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[Draco18s]

I embarked on a desert once.

It had an aquifer 3 levels down.

[Pilsu]

Having pits that expose aquifers could simulate Oases, in theory. Doesn't deal with the problem with the lack of flora in itself though

I think aquifers were gonna get reworked into something more common and less destructive anyway

[Granite26]

Having pits that expose aquifers could simulate Oases, in theory. Doesn't deal with the problem with the lack of flora in itself though

I think aquifers were gonna get reworked into something more common and less destructive anyway

It'd be cool if all/most exposed water got reworked as exposed aquifers

[Sowelu]

In temperate regions, lakes aren't exposed aquifers though, at least not a lot of the time.

Agreed though on 'acquiring' water from off-map...Ever carried a couple gallons of water?  Ever carried them for ten miles?  Even if you're wearing a Camelback, it's heavy and you're not carrying very much.

Aqueducts work, but they only go so far.  They're huuuge undertakings to create, which admittedly is Fun--but that's a lot of stone even for dwarves, as well as metal plating, and how far from a river are you going anyway?  Aqueducts rarely went very far.  Channels are a total non-starter unless they were metal plated, IE big pipes, which might actually be pretty cool...underground aqueduct.  And for wells...  A lot of deserts don't HAVE a water table, or at least not a very big one.  They're surprisingly easy to exhaust.

...

Okay, given enough metal, I would *totally* buy dwarves transporting water from off-map with pipes or half-pipes.  Because why do it above ground when you can do it underground, where it won't evaporate as fast?

[Aspgren]

How about desert-specific water merchants?

Protecting your friends from the goblin hordes has never been this important! If a caravan and an ambush arrive at the same time today the caravan might be scared away and won't come back next year out of fear.
 If that happens to the water merchants ... itwould be catastrophical.

The goblins could use this as a tactic as well. Hit you where it hurts: in the water pouch.

[Neonivek]

you can already do C. just build a huge tower around a murky pool, and station a bridge on top. open the bridge when it rains, and close it when it doesn't, so your water doesn't evaporate.

Ehh needs to be a better solution then that. Though that is interesting.

Why?  People Live in the desert today because we've basically redug rivers (pipes) to flow into them and controlled access to the rivers.

They SHOULD be a wasteland, void of dwarven life.  Not every spot has to be a place to plop down a fort.  Especially with the army arc (places to fight, or terrain to avoid/cross) coming.  (IMO, of course...)

Yeah but there are a lot of Desert cities and nations that were largely successful due to their ability to get water among other things. (Such as Egypt or pretty much the whole Middle East at one point)

Though I guess it depends on what we consider a desert... I mean there is a reason why we have the term "Barren Desert" and why it isn't considered redundant.

[The-Moon]

(Im responding the the original post btw )

Well, once water becomes more needed then it is, i would like to see it so that you can import / trade for water.

When toady gets more into things, you can start up a "Settlement" in a desert, mainly for the purpose of mining the raw resources.

Maybe it being some kind of minor side quest / mission thing, where you can goto a desert and mine as much as you can and survive as long as you can from trading back to your mountain home as much ore / metal / gems / resources as you can.

The longer you survive, the more you export home, the more your dwarf race grows and becomes more powerful.

Once wars are established, going to the desert as a mission to obtain resources, would make your race more powerful and able to take over goblin settlements / city's and such, or just build bigger armys to defend your city's / settlements.

The deserts would be mini settlements, only being able to support 20 - 30 people, with its own government structure, never having a economy.

This would of course only be for "Deserts" sand deserts or barren deserts, or even tundra. Any place where you wouldn't normally have a thriving settlement with a full economy.

This is what would like to see toady do in the future

[Yourself]

Yeah but there are a lot of Desert cities and nations that were largely successful due to their ability to get water among other things.

Weren't most of them situated adjacent to some large river?

[Neonivek]

Yeah but there are a lot of Desert cities and nations that were largely successful due to their ability to get water among other things.

Weren't most of them situated adjacent to some large river?

Most Id accept (I am too lazy to look at every Middle Eastern City in a desert Biome that was thriving at one point...), though it wasn't ENTIRELY because it is easier to to get water.

It is also because Sand in general tends to either be too rich in nutriance (being toxic) and unable to retain moisture.

But Still, Some is more then None.

So it shouldn't be impossible to have a mighty desert city away from a river. It should just be a lot of work!

[Flashzom]

I don't see what the fuss is about the deathstills. I see no reason why they wouldn't be implemented, all things considered. Extracting water would be a fairly primitive process that simply involved putting them in a steel basin with a conical glass hood on top and boiling the blood and moisture of out the corpse a few times over, filtering it perhaps with a cloth of some sort. I see no reason why the dwarves would be unable to drain corpses of water.

