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[Spotswood]

could someone reccomend a good indoor powerplant setup? I tried making 2 long waterwheel trenches (~20x3) on top of each other with pumps moving the water from the lower to the upper trench. However, I never got all the waterwheels to produce power. It looked like when the water reaches 7/7 under a specific wheel, that wheel stops. So I was wondering if someone has figured out a more efficient way

(I know it is a generic question, but I figured power is a gnomish thing more than anything else)

I always use waterwheels to start. I try to find a good waterfall if I can, otherwise you can use a cistern. I dig a 3x1 channel down from the waterfall to the room where i've channeled out a 3 tile wide pool (however long) for the water to fall into. From the pool I channel three 1 tile runs across the room. These are usually about 4 tiles apart, but it depends on how you want to link the waterwheels. The channels then go under the rooms wall and back out to the river where the waterfall finishes. For this it needs to be on the side of a waterfall so you have a free outlet. If your getting 7 water on your waterwheel it can mean the water is not moving, which will stop the wheel. If you set this up with a cistern you would want to put pumps (rather than a drain) connecting to the waterwheels which then pump the water back to the cistern. So your initial power for the waterwheels comes from water dropping from the cistern and running past the wheels. Its cool, 1 because it works well and 2 because it gives you a massive cool looking generator room, which I like.

So with a drain it looks like

x=channel
.=floor

         Out to river   
......x....x....x...
......x....x....x...
......x....x....x...
......x....x....x... <- waterwheels go in channels and are all linked together to one gear
......x....x....x...
......x....x....x...
......x....x....x...
......x....x....x...
......xxxxxxxxxxx<-
......xxxxxxxxxxx<- Water falls from above (from natural waterfall)
......xxxxxxxxxxx<-

You can make this as big or as small as you like. Just make sure that your inlet amount (so the tile width falling from your cistern or river) is equal to the amount of runs you have leaving to the river. Too much inlet and you'll flood the room. To much outlet and your waterwheels wont run.

[tschib]

@spotswood; referencing df wiki, water wheels do not work directly with waterfalls, plus i never encountered a natural waterfall in world generation; indeed, rivers tend to cut through hills on floor level but i do get your point that you make water flow by this setup. why, though not directly building those waterwheels into the river?

coming back at

Start with a stonecutter. It's simpler. An arc furnace requires some high end parts.

I'd like to note that gnomes do not have access to a stonecutter..

-------------------------------

Ah yes... after a rather thorough playthrough, my thoughts on gnomes:

first of all I am amazed at how brilliantly well the automated machines work; from the input/output tiles to crushing accidents; truly a dwarfish gnomish thing!
Still I feel the automatization system is not there yet in terms of mnufacturing lines;
I mean I'm unaware of the current or future dev plans for a future version once meph is back and kicking, but currently the automation seems to not really be worth it:

The blockcutter packs an insane output per boulder AND allows to use unconventional boulders like ores for block production, which is pretty nice since the blocks retain their high value and thus allow to produce metal-esque furniture at the automated furniture plant in INSANE quantities, omitting smith/autoforge.
However the quality of the automatically produced items never reaches those of a great/legendary mason, and while this shortcoming is no problem for furniture, as furniture can be cheaply increased in value by the AutoDecorator, weapons and armor are still potentially better hand-produced than in the autoforge, same for the autotailor.

Im just throwing some ideas I had while playing the gnomes, but how bout changing the current system to one where building long, complex production lines is essential, as stated in the race introduction; i imagine something like

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

ore -> ARCFURNACE -> bars -> AUTOROLLER -> metalSheets -> AUTOCUTTER -> metalStripes -> AUTOTINKER? -> wires/?
                                                                                                                                            -> AUTOFLETCHER-> arrows/bolts/?
                                                                                           -> AUTOMOLD    -> armorplates -> AUTOARTIFICER -> mechanical/clockwork chassis
                                                                                                                                           -> AUTOARMOURER -> basicArmors
                                                                                           -> AUTOTUBEFORGE -> tubeSections/Barrels
                                           -> AUTOHAMMER -> basicWeapons
                                           [...]

this is just a quick draft that is neither thought through nor intricate but might illustrate what i hope for production depth, especially when you need multiple different parts from different pre-production machines to assemble a finished good, mking use of the logic gatters and sorting machines...

One more thing maybe; my main problem when playing with the gnomes was their enormous appetite for metal bars; to produce these, you need the arc furnace as smelting the unrefined ("ore containing") boulders is extremely inefficient but since you need such an enormous amout of bars to even build the arc furnace(and the static generator), things are kinda tough in the beginning especially on a low wood/scarce ore embark.
Maybe unlock the gnomes the ore processor?

Anyways, bruh; keep up the great work, gnomes are my definitve favourite besides the fooccubii

[Aristion]

Start with a stonecutter. It's simpler. An arc furnace requires some high end parts.

I'd like to note that gnomes do not have access to a stonecutter..

Actually they do. Its an automated machine however.

