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[Random832]

A rain event that happens maybe once or twice a year, and coats the entire map with a partial layer (say, 2/7 - or could be 1/7 if only 1/7 water would flow properly) of water. Any open surface tunnel into your fort would be at risk to act as a drain and drain the floodwaters into your fortress.

[winner]

frame rate would be my only objection.

[Warlord255]

Seconded on the framerate, it's the instant killjoy for (realistic) disasters of any kind.

Lightning strikes would be a good way to simulate thunderstorms, as would wind effects.

[Golgath]

I love the idea.  However, what it would do to my FPS makes me cringe in the inside.  But I'd still go for it.

[Thuellai]

For (slightly) less FPS killing, how about it just elevates your rivers up a level, so that they slowly flood the surface with water, but they don't last very long unless you're in a super-wet area?

[Sowelu]

Yes!!  A return to seasonal floods!

I like the idea of covering the map with 2/7 water, but one problem is that there are very few contours on most maps.  I mean sure there's hills, but within a valley, there's no way to focus all that water into one rivulet down the middle like it should work.  It SHOULD flow downhill, towards existing rivers and streams, but I don't see how that could possibly work--elevations are not finely grained enough.

[snelg]

For (slightly) less FPS killing, how about it just elevates your rivers up a level, so that they slowly flood the surface with water, but they don't last very long unless you're in a super-wet area?

Don't water kind of dissapear when it touches a river or brook or something like that?

[Jisaan]

If this was implemented, I'd want a change to how 1/7 water covers objects, or the rate at which it evaporates, or the ability for dwarves to clean it. My current map STILL has large, totally featureless areas where I had to drain my perpetual motion machine some odd years ago, not to mention the roof of one building which has been made indistinguishable by an unfortunate pumping accident. I might abandon a fortress out of pure disgust if I had to look at a map that was completely covered in water all year round because the puddles wouldn't evaporate before another storm.

And I'm pretty sure it would solidify any lava that was open to the air... Which would create interesting results. I imagine there would be lots of disasters where a block of obsidian formed without support in a large magma channel, causing a collapse that punched through every level of a fortress, flooding it with magma.

While this would be fun, there would be far more occurrences of a magma feature simply getting clogged up by the stone, requiring it to be dug out again, which would be a pain. Magma moats would be effectively useless, and magma pipes would slowly form an obsidian cap, after being cleared of imps by tons upon tons of obsidian collapsing inward when the water didn't land at the edges. Not to mention the constant collapse alert spam.

Though to be fair, this would lead to some interesting technical details when it comes to magma features, such as roofs to protect against falling rain, and channels to direct flowing water away from them. It would also limit what could be done with magma however.

Also, this would effectively irrigate every tile on the map in a single storm... Which is hardly realistic. That would need to be changed as well, or muddied stone tiles would have to be changed to only support a certain number of crops before they had to be irrigated again.

All these things considered, I'd rather we just had seasonal floods that originated from rivers. The storms can happen offscreen. Or you could have the floods correspond with the storms we already have onscreen. I believe I remember hearing somewhere of a megaproject that could create a similar effect to what you're suggesting, however. Something about building a huge cistern in the sky with a bunch of randomly opening floor hatches.

[Random832]

If this was implemented, I'd want a change to how 1/7 water covers objects, or the rate at which it evaporates, or the ability for dwarves to clean it.

Absolutely - it should seep into the ground (depending on the biome's drainage) - and it could also seep _out of_ and weaken [improved cave-in system] soil ceilings; it should flow towards lower elevations and ultimately towards the river or aquifer, and water above 1/7 should still evaporate eventually.

[Footkerchief]

I like this idea a lot but yeah, covering the map with 2/7 water wouldn't work.  How about a shortcut where the game detects likely local drainage areas and fills them with water directly?  Maybe it could use a scaled-down version of Toady's river creation algorithm.

[Random832]

I like this idea a lot but yeah, covering the map with 2/7 water wouldn't work.  How about a shortcut where the game detects likely local drainage areas and fills them with water directly?  Maybe it could use a scaled-down version of Toady's river creation algorithm.

The key is "it gets into your fortress", anything beyond that is just visual niceness really. (having it seep in through soil ceilings / weaken soil ceilings once improved caveins are in would be a bonus too)

[vooood]

Seconded on the framerate, it's the instant killjoy for (realistic) disasters of any kind.

Lightning strikes would be a good way to simulate thunderstorms, as would wind effects.

This is a good idea and could be some real fun. Maybe not having a rain that will cause flooding of the complete map but that will temporary flood the river (making it a bit larger and thus dangerous if terrain is bad)?

[Dakira]

I have one thing to add along with this.

Muddy terrain. All it takes in 1/7 of water to make a space muddy for the rest of eternity.

I like this idea of having floods and/or torrential rains, but I think the mud needs to be addressed before this gets implemented. Otherwise your beautiful green forest has become mud brown.