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[Toady One]

I saw a screen over on SA that indicated farming using a channel from the outside river is possible.  In general, channel water wasn't supposed to flow "uphill" into the cliff, though it seems you can do it.  Does it require two floodgates?  Can it be done with only one?

[genmac]

I believe he used a bunch of channels and two floodgates:

X______________________________BX

I'm not what the bridge was for, although he implied it was required for something or other, it might just be for crossing the channels.

nm my pond question got answered at SA

[ August 15, 2006: Message edited by: genmac ]

[GauHelldragon]

My last game I used the river outside for farming.. my save game crashed but I'm gonna do it again, and i'll take a screenshot for ya.

[Aquillion]

This makes sense to me... I mean, the dwarves are living underground, aren't they?  It stands to reason that they'd be able to divert aboveground rivers into their fortress to farm.

But from a game-balance standpoint it could be a serious problem...  I was under the impression that the fact that you have to open yourself up to the river to start a farm was supposed to be a major issue.  Hrm.

[Zereth]

That was probalby me. I did it with just one gate, like this:

code:

..#.
.##.
~~~X
.##.
..#.

The bridge was because I screwed up and the channel didn't go far enough and the dwarves couldn't get to the square through the floodgate to dig some more.
EDIT: I put it there becuase it's the farthest out I can put a floodgate, one square to the left in the initially visible rock area and it can't be placed.

[ August 15, 2006: Message edited by: Zereth ]

toad: code tag reformat

[ August 17, 2006: Message edited by: Toady One ]

[GauHelldragon]

last game i was able to get water into my fortress just using channels, but this time the water stops right at the entrance. Oh well, guess I gotta do it the hard way  

[Dehydration]

I'm doing it right now.

code:

~
~             ############
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~X..........#
~             #....I.....#
~             #..........#
~             #....I.....#
~             #..........#
~             ##########+#
~                      #.###
~                      #..a#
~                      #...#

And yeah, it works to the point where the underground river is an overcomplicated joke. The channel is always full of water, even in midwinter, so any time I pull that switch the field floods. No waiting for an overflowing underwater river or anything like it.

edit: Man, screwed up /code. Imagine the floodgate just inside the mountain wall instead of sixty feet inside it and you have a better idea of what it looks like.

re-edit: I give up. Quote it to see how I originally formatted it.

[ August 15, 2006: Message edited by: Dehydration ]

toad: code tag reformat

[ August 17, 2006: Message edited by: Toady One ]

[Zereth]

quote:Originally posted by Dehydration:
<STRONG>
And yeah, it works to the point where the underground river is an overcomplicated joke. The channel is always full of water, even in midwinter</STRONG>

Oh yeah. I remember now, I think the latest game, when I conencted the channel to the compeltely frozen river, it immedeatly filled with water. That's a bug, if nothing else involved in this is.

[Dehydration]

quote:Originally posted by Zereth:
<STRONG>
Oh yeah. I remember now, I think the latest game, when I conencted the channel to the compeltely frozen river, it immedeatly filled with water. That's a bug, if nothing else involved in this is.</STRONG>

Well, frozen solid and ice on top are two different things and it's unlikely you'd find a completely frozen river outside some really cold climates. On the other hand, even if you dug the channel deep enough to access that water it would promptly freeze over as well.

Which leaves open the question of whether there'd be enough motion in the bottom layer of water to prevent freezing. Hm.

[Sankis]

Water, when released into a cave from a floodgate, will also spread forever unless the floodgate is closed. Here, for example, I channeled the water into my cave from an outside river (Please don't remove this feature, just balance it a bit. Maybe allow outdoor farming if you do remove it since finding cave rivers is a huge hassle and risk).

Here is a before picture for comparison:

[Solara]

As cool as the cave river is, I never understood why the dwarves couldn't do more with the regular one. I'm sure they've got some plants specially adapted to growing underground, but if they didn't mind risking getting shredded by the animals why can't they grow a few crops above ground? (perhaps very poorly since it's not really what they're used to, and harsh weather and pests could ruin a harvest, but it should still be possible to try.)

If it's eventually going to be possible to play as humans, some kind of regular farming will have to be implemented anyway. (Elves might have hanging gardens or orchards or whatever, but humans at least will probably stick with boring ordinary fields...)

[frumiousj]

Because they're dwarves, not humans. Call me crazy, but I want to see the dwarves able to completely ignore the world above if they want (make buckets and beds craftable from stone, for instance).

[Solara]

Yeah, but just because they prefer to live completely underground doesn't mean it should be physically impossible to do otherwise.

Humans in real life have lived underground, even built underground cities - not an ideal situation, but anything's possible when you're desperate.

[ August 16, 2006: Message edited by: Solara ]

[Dehydration]

Man. The outside-river method causes huge problems. I have twenty or so dwarves set to farm the fields and I still can't get the entire thing planted before one side is ready to harvest.

 

[Oboro]

I wasn't aware this is unintended, so I've been using it in every fort of mine so far-- I do also make interior farming chambers, though, so I'm not a total cheat!

For the outdoor river channeling, I just create an entraceway into the side of the mountain 2 tiles deep, put a floodgate in the interior tile, and put the end of the channel on the exterior tile.

Then I dig from north of that to create a room where I will be farming in, and separate it from the rest of my fort with two doors (because I believe in precautions!). Have a dwarf link a lever to the floodgate, flip it and flood the room (with the doors set to Forbidden), and then flip it again for the weather to recede. Repeat in the spring!

Also, it is true that the channel will take in an arbitrarily large amount of water. When I was done with my most recent fort of 54 dwarves, a very sizable fort stretching far beyond the far side of the underground river, I jammed both of my safety doors open and removed the rest from my fort.

Not only did every single room flood, but so did the entirety of the wilderness. Every living thing that was not on the very tip of the map drowned.

EDIT: Actually it seems like everything was dead to begin with, now that I started the file back up again. Well, at least it got rid of my dwarves!

[ August 16, 2006: Message edited by: Oboro ]