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[muldrake]

Is there actually a coherent explanation of how fluids work in this game?

I recently dug a 130 layer conduit to redirect a surface river down to the layer slightly above HFS so the dwarves living there can have wells both for worship and hospital purposes, and also maybe to create obsidian (though I don't know why I'd even want that).  Also, I just want to wet the ground in part of the place so I can establish farming and the entire area can be self-sufficient (and exist on its own if the rest of the fort gets destroyed).

However, the water doesn't seem to be doing what water would actually do.   It shows up at the bottom, but often just moves forward a bit, then backwards a bit.  Plus the wells from the same source (just a level below the surface) seem to go dry from time to time.  Is this evaporation?  What is even going on?

I think my solution is going to be just draining one of the cavern lakes directly into my (two levels high) reservoir.  That will probably last until I manage to destroy my fortress somehow, but I'm wondering what's going on?  How can directing a river downwards result in only a tiny trickle of water at the bottom?

[Pirate Santa]

How wide is your pipeline? A narrower pipe will result in less ground to cover and therefore a stronger flow. Water can evaporate at depths of 1/7th. The trick is to fill it fast enough that it doesn't stay at that level for too long. See this page of the wiki.

Farms are pretty simple, just hook up a door/floodgate/drawbridge to a lever, open it to let water out, close it once every square of the farm has been splashed. 1/7th is sufficient to leave mud.

Also I'm hoping you already know about water pressure.

[muldrake]

How wide is your pipeline? A narrower pipe will result in less ground to cover and therefore a stronger flow. Water can evaporate at depths of 1/7th. The trick is to fill it fast enough that it doesn't stay at that level for too long. See this page of the wiki.

Farms are pretty simple, just hook up a door/floodgate/drawbridge to a lever, open it to let water out, close it once every square of the farm has been splashed. 1/7th is sufficient to leave mud.

Also I'm hoping you already know about water pressure.

Yes.  I just don't have actual numbers on these things.  I think I'm going to open a wider pipeline because I'm pretty sure I have to be getting evaporation for this result to happen.  It's a ridiculously long pipeline made even longer by the fact that I discovered two previously unknown sections of cavern along the way and had to reroute around them.  And most of it is 1/7 or 2/7, ensuring evaporation.

The farm part of it is probably going to finish in a month or two, but the 2 z-layer deep reservoir, so far as I can tell, is never going to fill at this rate.  (It's fed from the bottom, but so long as there is water pressure, it should fill up.  The issue isn't water pressure so much as there is just not enough water coming.)

I'd like to get it filled eventually because I've built a well there out of solid gold with an artifact adamantine chain and a masterpiece oak bucket.  Plus the legendary craftsmen and metalsmiths down there are universally complaining of no place to worship Cumberbatch Bandersnatch or whatever.

[Dorsidwarf]

Try putting doors in the channel and linking to levers. That way you can build up "pulses" of water and fill it stage by stage.

[taptap]

Horizontal pipelines don't work well (unless 7/7 and working by water teleportation, but this requires careful design everywhere else to avoid flooding). I build "pressurised" plumbing, water source on top, aquifer is most convenient, followed by a reservoir directly below and the main plumbing is almost exclusively vertical (stairs are fine for building it and occasional maintenance, don't forget emergency shutoff/drain during installation), for wells I access it diagonally on the top level of the well reservoir. Everything taken out of the well is instantly filled up, but no flooding can happen (that you access your plumbing only in the diagonal is crucial, otherwise you flood your fort or at least the room with the well bottom up through the well). If you have horizontal distance to cover either do it between water source and top reservoir or on the z-level you access your main pipe - just keep the main pipe vertical.



Picture shows top reservoir level. (Reservoir is 2 or 3 level so water is fresh.) Above it is a level of air I believe, then the well. Details don't matter that much and it can flow certain distances in a small pipe horizontally, just do not link up a 100 tile horizontal roundabout.

[Virex]

How big is your imput flow? If you're trying to squeeze the entire river through a one-tile wide entrance to the plumbing, it's no wonder that you're not getting a decent flow. That would be like expecting a garden hose to hold pressure for over 100 meters. In my exeprience, getting a hig inlet flow is pretty much required for large water works. My last cistern project was similar to yours in that it had a 50 tiles long tunnel connecting the inlet to the cistern and I had no problems filling the cistern using 5 screw pumps to pump the water from a lake into the tunnel.

[GhostDwemer]

You'd need to illustrate or explain your setup in more detail for a more detailed answer. I do what taptap does, use fully pressurized water lines and diagonal depressurizers at the point of use. With multiple z-level cisterns, I always fill from the top. Filling from the bottom is just too tricky, you'd need to depressurize at one z-level above the highest point you want to refill to.

I have seen bugs where the water system does not work according to the explanation given, when using u-bends at the bottom of a feed, with grates controlling access. Buildings and furniture can not be destroyed from below, if there is no other path to them, so this lets me seal up my fortress while still maintaining a water connection. However, this simply does not work sometimes. Mostly, it works as advertised but sometimes, flow simply stops at the u-bend.