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[WanderingKid]

I am missing some details for my water generating plant... I was sure it would work already sketched the automatisation and now this...

How do I prevent freezing water leaving a floor of ice above itself? Or put in another way, is there a way to guarantee a pump above has access to freshly melted water. Floor grate does not work, a floor of ice appears under it.

I'm curious about your expectations here.  Melted perma-frost, such as glacier surface, doesn't replenish if you mine/melt it.  If you have pond water that shows up in summer then freezes over winter, you'd need a way to melt it in the first place when it's not summer, which is almost always nearby magma.  If you have magma, you can control the source tile of the pump.

The only time I could see this being a possible concern is if you dug into an ocean and are desalinating the water.  In that case, if I remember right (it's been a long time since I played with oceans) you should be able to dig deeper to the non-freezing areas of the ocean and use that water.

Can you give more of an idea of what you're doing here?  To directly answer the question, the only way to be sure is to put a magma pool next to the water source hex so it never freezes.

[taptap]

@wanderingkid: I am building a water generation plant to produce in principle unlimited water out of a limited amount of frozen ocean, slow-mo aquifer generation for when I am stuck without an aquifer, if you will. For that purpose I dropped ice a few z-levels below sea level. (Result: Ice floor and water below.) Removed the initial ice floor to expose the tile below and now it duly refreezes. Built all the magma piping required and when magma flows below it, it duly melts again. Then I take a part of that water to my reservoir and let the remainder refreeze (next melting produces 7 units again). Rinse, repeat. The process works - and this has done manually often enough. The ice floor (that does not stop the refreezing in any way) is merely an inconvenience that makes my initial setup for an automated plant with pumps impossible. I.e. I can melt the source tile of the pump all I want, it has a little ice roof that prevents the pump from working.

This is also the reason caving in that floor once I melt the ice below won't work (it will plunge straight into the magma messing up the whole plant). Flooding both the level above and below with magma while taking a part of the water out of the middle seems like a real pain to accomodate all the tanks and access routes in a confined space. I rather work without water pumps for carrying of a fraction of the water then and leave the ice roof be.

[Bumber]

high wall (think above surface magma reservoir outer wall), efficiency as in easy and cheap and safe to construct and deconstruct.

Use bridges. 1x1 stairs spaced 20 tiles apart with a 1x10 bridge on each side. Don't try to support anything with the bridges. Bridge materials should be kept nearby (as they are hauled one at a time by the builder.) Quick and safe to deconstruct.

[Slogo]

@wanderingkid: I am building a water generation plant to produce in principle unlimited water out of a limited amount of frozen ocean, slow-mo aquifer generation for when I am stuck without an aquifer, if you will. For that purpose I dropped ice a few z-levels below sea level. (Result: Ice floor and water below.) Removed the initial ice floor to expose the tile below and now it duly refreezes. Built all the magma piping required and when magma flows below it, it duly melts again. Then I take a part of that water to my reservoir and let the remainder refreeze (next melting produces 7 units again). Rinse, repeat. The process works - and this has done manually often enough. The ice floor (that does not stop the refreezing in any way) is merely an inconvenience that makes my initial setup for an automated plant with pumps impossible. I.e. I can melt the source tile of the pump all I want, it has a little ice roof that prevents the pump from working.

This is also the reason caving in that floor once I melt the ice below won't work (it will plunge straight into the magma messing up the whole plant). Flooding both the level above and below with magma while taking a part of the water out of the middle seems like a real pain to accomodate all the tanks and access routes in a confined space. I rather work without water pumps for carrying of a fraction of the water then and leave the ice roof be.

In that case I'd just put the pump from a tile that doesn't freeze (i.e always has magma under it or is considered inside so won't freeze). So you can make a little extension out of your freezing/thawing chamber and when you thaw it should fill with water you can pump. When you refreeze then a little water will get wasted, but overall you should come out ahead.

[WanderingKid]

I would agree with Slogo here, and there's a relatively easy way to go about it.  Thinking on a single level, which is the level you're melting in the ocean deeps, you have a sheet of ice that you're intending to melt.

Carve a small cavern, two blocks deep, from this ice sheet.  Below that in a contained area, put in a magma pit.  That will keep the block that your pump works from free of ice.  Floor it over with something.  That magma never moves and will always keep the block free.  When you melt the ice sheet, it will slosh some of the water into your two block cavern, allowing the pump to grab water.

