Bay 12 Games Forum

nobles are a great way to keep dwarven justice a relevant part of the game.  Despite them being annoying, they do add some flavor.

sounds like you are playing 40d.  Make sure dwarves are allowed to go outside with the orders menu (o).  The traps could possibly be forbidden, but I doubt that.

I don't get it.

don't ever appoints a captain of the guard until you know how justice works.

I believe buckets with 9/10 water can still be used to 'give water.'  Also, because "fill water for cast" job is broken, its still possible to use partially full buckets to successfully apply casts.   Also keeping extra buckets mean you're less likely to run out of buckets while waiting for milk to be transfered to barrels.

I liek buckets.

Anyone have a picture of that walrus that loves his bucket?

Aquifers seem to be everywhere. People certainly complain about them often enough.

"Pipes" and pumps will let you put your shower anywhere.

when my shower is 20 levels below said aquifer, it really doesn't matter where I'm getting the water from, there's no way I'm going to bother pumping it all the way up just to drain it, and no way that I'm going to risk connecting my meeting hall shower to an infinite water supply.  Much better to have a completely self contained system that easily recycles water.  By "optimal"  I want a design that is small and minimizes the length of the path of the water while maintaining an even and constant flow of small amounts of water.

you can exploit this if you have two layers of aquifer even if they are flat.  Lets say in the top layer you dig a 3x1 trench that then fills with water to 7/7.  A single pump will empty it enough for a dwarf to stand and channel out the middle tile into the second layer.  Once that is done, you can turn off the pump, and all the water in the top will drain into that tiny hole you put into the second layer.  Then you can expand the top room, and the increased amount of water will still drain just the same.  This eliminates the need for pumps while you secure the top layer.  Once that is done, you can tackle the next layer.

to answer your question, if you channel into an aquifer layer, it will fill with water.  Nothing will drain unless you manage to dig into a second layer.  Or if the top layer of aquifer changes z levels, you can channel a hole in the lower layer (this will fill to 7/7), and water produced in the top layer can be directed into it, magically disappearing into the 7/7 water from the lower layer.

Hopefully this answered at least a part of your question.

Red circle shows diagonal bend.  Top leve has a lever to cut off the power supply.  It is off in the image.  Because more water is needed to keep flow in the upper level, the bottom is level is wider to hold more.  When it is on, before the bend is usually between 4-6 units deep, after the bend between 1-3.  water falls down intermittently, but there is a constant supply of mist.  I'm not sure if the mist cleans dwarves or if they need to actually get hit by the 1 unit block of water to get clean.

My current setup was sort of shoe-horned in, so its far from optimal.  Ideally I would put another pump on the other side, and then expand the main walkway to 3 tiles wide.  The top level has a larger-than-necessary U bend in it because of where I had to place the pump, I think it could be done much more simply by placing the pump(s) one tile south from the actual waterfall zone.  I'm considering building a new main dining hall now that my fortress is more mature, in which case I'd take what I've learned here and built wider and more efficient.  Aside from traffic jams in the 2-wide hallway and the occasional need to toggle the pond filling job on, this appears to be working just fine.

If I get a nicer setup built I'll post that as well.