[Faces of Mu]

Eh, created a new thread for my comment!

[scale_e]

(Im responding the the original post btw )

When toady gets more into things, you can start up a "Settlement" in a desert, mainly for the purpose of mining the raw resources.
Maybe it being some kind of minor side quest / mission thing, where you can goto a desert and mine as much as you can and survive as long as you can from trading back to your mountain home as much ore / metal / gems / resources as you can.
The longer you survive, the more you export home, the more your dwarf race grows and becomes more powerful.
Once wars are established, going to the desert as a mission to obtain resources, would make your race more powerful and able to take over goblin settlements / city's and such, or just build bigger armys to defend your city's / settlements.
The deserts would be mini settlements, only being able to support 20 - 30 people, with its own government structure, never having a economy.

My thoughts exactly.
Dwarves like mining, and acquiring precious things from underground. If there was a totally barren, inhospitable desert... that happened to have a gigantic slab of gold underneath it. Do you think that would stop dwarves migrating there? Hells no. They'd be all over it like... something that, is covered in... something... ...i'm not too good with words, but you get the idea. Would they bugger off and not return when they had mined it out? Probably. But until then, keeping them alive, keeping the flow of gold going, that would be an entertaining game.

And yes, I know, you aren't going to find a gigantic slab of gold underneath a sandy desert, geologically speaking. It was just an example, but you know what I'm getting at.

I don't see what the fuss is about the deathstills. I see no reason why they wouldn't be implemented, all things considered. Extracting water would be a fairly primitive process that simply involved putting them in a steel basin with a conical glass hood on top and boiling the blood and moisture of out the corpse a few times over, filtering it perhaps with a cloth of some sort. I see no reason why the dwarves would be unable to drain corpses of water.

Thanks.

Not within the sacred pre-1400 time frame...

eh? is that in the pre butlerian novels written by herberts kid or something? I've only read the first 4 books, and the three Prelude to Dunes

No, I am referring to dwarf fortress, only things that existed prior to 1400 ad are allowed in it.  Suggesting things that were created after that usually results in harsh criticism around here.

Since dune technology if memory serves me correct is roughly 3600AD tech (after a war with computer controlled machines caused humans to reject all computers) I doubt it will fly.

Is the rule that strict, or is it only a jihad against technology that looks like it came after that period. I mean, hell, I could see this sort of thing happening in pre-1400. The technology itself isn't that complicated. Hell, making alcohol is way more complicated than boiling some dead dwarf bodies... or unconscious goblin ones...

[TheMirth]

Making alcohol is pretty damn simple, making it palatable is the art. Irrigating the desert is fairly difficult without a nearby watersource. It's not as if you could really imagine dwarfs or much of anyone surviving in the Sahara without working around an oasis or river.

I could see it as a temporary mission region though. As for a willingness to boil the moisture out of living things, that sounds like an entity tag [ETHIC:EATDRINK_SAPIENT_OTHER:ACCEPTABLE]

[Pilsu]

Drinking only blood would probably give you iron poisoning. Then there's the question how did the enemies make it all the way to your hole in the ground without any supplies

There's just so many leaks in this plan I don't even know where to begin. Any real desert settlement would invariably be based around an oasis. Just add those into the game and deserts aren't a total waste

[Granite26]

Drinking only blood would probably give you iron poisoning. Then there's the question how did the enemies make it all the way to your hole in the ground without any supplies

There's just so many leaks in this plan I don't even know where to begin. Any real desert settlement would invariably be based around an oasis. Just add those into the game and deserts aren't a total waste

Reclaimers and hauling water through the desert are negative sum games.  A donkey drinks 1 gallon per day, travels 30 miles per day, and can haul 30 gallons worth of weight.  For 20 dwarves (drink 1 gallon per day, reclaim half) living 300 miles into the desert, it would take one donkey every single day to bring enough in, and that's not counting profit or the drivers or anything.

Crude reclaimers could get what, 5 gallons of water from a human (on the high end).  (Reclaimers always seemed like a violation of conservation of matter to me.  In order for it to work, the water lost to evaporation (sweat, plants) has to be regained somehow.  It's like putting a bandage on a splinter when you've got a gunshot wound

The original argument was 'if we make booze require water, and plants require water, nothing could survive in the desert'.  Nothing is stopping people from being clever (carving out underground rivers, for example), but I don't think we should go out of our why to make it possible for non-clever people.  There's a plate of gold?  I'm sure they'll find a way to get water there, but that doesn't mean that we have to magically warp the world to make some special case work.

Hell, people are already building cross world aqueducts...