[taptap]

I went with simple propagation by flow into an extension, just made it a little larger and left out the pump altogether (mainly due to the installations already in place), dropping the water from there as soon it freezes again in the freeze/thaw chamber. Less efficient, but simpler design. Still puzzled how it is apparently impossible to prevent generation of a floor on the level above.

I am somewhat unsure a simple magma pit would even work. Water refreezes over 7/7 magma (yeah counterintuitive, but it does) and even with lower magma only changes in level seem to trigger melting in my experience. The only way to keep my freeze/thaw chamber from refreezing is by keeping the pump running.

[Fleeting Frames]

Having recently toyed with a mid-air cold lake biome, if you have variance in magma height it tends to result in spontaneous freezes and then melts (all 7/7 with 1 6/7 is cool to watch).

For keeping enough of the water to get ice walls, if you have some subterranean tiles you could easily use minecarts, or pressure-plate toggled furniture instead of pumps.

I expect all of this plays merry hell on fps, of course.

[WanderingKid]

Does anyone know if turning off weather via the LNP also stops Dust and Plague storms in evil biomes?

On a similar note, I can't find details on what using Starting Labors: By_Unit_Type does.  Anyone have a link to the specifics of this handy?  Nevermind, found it.  It only activates their specialization.

[Fleeting Frames]

My own search into this topic in this forum says no. To turn those off you have to disable them in worldgen.

[Calidovi]

Any way I can quickly allow time to pass in my world? Something like 15-30 years.

[Fleeting Frames]

After worldgen? Walled in fortress (preferably with map edge bridges to prevent migrants to save fps and not drain mountainhome), with plant gathering zone/farm and source of water/automated jobs for booze, then leave to run overnight while you sleep. At 100 FPS, it would take *mathes* 1,12 hours per year, and you can run 1x1 embarks lot faster than that.

[vexxice]

So, I have created my first pit trap, and seem to have made a grave error. I designated down stairs followed by up/down stairs in long shafts. then, I channeled the up/down stairs from the bottom. The problem is, now I cannot remove the down stairs, there is no up stairs connected to them and channeling does not seem to work. So I have some bridges that sit above some down stairs. Retracting the bridges can make the people on top trip and fall to their doom, but the more dexterous seem to be able to walk across the down stairs.

Can I remove the stairs, without removing the bridges?

[Fleeting Frames]

No. You can't dig building squares (which is sometimes real nice with ramps and temporary stockpiles).

For next time with that structure, you can remove constructed tiles under buildings - such as downstairs - to return the tile to open space, floor or dug downstairs.

[Farmerbob]

OK, have been away a while, and recently returned.  I've noticed that even legendary miner dwarves move very slowly now when carrying mined stones.  So I've been experimenting with wheelbarrows and linked depots.

Everything seemed to make sense, until I got to a point where it should have worked well, then it broke.  I think.  Maybe I'm doing something wrong, so I've come here to poke you all with a stick and see if there's something I'm missing.

I have a craft workshop, a mason shop, and a mechanic workshop, all sitting immediately next to up/down stairs, directly above a stone depot.

The stone depot only accepts non-economic stones.  It is set to give to the three workshops mentioned above.

Increased wheelbarrow count for the main depot to 3.

The three workshops correctly pulled only from the central depot.  However, the glorious drunkards were puling stones from practically everywhere with only three wheelbarrows, and the stones ran out.

I created four three-tile depots, one on each side of the main stone depot, with the same non-economic stone settings.

Increased wheelbarrow count of the four sub-depots to three.

Set all four of the sub-depots to give to the main depot.

What I expected to happen is:

1) Up to 12 dwarves would use the 12 wheelbarrows in the 4 sub-depots to fill said sub-depots from whatever dwarfy place they randomly decide to get stones from.

2) Up to three dwarves would use the three wheelbarrows in the main depot to pull stones from the sub-depots.

3) Craftdwarves would only have to walk a few steps to get stones they need.

What is actually happening is:

Idling craftdwarves.  The main depot is not filling, despite plenty of available dwarfpower with the correct jobs enabled.

Is there any way to de-break depot / wheelbarrow linking?  Or am I doing something wrong?

[Farmerbob]

I figured it out.  Wheelbarrows do not stack with stones.  Three-tile stone depots with three wheelbarrows in them do not have room for stones.

Increasing the size of the feeder depots to 10 tiles with three wheelbarrows immediately led to proper function.