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[rephikul]

I'm thinking about designing water powered conveyor belts for my new fort and i have questions.The idea is that the dwarves will pick up a caged animal from a remote   location, like the choke point and put it on the animal stockpile. Water   will then push the animal to the processing center, such as the   slaughter zone or taming center inside the fotress. This'd greatly   reduce the amount of time needed to haul animal around. I play on 7x7   embarks so edge traps are quite far away.

Here's the design, side view


     #####X##############X#
z  0 # ÷>GX^P          ^_X#
     # ################# ##
z -1 ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

_  Grate and the destination stockpile
G  Floodgate
^  Pressure plates
P  Starting stockpile (on the upward stair)
÷> Screw pump
X  Stairs
#  Wall
≈  Water


The idea is fairly simply, the endward side of the tunnel is restricted, thus to place item on the starting stockpile the hauler will have to go through the left pressure plate (twice), which activate the floodgate's repeater. Waterflow will then push the object toward the end of the tunnel. The pressure plate there will measure the water and when it reach a critical height like 6/7 or 7/7, will deactivate the repeater, closing the floodgate. After most of the excess water has drained, the object at the end of the tunnel can be picked up. Water speed and drainage can be controlled by stratergically placed pressure plates linked to hatches and extra pumps.

The questions being:

1) Does this work? It work
2) Are there any potential flaw in this design?
3) Ores are too small and fall through the grate into the reservoir. Stone are big enough so they are fine. Are there any grate type item that only allow water just in case?
4) dorfs dont like the idea of a bunches of stones stacking on each other and would try to destack them, usually involve carrying the stone back to the starting pile. Potential, untested solution: make the starting pile inaccessible if there are stuff on the end pile. Would this work?
5) dorfs cannot access the starting pile cause of 7/7 water. Potential, untested solution: ensure there's only 3/7 water with pressure plate. Would this work?
6) dorfs will pick up items on transit if they can access it ala 3/7 water. Potential, untested solution: Use a 2nd multi leveled pump, ensuring cages on transit inaccessible. This pump turn off when there's something at end point. Would this work?
None remains

[rephikul]

oops, double post

[BigJake]

Water pushing stuff is kinda...iffy.  There was a post that dealt with this a couple days ago, let me see if I can't dig it up.


edit:  I fail.  Wish I could actually help ya out but I don't remember the specifics enough to pontificate on them.

[o_O[WTFace]]

Only naturally flowing water will push things.  Pumps and pressure don't work, or at least they didn't in 40d. 

[rephikul]

okay i've made a new embark just to test this idea and it WORKED, at least with stones.

Issue 1 : Ores are too small and fall through the grate into the reservoir
Issue 2 : dorfs dont like the idea of a bunches of stones stacking on each other and would try to destack them, usually involve carrying the stone back to the starting pile. Potential, untested solution: make the starting pile inaccessible if there are stuff on the end pile
Issue 3 : dorfs cannot access the starting pile cause of 7/7 water. Potential, untested solution: ensure there's only 3/7 water with pressure plate.
Issue 4 : dorfs will pick up items on transit if they can access it ala 3/7 water. Potential, untested solution: Use a 2nd multi leveled pump, ensuring cages on transit inaccessible. This pump turn off when there's something at end point.

[BigJake]

7/7s are definitely something you want to avoid in the whole system.  They don't push a thing.

[WrathNail]

I hope you can get this to work, if only for !!SCIENCE!!

Though the idea of using multiple channels to move stuff around the map sounds a bit "awesome but impractical" to me, to be honest. From my own experience I'd say the way water moves items isn't very reliable.

[rephikul]

7/7s are definitely something you want to avoid in the whole system.  They don't push a thing.

Ah, guess i'd add some extra pressure-powered hatches midway to ensure flow

I hope you can get this to work, if only for !!SCIENCE!!

Though the idea of using multiple channels to move stuff around the map sounds a bit "awesome but impractical" to me, to be honest. From my own experience I'd say the way water moves items isn't very reliable.

It works and doesnt require multiple channels. I'd make an elaborate set up and post screenie later.

[Sphalerite]

There is (or was) a strange bug in which objects pushed by water would sometimes disappear from the map.  An object moved by water would have a chance of going into a strange limbo state in which it would still show up on the stock screen and would still be accessible to your dwarves, but would no longer appear on the map or interact with fluids passing through the tile where it was supposed to be located.  Once in this state that object would no longer be pushed by fluid, so if you were designing a long water conveyor you would be likely to end up with most of the objects getting stuck in limbo somewhere along the way and very few reaching the end.  It's possible that this bug has been fixed in the latest version, but I doubt it.

Back in my last great 40d fortress I built a working conveyor system based on a large number of retracting bridges.  It worked, but was slow and impractical and caused a massive FPS drain due to all the objects being repeatedly flung into the air.

Also:

Issue 1 : Ores are too small and fall through the grate into the reservoir

Objects don't fall through grates.  If an object on a grate vanished, it was probably the pushed into limbo bug.

Issue 2 : dorfs dont like the idea of a bunches of stones stacking on each other and would try to destack them, usually involve carrying the stone back to the starting pile. Potential, untested solution: make the starting pile inaccessible if there are stuff on the end pile

Dwarves don't mind at all the idea of a bunch of objects stacked in a single tile.  Ask anyone who's ever set up a quantum stockpile.  If dwarves were removing stones from the pile, it's because the stacked stones weren't in a stockpile, and there was free space in a stockpile somewhere else.

Issue 4 : dorfs will pick up items on transit if they can access it ala 3/7 water. Potential, untested solution: Use a 2nd multi leveled pump, ensuring cages on transit inaccessible. This pump turn off when there's something at end point.

Objects don't trigger pressure plates, so you will have to have the pump turn off manually - there's no way to automatically shut it off when the object has reached the end.

[rephikul]

There is (or was) a strange bug in which objects pushed by water would sometimes disappear from the map.  An object moved by water would have a chance of going into a strange limbo state in which it would still show up on the stock screen and would still be accessible to your dwarves, but would no longer appear on the map or interact with fluids passing through the tile where it was supposed to be located.  Once in this state that object would no longer be pushed by fluid, so if you were designing a long water conveyor you would be likely to end up with most of the objects getting stuck in limbo somewhere along the way and very few reaching the end.  It's possible that this bug has been fixed in the latest version, but I doubt it.

It's not fixed, my cage used for testing disappear very often in a 10 tiles long tunnel.

[lazylonelion]

There is (or was) a strange bug in which objects pushed by water would sometimes disappear from the map.  An object moved by water would have a chance of going into a strange limbo state

It's not fixed, my cage used for testing disappear very often in a 10 tiles long tunnel.

So, it's no use in much longer coveyors? I mean like 50 tiles?