but there you go.

I'll have to investigate aforementioned methods.

[Thormgrim]

i hate breaching them and resort to DFHack to remove the aquifer for whatever area I want to drill through.  I usually leave the rest of it intact, in case I want to tap into it for water.  I never get around to doing that, however...

[Mr S]

And, of course, the DF canonical answer is: to kill elves.

[Girlinhat]

i hate breaching them and resort to DFHack to remove the aquifer for whatever area I want to drill through.  I usually leave the rest of it intact, in case I want to tap into it for water.  I never get around to doing that, however...

Regular raw modding will do the trick.  BEFORE EMBARK, go to your save game, open inorganic_soil in the raw file, ctrl-h search [aquifer] and replace all with empty text.

[BoredVirulence]

To make dwarves embark in mountainous regions and not in river valleys, of course. Only humans and elves live near rivers that aren't next to mountains. And the added difficulty, and it disrupts / adds-an-organic-flow-to fortress design.

Me personally, I don't run into aquifers often. I also avoid rivers and always embark with part of my site on a mountain.

[vanatteveldt]

It is a realism thing although the infiniteness of the drain/sink is not realistic, of course.

They were digging a metro tunnel in amsterdam (=soggy ground). They hit the aquifer pretty quick, and then need to put temporary steel walls in first, then drain the area in between with pumps, and then they can start working. Whenever there is a breach it is actually quite dangerous for the surroundings as the soil shrinks when the water is drained, so you can get sinkholes or houses that shift on their foundations.

What would actually be nice if aquifers would function as natural sources as well when an aquifer hits a slope, so you get a river/stream that springs from an aquifer rather than the quite ugly sources they have now.

Also it would be good to have a measure of saturation, e.g. an aquifer can contain 0-7/7 water. If it is breached, it will leak water into the open space, and then the neighbouring aquifer tile will refill the breached tile etc. This will also make breaching aquifers less of a pain in the arse. Aquifer tiles at map edge could generate water like map-edge river tiles. Bonus points if a drained aquifer tile does not support, so you can get sinkholes by draining the aquifer too much...

[fricy]

Don't think of aquifers as a challenge, but as a source of infinite water/power. Most of the time it's very easy to deal with them, just choose an embark location that has 2 or more biomes, that way it's almost guaranteed that you can bypass them somewhere. After that if you don't dig into them from below/from the side you are safe to use this marvelous natural resource. Ok, a 10z level deep aquifer can still screw you over, but that's DF for you. 

[Callista]

Hey, I did get through a ~10z aquifer once. Except it took me so long to do it that my dwarves got unhappy from the lack of pretty much anything other than the basics (plump helmets, booze, and a dormitory)... which started a tantrum spiral and the usual Fun that results from that.

[vanatteveldt]

If I encounter an aquifer that I think I need to manually drill through, I am careful to set up a temporary soil-bound fortress that keeps my dwarfs more or less happy. You don't need any rock to make a dining hall, bed rooms, etc. Any you could even make a waterfall quite easily since you're literally sitting on an infinite water source/sink anyway, and pumps don't need any rock (I've not done this, but it should be doable).

If you bring at least one real stone you could even fire up a kiln and make some earthenware, which has good value for statues and crafts. If the wiki is correct, an ash-glazed earthenware statue (which requires nothing more than clay and a lot of wood) should have quite good value. (although strangely the http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Statue page does not list ceramics as a source of statues).

Getting a good military without access to ore is a challenge, and traps and raising drawbridges are out without stone or metal for mechanisms, so you will have to make do with leather-clad bone-crossbow archers. Taking some cassetirite and malachite on embark is a cheap way of getting some metal going, especially if you also bring coal, but that might defeat the point of the exercise . In any case some ceramics crafts and/or lavish meals should enable you to buy plenty of weapons or meltable metal from the caravan to have ready by the first ambush...

[EBannion]

Also it would be good to have a measure of saturation, e.g. an aquifer can contain 0-7/7 water. If it is breached, it will leak water into the open space, and then the neighbouring aquifer tile will refill the breached tile etc. This will also make breaching aquifers less of a pain in the arse. Aquifer tiles at map edge could generate water like map-edge river tiles. Bonus points if a drained aquifer tile does not support, so you can get sinkholes by draining the aquifer too much...

Pretty sure that making the aquifer flow overlay the stone instead of just produce water from the edge would massively exacerbate the already-onerous FPS hit that flows cause.

But from a realism, simulationist perspective this is a great idea.

[Brilliand]

Pretty sure that making the aquifer flow overlay the stone instead of just produce water from the edge would massively exacerbate the already-onerous FPS hit that flows cause.

I wouldn't expect it to be any worse than an ocean.  Oceans do cause severe FPS hits sometimes, but only when you're doing something strange with them... and I'm pretty sure the existing aquifers are actually worse in that regard.

[Di]

I can't remember when was the last time I've embarked without aquifer.
If my embark doesn't have one I can't ...er... perform normally. It all just happens too easy and too fast in that case. You don't even have such essentials as farms and you need to decide where the main parts will be located and where to search for metals and so on.

Besides, aquifers provide unlimited water and power without much fps damage.