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[Joseph Miles]

As is, a waterwheel can power a pump that moves the water near it to make the waterwheel effectively power itself. Thus creating, perpetual energy. While I'm not saying this isn't useful,hell I LOVED this when creating an underwater fort, but it's unrealistic. A fix to perpetual energy would be nice, though probably difficult to code.

[Kholint]

What, other than just making the energy needed to move [ x ] amount of water more than the energy gained from moving [ x ] amount of water? :p

[Paul]

It is a bit silly, but I can't think of an easy way to make it work properly in the game. You'd have to either make water wheels generate power based on how much water goes past them (instead of a set amount) and have the pumps pump slow enough so that the water from one only generates 10 energy in the wheel. Or make some kind of "power" level for water which gets set by the source of it (# of pumpsx10 or x100 for river) and gives that much to water wheels going over it. Both ways would still allow for systems with multiple wheels in a row, though, unless you made them slow the water down as it went through them. All this would probably slow down the game from all the extra calculations, and just make people skip them for wind power.

I don't really think it's enough of a problem to worry about fixing. Even without the waterwheel perpetual energy thing it's easy enough to get near limitless energy just with windmills. You can even build a stack of windmills generating power. Or even underground windmills with a tiny hole to the surface. As long as the central tile is exposed they work fine.

I could see a reduction in power generated by them, though. Maybe cut it down to 40. That way it's still worth building a water wheel for the power (2 windmills) but a perpetual energy machine won't produce enough power to pipe it across the fort and still have some leftover. One fort I made such a powerful generator that I had axles going all over the place powering magma pumps, water pumps, and my mill. It still had a bunch left over... It only had 8 water wheels.

[Techhead]

Water doesn't flow in the middle, however, it only flows at the source of the body of water and at the drain.
Unless, of course, you make a long room with the water level designed to fluctuate between 3 and 5 using pressure plates and drains.

[Granite26]

Actually, that might make it easier.  You know the in, you know the 'out'.  Horizontal motion doesn't matter, only the lower potential of the water actually being lower matters.  If 3/7 water flows out to 3 1/7 squares, that's 2/49 dpus (dwarf power units).  One DPU is the energy generated by one unit (7/7) of water falling one z level.  It doesn't matter if the water doesn't actually go through the square.  Path is still calculated, so it touches the square.  It knows the water is touching that square.

I'm not making sense, I think.  I'll try later.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Make water wheels only produce power when water FALLS on them, this would both nerf the wheels (currently SUPPER easy to make and use) and more closely resemble the more common set up in which a small dam is built to raise up water levels to the point then can fall onto the wheel.  The type of wheel which simply sits in flowing water did exist and it would be nice to see it as an option (with much lower power production) but if we want to stop perpetual motion this seems the quickest solution.

[Idiom]

Slower acting water pumps to balance this?

[mainiac]

I keep thinking that the solution to perpetual motion lies in applying the bernoulli equations to track the energy of a given water stream.  It would be pretty easy to find the energies at the start and end of a stream, river, pipe, etc and find out if a flow is possible or not or at what point the water stops flowing or experiences cavitation or whatever.  The velocity could easily be solved for at every point of the flow based off of the cross section and the overall flowrate.  The velocity tells you how much power your water wheel or other turbine can provide and then that power (plus a loss) is subtracted from the stream as friction or minor loss.  It's as simple as that.

The biggest problem I see is that this completely does not fit into the current water system since it deals with water as a flow while the current system deals with it as a volume (you could say it's on another "dimension" entirely).  But it would offer a way to handle steady flow systems without needing to constantly track the flow of water, once your flow is set up, no more calculation is needed until it stops.  Thus, it would be a more efficient way to handle complex/large scale hydraulics.

[Idiom]

...or instead of having more calculations to lag with, we just nerf waterwheels and pumps.

[i2amroy]

I could see a reduction in power generated by them, though. Maybe cut it down to 40. That way it's still worth building a water wheel for the power (2 windmills) but a perpetual energy machine won't produce enough power to pipe it across the fort and still have some leftover. One fort I made such a powerful generator that I had axles going all over the place powering magma pumps, water pumps, and my mill. It still had a bunch left over... It only had 8 water wheels.

The problem with this idea is that with the right set up you can power like four waterwheels with one pump.

[BurnedToast]

I don't see what the problem is, really, other then the fact it's kind of silly to have perpetual motion machines. Windmills already generate infinite power and are not hard to build (easier then setting up a PMM imho).

People who don't care about such things can build PMMs, and people who think it's stupid can just not build them.

[Veroule]

I also do not see the point in trying to restrict this.  My current fortress has 3 towers setup.  2 of them are for bringing water up and around to my waterfall location.  The other is for pumping magma into my smelter resevoir and small obsidian creation chamber.  All 3 towers are linked by catwalks which are covered with gears and axles.  Then there are windmills placed above that.  The total power generation is nearly 3000, and my peak usage is about 900.  Most of that usage is just from all the gears and axles that form the power grid.

Another thing to note is that pumps powered mechanically already have a slower output then a pump powered by a dwarf.  A dwarf powered pump uses the dwarfs skill to determine how fast it is pumping, and this makes a legendary pump operator do pumping about 5 times faster then a mecanical power source.  I never really checked what skill the pumping rate are equal at, but the difference is obvious when you have a legendary turn that pump.

[i2amroy]

Another thing to note is that pumps powered mechanically already have a slower output then a pump powered by a dwarf.  A dwarf powered pump uses the dwarfs skill to determine how fast it is pumping, and this makes a legendary pump operator do pumping about 5 times faster then a mecanical power source.  I never really checked what skill the pumping rate are equal at, but the difference is obvious when you have a legendary turn that pump.

Wow, I never new that. Guess you learn something new every day.

[Granite26]

I don't see what the problem is, really, other then the fact it's kind of silly to have perpetual motion machines. Windmills already generate infinite power and are not hard to build (easier then setting up a PMM imho).

People who don't care about such things can build PMMs, and people who think it's stupid can just not build them.

I guess I'm of the 'do the best you can at the game as it exists' school, while also being of the 'the game should be pseudo realistic, so that the best you can do doesn't break suspension of disbelief' school

[Draco18s]

I could see a reduction in power generated by them, though. Maybe cut it down to 40. That way it's still worth building a water wheel for the power (2 windmills)

Windmills in some areas do produce 40 power.  No one's quite worked out why.

A windmill generates power under the following conditions:

   1. Its center tile is outside.
   2. The map has wind.
          * Some maps have strong wind (40 power per windmill), some have weak wind (20 power), and some have no wind at all.
   3. It is not connected to frozen machinery, such as a screw pump or water wheel in ice.