More gameplay options concerning water collection and storage: At present, there are only a few work arounds which allow players to add containers filled with water to one's stockpiles in an unmodded game.
A dedicated means of activating a dwarf behavior which collects and stores water could be useful players, and especially useful for modders. Dwarves already know how to fetch water for injured dwarves, fill a pond, and fill an aquarium, however they don't know how to put that stuff in a barrel, or receive work orders to acquire it, or do anything with the water once they've stored it.
Presently Know Work Arounds in Vanilla:- Buckets of water can be collected by declaring a pond zone, and then removing the designation once several dwarves have collected buckets of water, whereupon the dwarves will drop their water buckets and stockpiles can be placed on those tiles. (As dwarves attempting to provide other dwarves with water will invariably collect and then empty these buckets, before merrily carrying them back to a water source, only to then redundantly fill those same buckets back up with water, in order to accomplish some task requiring the delivery of buckets of water, a dropped bucket containing water should be set to forbidden, in order to prevent their reuse).
- Glass cages can be "built", designated as an aquarium, and then be deconstructed once a dwarf has completed filling it with water. The water remains in the deconstructed glass cage, and is then moved back to a stockpile.
Toady has mentioned wanting to increase the amount of sustenance micro required by the player, as it is considered too easy at present. I would suggest, as I'm sure others have done in the past, to
add water as a reagent for brewing at a still, for all brewing labors. This would increase the element of realism currently present in game, increase the depth of gameplay and strategy concerning the manufacture of liquors & the sustaining of a fort; and accomplish these goals by utilizing mechanics and behaviors that are already featured in game.
Lastly, having
a [NEEDS_WATER] token added to the RAWS would be nice. We already have a [NEEDS_MAGMA].