[94dima94]

1) I still have not said this, so, to the author of the mod:
This is an amazing mod: it's an awesome race, and it has exactly the features I like (indirect war, animals, machines...), so... Congratulations, and thanks!
I just wanted to say that...

Anyway, I also have an actual question:
2) In my playthrough all of my forest spiders got killed in a titan attack. The fort survived, but now my "druid score" is about -4500 (I lost quite a lot of other animals too). I can't find a way to recover, given the fact that I basically have no animals left, except for the mechanical ones, (and I don't have a lot of people either)... Can I actually go back to a positive score? Or should i just give up druidism in this game?

[IndigoFenix]

1) I still have not said this, so, to the author of the mod:
This is an amazing mod: it's an awesome race, and it has exactly the features I like (indirect war, animals, machines...), so... Congratulations, and thanks!
I just wanted to say that...

Anyway, I also have an actual question:
2) In my playthrough all of my forest spiders got killed in a titan attack. The fort survived, but now my "druid score" is about -4500 (I lost quite a lot of other animals too). I can't find a way to recover, given the fact that I basically have no animals left, except for the mechanical ones, (and I don't have a lot of people either)... Can I actually go back to a positive score? Or should i just give up druidism in this game?

Thanks!

Druidism demerits for dead pets are reduced by half after 6 months and disappear entirely a year after the creature dies, so if you wait a while yo.u'll be able to use druidism again.  You might have to get some tame animals by buying or capturing wild animals to actually go back to positive though

[smakemupagus]

tiny suggestion:
allow galena as a reagent for diodes.  Historically, it was one of the earliest crystal rectifiers, it works basically right out of the ground.

[thegamemaster1234]

The gnomes and their ways of tinkering with mechanisms and such actually made me think a little about base defense for once.
Having settled right next to a river, I walled off my 5x5 stairway, added a trade depot right outside it, walled it, and put a drawbridge across the river with a couple cage traps at the end of it.

Unfortunately I didn't think enough; I accidentally flooded the base after trying to build a well. I had forgotten that digging channels causes a downward slope on the top and an upward slope on the bottom, so after trying to tap the river it all just flooded straight down into my base.

Thank goodness for those seasonal saves.

Even more hilariously, after reverting to the summer save, a rhesus macaque arrived and instantly got captured in one of my cage traps. So much for driving it away, I guess (this happened twiceTHREE TIMES in a row, with the same cage trap!)

The lever for my bridge is moving on its own. Can the wind move levers, or is it possessed?? 

[Arcvasti]

From what I remember, in valnilla DF, gremlins can pull levers and are stealthed. It might be those or some Masterwork creature that has similar tags.

[thegamemaster1234]

After playing around a bit more, I found that I can't power a Stonecutter even with 5 waterwheels. Everything's set up just the way it's supposed to, so I don't know what's going on. Just as well a lot of other things don't seem to work, like checking the power. And how are you supposed to check your druidism score? Just the same, trying to release kids into the wild doesn't work either.

Do you have to launch MDF with dfhack for things to work correctly?
Also, after launching with dfhack, my children surrounding the nature shrine with an adult continuously chanting the release ritual while the children are burrowed there created some kind of infinite druidic token thing, and now I'm drowning in the things!

EDIT: Actually, using "Go off to live in the wild" at ALL instantly creates ~5-6 tokens instantly! And since nobody's actually leaving, they're all for free!
At one point I calculated the existence of 161 (ONE HUNDRED SIXTY ONE) tokens inside the shrine at once. Yeah. I would've made an image that strung all the tokens together, but I'm too lazy to save all of the screenshots and load them all up in GIMPhoto (Preview just doesn't work for that). And the numbers just keep getting bigger the longer that dude sits on that shrine. At least I have a major export!

EDIT2: Realized that with the way I had copied stuff over into the "hack" folder that druidism scripts weren't there, so that was likely causing all the... er... weirdness. Now I know what happens when you try druidism while not actually having druidism: you get absolutely covered in tokens.

EDIT3: As it turns out, the old mac version of DFHack isn't compatible with the plugin that the druidism script needs (eventful) and running the windows version using Wine (I've heard mono with it helps with some things, will try) only lets me see a gigantic D. Oh well.

[IndigoFenix]

The gnomes are a plugin for Masterwork, and they come along with the official release.  They absolutely require DFHack to be running and may not work as a stand-alone download in any event.

[hanspeter]

[REACTION:CRATE_MAGNET_GNOME]
[NAME:Open crate of magnetized iron bars]

This reaction gives 5 [ITEM_TOOL_MAGNET_GNOME], shouldn't it give 5 [ITEM_TOOL_MAGNET_LARGE_GNOME]?

[hanspeter]

What's the point of being able to load OUTPUT tiles with barrels, bags and bins? Doesn't seem to do anything, or am I just doing it wrong?

[Meph]

I'd assume that the output gets added to the container? Or at least that you have a container ready nearby?

[hanspeter]

Output doesn't get added to the container, at least as far as I've tested it. Second option makes sense, maybe. But why barrels and bags? None of the machines can produce anything that gets stored in those, afaik.

[palu]

I think the grinder produces powder.