you can use a pressure plate and some pumps to achieve the desired de-syncing
set up two pumps and a pressure plate like so:
# %> # z 0
# <% # z -1
####^# z -2
so that the pumps do not transfer power and can be operated independently
the plate should trigger on 0-1/7 water - it will trigger once built, and stay triggered until water gets on it.
link all the floodgates and a gear powering the bottom pump to the pressure plate.
link a gear powering the top pump to a lever and the gear linked to the plate to a second lever. Pull both levers to disconnect both pumps from power, and fill the side without the pressure plate with 7/7 water.
to use: queue two pull lever actions on the top pump, a dwarf will come, engage power for 9~10 steps and disengage power, which will move the 7/7 water to the pressure plate side, where it will fall and allow the plate to untrigger, which will take about 100 steps or so.
untriggering will turn on the lower pump, which will move the water back to the reservoir and cause the plate to trigger and turn off the lower pump.
why this works: when a plate untriggers, it sends a close signal and immediately is capable of triggering again. since the first thing that happens when it untriggers is pumping away the water, the triggering condition occurs only a step or two later, which causes the plate to send out a close and open signal one after the other. Since floodgates and bridges take 100 steps to react to open and close signals, and ignore any signal they receive during that delay, all open gates will begin to close and still be closing when the open signal is sent. as such, only the gates that were already closed will receive the open signal, and the states will swap.
you will need to use links to other levers (or stationed military dwarfs, since anything blocking will prevent a floodgate from closing) to set the initial open and close states for your floodgates.
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Topic: Linking stuff out of sync (Read 1560 times)