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[muldrake]

Recent fort, chose an embark with an aquifer in one tile, my usual method of avoiding having no water at all.  Found it fairly early and set up a well and a hospital next to it.  Left that general area alone for years, and then suddenly, it just went dry.

I tried to dig out the area around it, and got "damp stone detected" warnings, and dug anyway, because yeah, obviously it's damp in an aquifer.

Nothing resulted.

Just a few "1" water squares.

Wtf?

I'd assume this is one of these weird newfangled "light aquifer" things.  Do they just suddenly go dry for no reason?

[CaptainArchmage]

Light aquifers fill very slowly. If you have a large area dug out around them, you'll see the water (1/7) tiles evaporating faster than they fill.

[PatrikLundell]

As CaptainArchmage said, the light aquifers fill slowly, so you don't need a large area for an aquifer to train into to evaporate all of its output. This means that filling a cistern won't work through the simple "dig tunnel and wait for it to fill" method if it's large enough (which isn't very large). In fact, the tunnel leading the water to the cistern might be long enough that you can't fill the cistern due to evaporation.
My method for light aquifer supplied cisterns is to build a bridge in the supply tunnel, close the bridge, and wait for the water to (slowly) fill up the shaft (or, rather, staircase) before opening the bridge to fill out the bottom level of the cistern. Repeat as many times as you need (for my small cisterns a single time has been sufficient). In at least one case I built the bridge after noticing that the cistern failed to fill up: a water level of 1/7 doesn't block the building of a bridge, although you may get an occasional 2/7 cancellation if you're unlucky.

[muldrake]

That sort of sucks.  So light aquifers have all the bad features of an aquifer and none of the useful ones.

[Sarmatian123]

It makes easier on new players to dig through them? Easier, as they still learning value in pressing "space" button often enough?

[muldrake]

The only good thing about aquifers was literally the main bad thing about them.  They were a source of endless water.  Light aquifers aren't even that?  They can't even be depended on for water?

Absolute bullshit.

[Uthimienure]

Light aquifers are working just fine for me, providing enough water to fill smallish cisterns and as many mist-generators as needed.

[PatrikLundell]

Light aquifers are almost trivial to pierce and require only a few retries when building the walls, in my experience. That comes at a cost in the other end in that you have to plan the collection of the water a little, and you probably can't run an obsidian farm continuously, but will have to wait for the water to fill up again before the next pass (or set of passes). Thus, you still have unlimited amounts of water, but not a constant flow. They certainly can be depended on to keep a well filled, and ought to be sufficient to run dwarf washers, etc (I've lost my 0.47.04 fortresses to bugs before I've had time to build the washer).

It's possible to write a script that converts all the worlds aquifers to heavy ones if you want the old type, by modifying the one that converts them all to light, and you can create PSV worlds that does the same thing (drainage modulo 20 = 7 results in heavy aquifers, i.e. 7, 27, 47, 67, 87).

[Hamsmagoo]

If you're digging into a light aquifer, you can make it as long as you want but don't make the rectangle more than 2 squares wide. Then it will fill pretty fast and stay full and you can either build a well right on top of it or pump it wherever it's needed.

[muldrake]

It's possible to write a script that converts all the worlds aquifers to heavy ones if you want the old type, by modifying the one that converts them all to light, and you can create PSV worlds that does the same thing (drainage modulo 20 = 7 results in heavy aquifers, i.e. 7, 27, 47, 67, 87).

This might have been a good idea before I rooted around in it but I suspect suddenly turning all these dug tiles heavy would have a negative impact on my dwarves.  I think I've messed up the general area too much to try this again.  It's no huge deal, I already have the water in the caverns.  I just have to dig a nice long shaft.

[anewaname]

Aquifers release water at the walls, so you can dig a chessboard pattern in the aquifer to increase water output.Next time...

[gnurro]

I've found the light aquifers to be a delight to play with: All the water, none of the hassle. A single, cat-infested one-handed miner can dig through them and with a little care, they produce unlimited water in a very controllable fashion.

In my current fort I have dug two 'light aquifer sources':

This one is for misting up the great hall and nicely fills a 7x7x5 reservoir in about a year.



Light aquifers easily provide unlimited power, just as the heavy ones...

The 'trick' is to keep the damp wall/damp ceiling to open floor ratio as high as possible to not allow any of the water to evaporate before it is used.

It seems to me that the aquifer produces more water when it is raining - but it rains a lot on this fort, so my observation is likely skewed.

[muldrake]

It seems to me that the aquifer produces more water when it is raining - but it rains a lot on this fort, so my observation is likely skewed.

Come to think of it, it hasn't been raining much at all lately.  Maybe that's why mine appears to have dried up entirely.

[Quietust]

It seems to me that the aquifer produces more water when it is raining - but it rains a lot on this fort, so my observation is likely skewed.

Come to think of it, it hasn't been raining much at all lately.  Maybe that's why mine appears to have dried up entirely.

What you're likely seeing is not increased water production, but instead decreased evaporation - in earlier versions of the game (think 40d), 1-deep water did not evaporate while it was raining (and possibly other additional circumstances).

[muldrake]

It seems to me that the aquifer produces more water when it is raining - but it rains a lot on this fort, so my observation is likely skewed.

Come to think of it, it hasn't been raining much at all lately.  Maybe that's why mine appears to have dried up entirely.

What you're likely seeing is not increased water production, but instead decreased evaporation - in earlier versions of the game (think 40d), 1-deep water did not evaporate while it was raining (and possibly other additional circumstances).

My original well was a 1x1 single square channeled downward, which started as 7.  It appeared to be working fine until it suddenly dried up.  Maybe new arrivals just used it more to the point that it was depleted.