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[treczoks]

Fellow Dwarfherders!

I'm settling in on a nice second level cavern with a cozy vulcano, and I'm planning on a bit of Dwarven Engineering.

For that I need a little piece of information: If a lake in a cave goes off the edge of the map, will it somehow "re-level" if I take out or add water to it?

Both the first and the second cave level have lakes that go off the edge. So could I just draw water from the upper lake, pass it through a channel with gazillions of water wheels, and drop it off into the lower lake without getting into trouble?

Yours, Christian

[Rasputin]

As far as I am aware if it goes off screen you can treat it as infinite, it's level is unchangeable.

Sounds like it's waterfall time?

[sambojin]

I think you might be on to a winner on gazilions of free dwarfwatts of power. You'll get a little bit of water level movenent over a square or two or a hundred, but other than that..... Over parity plus, a nice world indeed

Ain't gravity and an infinite renewal of potential energy amazing?

At least it's kind of realistic (sort of, with infinite lakes. At least there's infinite leaks to put up with if you stuff it all up).

[treczoks]

I think you might be on to a winner on gazilions of free dwarfwatts of power.

Yepp, indeed.

I installed my first "engine room" with a two-wide channel featuring twelve wheels. I think twelve is a bit excessive, as I  only get about 700 to 800 DWs (minus 299 DW for gears and axles) out of it. Looks like there is not enough current flowing there, but it is still a plus.

The second installlment will contain four rooms in a row, each with eight wheels, and a ramp down and a depressuriser between the rooms. The flow so far looks promising, but I have not installed the wheels yet.

There is one problem I run into with my last fort, and would like to avoid here: In the last fort I built a set of Dwarven Water Reactors (DWR) to power my mills, but they would occasionally "drop out", unqueing all my milling jobs. I connected all the mechanics to average the problem out, and it prolonged the time it took to dequeue the jobs, but this still occasionally happened.

Are there proven designs on such systems, like "use a four wide channel instead of a two wide" or "use only three wheels in a row"?

yours, in the name of dwarven water and power engineering,
Christian

[FearfulJesuit]

A bit excessive? There is no such thing, dear boy. No such thing.

[i2amroy]

For the problems you had with the DWR's it might have just been a problem with air bubbles in your system. As a general rule if you set an active pond on the space that is being drawn from by a dwarven water reactor the dwarves should fill it all of the way up to 7/7 in every tile even though it can run at much less amounts of water. This also provides the benefit of you never needing to replace the water because it will never evaporate. That's the only real reason that I can think of for why you had the problems. For the waterfall there should technically be no limit to how big you can make it save for how fast the water in the upper level is replenished and how well your computer processor can use the frames to calculate the water and still get a useful FPS. I do suggest that you build in a floodgate system that can be used to stop the flow if necessary, since it is always best to have a backup in the event something goes wrong.

[treczoks]

For the problems you had with the DWR's it might have just been a problem with air bubbles in your system. As a general rule if you set an active pond on the space that is being drawn from by a dwarven water reactor the dwarves should fill it all of the way up to 7/7 in every tile even though it can run at much less amounts of water.

Well, I did not use a pond, I had a reservoir three z-levels high, with a depressurizer to keep it up to the brim.

This also provides the benefit of you never needing to replace the water because it will never evaporate. That's the only real reason that I can think of for why you had the problems.

I don't know. Despite keeping the DWR filled to 7/7, it still generated some mist, but I don't know whether this counts as evaporation.

For the waterfall there should technically be no limit to how big you can make it save for how fast the water in the upper level is replenished and how well your computer processor can use the frames to calculate the water and still get a useful FPS. I do suggest that you build in a floodgate system that can be used to stop the flow if necessary, since it is always best to have a backup in the event something goes wrong.

It's not about producing a waterfall. It's about producing Dwarf Watts with water wheels. For a WW to produce energy, it needs a difference in water levels. With a long, narrow channel it might happen, that one or more WWs happen NOT to have this difference - maybe just for a split second - and when the total power drops below zero just for this split second, then all queued milling jobs are de-queued spontaneously.

