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DF Gameplay Questions / Re: how much water pressure will a brook provide?
« on: March 09, 2010, 08:00:28 pm »
You've got a couple options. I'm going to assume you want 40 independent waterfalls running continuously.
The way brooks, streams, and rivers work is that one end of the water is open space (think of it as the mouth of the river) where the water just pours off the edge of the map. The other end (the head) is a cluster of "river source" tiles that are continuously refreshed to 7/7 by the game engine every frame. Thus, wider water features provide more water. To run 40 waterfalls with nothing but physics, you'd need what the embark map refers to as a "major river." They're huge, if you have Nanofortress, you can actually get a site with less than ten tiles of exposed dry land for your wagon to embark on. An ordinary river is still massive, and might keep all those waterfalls running full time if your engineering is efficient enough. A stream could be stretched to fill everywhere, but you might need to either have some running part-time or recycle some water. A brook only has four River Source tiles, and thus will require some degree of water recycling to keep 40 waterfalls running.
You're in luck, though. Right now, water wheels and pumps can easily be arranged into a perpetual motion machine. Set up such a device, feed it with enough water to keep every tile at 2/7 or higher at any given moment, and you'll have enough mist to keep your nobles quite happy. Check out the wiki for some excellent models to work with.
The Fun part is going to be arranging 40 such structures to all be fail-safe. Too much water pouring into your fortress will, as you have foreseen, convert several of your loyal dorfs into drowned rats.
The way brooks, streams, and rivers work is that one end of the water is open space (think of it as the mouth of the river) where the water just pours off the edge of the map. The other end (the head) is a cluster of "river source" tiles that are continuously refreshed to 7/7 by the game engine every frame. Thus, wider water features provide more water. To run 40 waterfalls with nothing but physics, you'd need what the embark map refers to as a "major river." They're huge, if you have Nanofortress, you can actually get a site with less than ten tiles of exposed dry land for your wagon to embark on. An ordinary river is still massive, and might keep all those waterfalls running full time if your engineering is efficient enough. A stream could be stretched to fill everywhere, but you might need to either have some running part-time or recycle some water. A brook only has four River Source tiles, and thus will require some degree of water recycling to keep 40 waterfalls running.
You're in luck, though. Right now, water wheels and pumps can easily be arranged into a perpetual motion machine. Set up such a device, feed it with enough water to keep every tile at 2/7 or higher at any given moment, and you'll have enough mist to keep your nobles quite happy. Check out the wiki for some excellent models to work with.
The Fun part is going to be arranging 40 such structures to all be fail-safe. Too much water pouring into your fortress will, as you have foreseen, convert several of your loyal dorfs into drowned rats.