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[kefkakrazy]

Does flowing water exert any kind of force on creatures? I seem to remember watching a video of a dwarf struggling against a flow for a short time. If so, this opens up a possibility: having a section rigged so that creatures can enter freely, but powerful water flows push them onto traps. I can try to diagram it...


---------[X][X]------
|^                          ^|
|^                          ^|
|^                          ^|
|^                          ^|
|^                          ^|
_________##_________

Something like that, where [X] means floodgate (presumably with an unlimited supply of water behind it), ^ are ramps, and the # marks are grates. There'd be weapon traps clustered along the lower half, and whenever an invasion steps up, the floodgates would be opened.

Would the goblins try wading through the water? Could they be trapped into this area and forced to wade through the water? I'm going to build it myself and find out how viable it is (I'm playing a fortress right now designed entirely to test water deathtraps), but I need to know if flowing water does exert a push before I want to build this one.

[Dogman]

Why go through all that trouble to make what is essentially a drowning chamber, but not actually drown anything?

Edit: to answer your question, yes water does push things in the direction of its flow.

[kefkakrazy]

Various reasons.
Perhaps the mental image of a river of water entering my fortress and leaving as a river of blood has a certain appeal.

Mostly I just want to see if I can ^_^

[Fualkner]

Why go through all that trouble to make what is essentially a drowning chamber, but not actually drown anything?

Why do men climb mountains and go to space? It's pointless, deadly, and it's been done, but we still do it. This the nature of man.

I don't think flowing water pushes stuff yet, but I may be wrong. The gobbos will leave the water, however, so your idea works. Also, it's awful torture if they don't leave: Perpetual drowning FTW.

[Golgath]

Also, if you have a chasm or bottomless pit handy, as well as a water source that won't run out too quickly, you could just sweep them to their deaths.  No clothing, no cleanup of messy bloodstains, just a short period of screaming as they fall to their doom.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I had a chasm fort where the main entrance crossed the chasm twice.  I had water flowing on top of one of the bridges, and The Plan was that I would drop out the roof and drop 50 units of water on anything unlucky enough to be crossing at that time, washing them to their doom.  I never got to try it though.

(The big plus was I could use constructed floors rather than an actual Bridge. I liked the look a lot better, particularly in the tileset I was using. I did eventually figure out a way of making a constructed bridge destructible though.)

[Footkerchief]

Flowing water does push creatures/items BUT it's pretty quirky.  Essentially, creatures/objects in 7/7 water don't get pushed.  It's an unfortunate result of the way DF simulates fluids.

This tends to be a problem with continuous flows.  I recently tried to set up a trash canal that would wash all my refuse into a chasm, and it worked well at first, while the water was 4/7 or 5/7.  But once the canal filled up entirely, everything stopped moving.  Essentially, once a connected fluid volume is "full," water entering at one end just teleports to the other end, and nothing in the middle gets pushed.

So your best bet is probably brief surges of water, either one big surge or a pulse every few seconds.  Due to the long delay on floodgates, having a dwarf pull the floodgate lever repeatedly would probably produce a decent pulse effect.  Also, you'll want to make sure the storage tank is at least a couple z-levels high, to achieve explosive water pressure.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

You could automated pulses with a pressure plate, couldn't you? Floodgate on z-1, pressure plate on z-0, pump filling chamber from z+1. 

[Footkerchief]

Yeah, pressure plate automation is cool.  I just gave him the simplest suggestion so as not to turn him off on the whole idea

For anyone who's interested I just posted a suggestion thread with a possible solution to one of the flow pushing problems: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=25173.0

[i2amroy]

pressure plates are cool, but you would need to have a way that the entire thing can stop or start at the pull of a lever, or it would make the entire corridor unusable.

[Pilsu]

Use pumps and appropriately wide strips of space per pump if you want a continuous flow without 7/7 spaces

[kefkakrazy]

|               RESERVOIR                 |
__%_______________%_____________
  |%|                      |%|
   [X]                       

   |^|                      |^|
   

•                        

The screw pumps will be hooked into the pump arrangement filling the tower and will go constantly. As far as I can remember, a screw pump pumping into a completely enclosed area won't explode or anything, it'll just pump and move no water.

Opening the top set of floodgates will let water rush into the pulse chamber. As soon as 7/7 water hits the pressure plates, the bottom floodgates will open, unleashing the pulse, then close the gates, reloading.

Is this more or less accurate to what we're discussing? I haven't fooled with pressure plates much but since half of what this fortress is doing is Awesome Experiments, it seems like a good time.

Someone's mentioned something about it, but let me ask for clarification: Are goblins or dwarves stupid enough to path into the pulses, or will I have to wait until they actually get there to trigger the Wave Machine of Doom?

And yes, there is a chasm, so I may indeed wind up rigging a Dwarven Toilet (just pull the lever!) at some point.

[i2amroy]

Yes, dwarves and goblins are actually stupid enough to path into the pulses. You will get messages that they have canceled their task due to 'dangerous terrain' once they are actually caught in the path of the pulse.

P.S. this will only work with pulses, not a continuous stream of water deeper than 4/7.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

You want at least two z-levels of water in the reservoir to create high pressure (Fast-moving water.) I would construct it like this: The path between the reservoir and should be two tiles thick. Put floodgates in both tiles.  The gate close to the reservoir is hooked to the pressure plate and the exterior gate is hooked to a lever in a secure location. Have the reservoir be at least two z levels high (Z and Z+1).  There should be an always-on pump going into the chamber at the top. You may want more pumps for maximum pulse speed, but too many could result in rather a lot of water.  Place the pressure plate at Z+1 (or whatever the highest z-level is), and set it to 6/7.

The result should be that the trap 'readies' and opens the inner floodgate when it is full. The outer floodgate still blocks outflow until you desire the trap be activated. 

[kefkakrazy]

Well, my reservoir is going to be a massive water tower, from which I will feed the water traps of the entire fortress (via pumps, floor hatches and shafts, floodgates, etc). So water pressure will probably not be a problem, since I intend to try having something on the order of 7 z-levels of water in that thing.

I'm going to have to try out several different designs, I imagine. Well, I have time to try them out. And at least there's a chasm on the level-I can design a "flush" system to evacuate the water from the water tower and drain it into the chasm whenever I need to add taps to it, then refill it from the brook. And I won't have a problem with freezing, since it's a tropical map.

[EDIT: I see what you mean now. You're not talking about the water tower, you're talking about the pulse chamber, right?]
[EDIT 2: Fun. I just broke into a bottomless pit right where my entire wood industry was going to go. While this does mean a bit of a shift in my building direction, it also means I have another drain in case I need it.]
[EDIT 3: Owing to a mostly-nonintentional quirk in the way the siting for the water tower turned out, the bottomless pit I found underground is right below the site, which means I'm just going to dig a shaft straight down from there, cap it with a floor hatch, and have a simple emergency flush: open the floor hatch, close the floodgates on the feed, and water the bats.