MY question was whether someone has experience with the water flow model and can tell, if a wider channel is less prone to these "hickkups" than a narrow channel, and how long such a channel should be at most to give an optimum of output, as continously and consistent as possible.

The use of floodgates is so self-evident as the use of fortifications and was therefor not mentioned in my post.

[Ibid Straydrink]

Good luck with your fortress. Last time I tried to settle a cavern, a giant glass man with wings swam through an underwater tunnel and flew up the magma pipe into the center of the industrial sector. 

[treczoks]

Good luck with your fortress. Last time I tried to settle a cavern, a giant glass man with wings swam through an underwater tunnel and flew up the magma pipe into the center of the industrial sector. 

The "internal" part of that cave is walled off from the "external" part. Steel grates protect the water intake, and the output flows through fortifications.

I'm not sure (i.e. have not tried yet) if I can cover the holes in the floor over the vulcano with a grate and still build a magma smelter or forge over it.

And if they still come through, I'll put them on the refules pile, to the others.

[Ibid Straydrink]

Good luck with your fortress. Last time I tried to settle a cavern, a giant glass man with wings swam through an underwater tunnel and flew up the magma pipe into the center of the industrial sector. 

The "internal" part of that cave is walled off from the "external" part. Steel grates protect the water intake, and the output flows through fortifications.

I'm not sure (i.e. have not tried yet) if I can cover the holes in the floor over the vulcano with a grate and still build a magma smelter or forge over it.

And if they still come through, I'll put them on the refules pile, to the others.

Not much that is bad and evil to worry about from the magma itself, but if the crater below opens into the cavern at all, hop to it!

By the way, I believe that magma-dwelling creatures can come up under the forges.

[Starver]

There's two different patterns to the magma workshops.  The Forge has (IIRC) left-middle and right-middle squares as "building tiles", impassible along both Z and intra-Z movement, the others (kiln, glass furnace, smelter) have the top-central square likewise.

If you make your obligatory "channel over the magma" square equivalent to these squares (the top-central one for most of them, one and/or the other side-tiles in the case of the forge) and no others, the building itself should be sufficient to block ingress of anything that would otherwise bother you.

I double this up with specifically-channelled magmaducts driven in the layer below the workshop area to supply the workshops on the level above and access the magma pipe (or, occasionally, magma sea itself) from the side, with a diagonal connection to the magma-source dug (actually, fortification-linked, by a stone-smoother).  Once I've set up a floodgate.  When the floodgate has been opened, the fortification link made and the magma channel is finally full (with no pesky 6/7ths running around it), I close the floodgate and have no cares in the world about any further incursions.  Nor of accidentally depleting my magma-source and deactivating the workshops relying on the magma, because they still have their duct's-worth of it keeping them powered.

But there are other ways of doing it.

[khearn]

Regarding waterwheels in a channel, I've got a similar setup in my current fort. Only I'm not using two lakes, I'm using streams on two levels (There is a natural waterfall from one down to the other).

I originally had my tunnel tap into the top stream, go down a couple levels of ramps, through a depressurizer, and then into a long channel and finally out a fortification carved in the cliff side and fall to the lower stream. But I found the flow through the depressurizer was too slow and the last third of my channel never got deep enough for waterwheels to work. So I removed the depressurizer and crossed my fingers, hoping the water wouldn't overflow. I had floodgates in place to shut it off if it did, but I didn't need them. Since it has an exit on its own level, it doesn't rise up and flood the waterwheel room.

My channel is only one tile wide. So far I've got a dozen waterwheels set up, which should be more than enough to power my magma stack, if I can ever get it finished. I've got no sand or iron ore on my map, so building magma safe corkscrews relies on importing materials.

I do notice that the flow in the stream below where I tap into it is reduced. The water used to be 7/7 deep right up until a few tiles before the falls, but now it gets shallow quite a bit earlier. It's only 1/7 or 2/7 for 10-15 tiles above the falls. I think if I had a wider channel for the waterwheels, I'd either have too little flow to maintain deep enough water, or else I'd drain so much from the stream that it would just become a trickle.