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[Brdn666]

Does anyone have anything they want to share about machines? I want to try something new, but all I can come up with is pumping water out and I want to do something new. This includes elaborate gates, cool water/magma systems or anything else you want.

[Calenth]

I'd love to see a design for a swimming pool that would keep water perpetually at 4/7 depth, so you could station dwarves in it and train swimming safely. It should be doable but it's too complex for me to figure out.

[Joseph Miles]

This one is just off the top of my head, but a gateway thats opened by a series of pressure plates might work. You grab two levers, one for the start of the process(which will also be used to finish it) and one to continue it. Have a small square of 1x1 channels with a pump connecting them all going one way. One lever is connected to one of the pumps, the other is connected to the rest of the pumps. In three of the channels have a pressure plate activating on 7/7 water. Make three drawbridges connecting each one to a different one of the pressure plates. Pull the startup lever, once the water is pumped out pull it again and then pull the lever connected to the other pumps. This is way overcomplicated and unnecessary, but why SHOULDN'T it be done? Huh?


As for the pool idea, get a bunch of 7/7 pools that total a number that is divisible by four. Then, divide the total depth by four, and dig out that many spaces(Including the stairs/ramp) close enough that a pump could get water from the pool of water to the empty channels. Wall the water's path in for best results, you WILL lose water otherwise.

Example: You have a small pond, four pools of 7/7 water. Next to it, you dig out a 3x3 swimming pool, and a stairway going down. You build a pump in between them, then you build walls around the pump and a door so a dwarf can use the pump. Use the pump to pump the water into the channel, it should be 4/7 all around.

[Hague]

Well, I'm currently experimenting with an underwater mausoleum. Essentially, the bottom layer of my fortress is a massive area of tombs and treasure vaults sealed from the world. I have a series of floodgates that open a path from the source of a cave river down through the center of my fortress around an aquarium I have set up made of some 400+ green glass windows. The aquarium connects to the cistern that flows down into the bottom where it fills and covers up the tombs. The water then flows back out through another series of floodgates that flow towards a chasm where the water falls harmlessly out of my fortress. To fill the tomb with water, I close the floodgates at the bottom and open the ones at the top.

Spillways insure that my water cistern is constantly flowing (ie. Not stagnant) and prevent overflowing.

I'm not done with it yet, but when I am, I will upload it to the database.

[FalloutBoy]

This is kind of boring maybe but as my collection of caged goblins keeps increasing, I am trying to think of interesting ways of killing them. This was one of my ideas that I haven't tried yet.

Make a large rectangular room with a partition down the middle dividing it in half. Put floodgate access on either end of the room. 2 water pumps in the middle, pointing opposite directions. Levers hooked up to everything. Fill up one side from some external water source. Now you should be able to put a gobbo in the dry side and start the pump to slowly drown him. After all the water has been pumped to one side, you can put another gobbo in the other side and switch the pumps.

[Nonanonymous]

Well, I'm currently experimenting with an underwater mausoleum. Essentially, the bottom layer of my fortress is a massive area of tombs and treasure vaults sealed from the world. I have a series of floodgates that open a path from the source of a cave river down through the center of my fortress around an aquarium I have set up made of some 400+ green glass windows. The aquarium connects to the cistern that flows down into the bottom where it fills and covers up the tombs. The water then flows back out through another series of floodgates that flow towards a chasm where the water falls harmlessly out of my fortress. To fill the tomb with water, I close the floodgates at the bottom and open the ones at the top.

Spillways insure that my water cistern is constantly flowing (ie. Not stagnant) and prevent overflowing.

I'm not done with it yet, but when I am, I will upload it to the database.

That sounds really interesting...  Do the spillways rely on a system of pressure plates?  I can't fathom many other ways to keep everything from just pouring out...

[Doppel]

I'd love to see a design for a swimming pool that would keep water perpetually at 4/7 depth, so you could station dwarves in it and train swimming safely. It should be doable but it's too complex for me to figure out.

Have a pond of 7 tiles and dig out 4 tiles above it, pump those four tiles full with water (28/28 water) and drop it in the 7 tile pond wich would then normally result in a perfect 7 4/7 tiles. Is that a solution? (just thought of it)

edit: okay i just saw someone already made the same suggestion, sorry.

[Hague]

No, the spillways are just another channel for the water to flow outward into the channel instead of upward into the fortress. I'll have them hooked up to floodgates too.

My original idea (before I found the underground river) was to build a huge aqueduct from the brook toward my fortress and have waterfalls pour down from above into the chasm. Now I'm going to build a water elevator that will bring water up from the river through the top of the fortress and down into my fortress.  I'll build a tower above the fortress with 8 branching pathways, with slopes sloping downward slightly. This should split the water into smaller more easily manageable sizes. I might use some mechanisms and pressure plates to control the water, however. It will be pure awesome when I'm finished with it.

[Rollory]

I'm in the middle of designing a Waterworks level for my fort.  It'll carry water to all areas of the fort, and will feed wells and the pumps to reservoirs for water traps.  There'll be raised walkways along each water channel, for maintenance work, and floodgates at each intersection, and a system of pressure plates connected to some logic systems that will detect if a section of the pipes is overflowing, and automatically close the floodgate in the direction the overflow is coming from, and keep it closed until the overflow has drained, then reopen the floodgate.

I've got pretty much all the components worked out on paper, for how to build them and put them together.  Now it's just a matter of digging it all out.

[Benitosimies]

What I always like to do is divert a river to power pump + water wheel assemblies to get a waterfall going in my fortress, and divert the waterfall pipes to put waterfalls at different locations; usually one is over the entrance and another is in a meeting hall. I also use this to refill lakes that dry up.

Since I started this game I've been trying to come up with a conveyor belt, but the closest that seems to work is 'dump'ing an item into a narrow channel with a pump over the destination end: the pump sucks the item to below where the pump is. I don't use it though because it's not quite what I want.

[Sukasa]

Well, you could always make a machine logic computer, there's a wiki page on it actually.  Also includes a bit of clocked logic gating </shamelessplug>

http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Mechanical_Logic <- go there, make something useful with these!

[Rollory]

But the question is, to do what. 

It's easy to build the computing components.  But what is it you are computing?  Directional flood failsafes is the best I've come up with so far.

[LumenPlacidum]

Use a series of channels with floodgates like the display on an lcd clock, then use the machine logic system to construct a digital clock that works based on water and displays using water-filled channels.  That should keep you busy for a long time.

[Rollory]

That's rather like the calculator they make you do in introductory programming classes.  I always found that sort of task monumentally boring because it was so obviously make-work.

What can you do with computing that is actually useful for the dwarves?

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

For dwarves to enjoy it, it must contain alcohol and the mass slaughter of goblins.