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[Fishbreath]

Oh my. After my first fortress worked out pretty well (it's going strong eight years in, doesn't seem particularly likely to fall to any sieges, and has no other real challenges besides building impressive things), I've moved on to a second--which, as you may have gathered, has the three things in the topic. I've got a few questions, though, for clarification on how exactly things work.

My location has a small brook waterfall (drop of 1 z-level). The muddy brook at the other end is underground. Would this little section be my underground river?

There's that issue with pressure for waterfalls. Look at the diagram below and tell me if I've got things right:

Code: [Select]

####### <--Level 1
  #   # <--Level 2
###~~~# <--Level 3
####### <--Level 4
#s are land, ~s are water. Level 1 is ground level, where the open space above the original brook is. Level 2 is the open space above the underground brook and 7/7 of the original brook. There's also a tunnel nearly into the open space of the underground brook. Level 3 is 7/7 of the underground brook. Level 4 is just rock.

If I open the tunnel on level 2 to the brook, will it flood? (I think the answer here is no).
If I channel from level 2 down to level 3 to access the brook, with the tunnel on level 2 flood? (I think the answer here is yes).
Can I tap into the above ground brook, drop the water down a level into my fortress (from level 1 to level 2) and then route it so that it dumps into the brook at level 2 (via tunnel?)

If I do this:

Code: [Select]

######## <--Level 1
  xx   # <--Level 2
  ##~~~# <--Level 3
######## <--Level 4
with the X's being a pump and the empty space in level 3 being a channel, will the tunnel at level 2 flood? (I think the answer is yes)

Would it be easier just to build a waterway and dump the water into my chasm? Will flying nasties be able to get into the fortress that way?

My magma question is a lot simpler. Fire snakes spawn in magma biomes. Does that mean the original magma pipe area only, or anywhere I route the magma?

[Beanchubbs]

Anywhere magma can reach that isn't filtered (i.e. fortifications, anything liquids can go through but creatures can't) Magma monsters will get there. The dwarvernly solution to your waterfall problem: Destroy the source of the water.

[Fishbreath]

Destroying/rerouting the river is certainly one possibility, but it would also remove my source of moving water--which I'd like to have.

Plus I'd like to know just for the sake of saying I have a better understanding of water physics than I did before. >.>

[Razin]

Fire-snake vermin only show up near the pipe itself and stay pretty near it.  So as long as you don't store anything flammable near the actual pipe, you shouldn't worry about it.  Imps and the like will sometimes swim through your magma tunnels, but you can keep those out with either filters of some kind or just a really long tunnel.

I'm bad at visualizing with forum-symbol art, so I can't help with pressure questions without screenshots, but the brook shouldn't count as the underground river, at least for tower cap growth.  When you find the real one, it'll pause the game and give you an announcement to that effect.

[Granite26]

I currently have an underground river that runs 10 squares befor dumping off the bottom of the map...  It's a 5x10 square on one level, and 4 5x5 round 'falling off the map' levels.

Good luck finding it

[Fishbreath]

In case it wasn't clear, the character art is cross-sectional, not top-down.

When I get home I'll just experiment, I guess, and see what happens.

[Razin]

This is the (entire!) river on the map I'm currently playing.  It's 13 levels down, and looks like this:

If I do this:
Code: [Select]
######## <--Level 1
  xx   # <--Level 2
  ##~~~# <--Level 3
######## <--Level 4
with the X's being a pump and the empty space in level 3 being a channel, will the tunnel at level 2 flood? (I think the answer is yes)

I'm still not sure about the first diagram, but yes, the pump will fill the tunnel at level 2 once it fills the channel at level 3.

[Martin]

Fire-snake vermin only show up near the pipe itself and stay pretty near it.

I believe they show up anywhere in the 48x48 embark tile that contains the pipe. In most situations that really doesn't give them a whole lot of space anyway.

[dresdor]

The only dwarvy thing to do is build an aquaduct at the level the water is before it falls down the waterfall and use it to channel it off the map.  Bonus points if you can use it for another purpose.

The *Really* dwarvy thing to do is to make said aquaduct loop all around the entire map greatly expanding the amount of running water and killing your FPS....and also increasing the risk of a catastrophic failure (which is, of course, the best kind).

[Fishbreath]

The only dwarvy thing to do is pump the water up to 5 or 10 z-levels above ground, and /then/ make an aqueduct.

As for my first question, about channeling from the bottom of a waterfall, the information on Dwarffortresswiki seems inaccurate (or at least misleading):

Water at the bottom keeps the pressure of the water at the top of the waterfall. Even water far away from the waterfall has the pressure of the first z-level of the waterfall. Channels dug after a waterfall will overflow.

The channel dug after my waterfall is not overflowing. Granted, said waterfall only drops one z-level, and the water source is a brook, but still.

[atomfullerene]

I've got one of those tiny little underground rivers in my current map too.  It just appears out of nowhere, which I think is really odd.  I got to wondering though...what happens if you dig out all around the origin tiles?  Can you get water appearing in mid-air in a cavern several z levels tall?  I haven't got the digging and water movement skills to do this, but I'd be really interested to find out. 

[Maw]

I've got one of those tiny little underground rivers in my current map too.  It just appears out of nowhere, which I think is really odd.  I got to wondering though...what happens if you dig out all around the origin tiles?  Can you get water appearing in mid-air in a cavern several z levels tall?  I haven't got the digging and water movement skills to do this, but I'd be really interested to find out. 

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=37861.0

May help answer your questions on the origin tiles.   Basically, if you dig around the tiles, they will drop (collapse) down to the next solid surface layer (just like a normal collapse).  The tiles will continue to produce water at their new location.  If you drop a natural floor or natural wall on top of those tiles, you will instead destroy the source tile - no more water.

[Fishbreath]

Looking at this again, it turns out that my waterfall is not, in fact, a waterfall:

There are no tiles called 'waterfall', nor is there any generated mist. However, the water does decrease in z-level.

I'm kinda confused at this point.

[Granite26]

This is the (entire!) river on the map I'm currently playing.  It's 13 levels down, and looks like this:

I wonder if this is a bug... I also wonder if Toady knows about it.  All the new UD stuff would make this interesting... Hundreds of 5x5 features!!!