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Author Topic: Water source activity zone  (Read 1341 times)

Lord Shiteblast

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Water source activity zone
« on: November 14, 2017, 07:30:56 pm »

I have a bunch of water from caving in ice. My plan is to bucket brigade it to my farming area. According to the wiki I'm supposed to drop the water zone over the tiles adjacent to water not over the water tiles themselves, but when my dorves try to fill the pond zones I get message spam about no water source. I don't understand why this isn't working, please halp!

EDIT: Additional information - the water is 2 deep and I've checked the orders menu sop that nothing is stopping the dorves.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2017, 07:34:24 pm by Lord Shiteblast »
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deathpunch578

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Re: Water source activity zone
« Reply #1 on: November 14, 2017, 07:50:07 pm »

what you are currently trying to do is set a water DRINKING zone, this is for making sure your dwarves drink from a certain spot. what you should do is put a pit zone over the hole, go in to options for the zone and set it to pond instead of pit. the dwarves should be dumping water into the hole once that's set (keep in mind that they will keep filling it until its full, so keep an eye on it)
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Water source activity zone
« Reply #2 on: November 15, 2017, 05:43:02 am »

A water drinking zone should not be required for dorfs to fetch water, as deathpunch578 said. However, a water drinking source (with or without a zone) is often the place where water can be fetched for bucket usages as well. If you get spam about no water source I'd double check that the dorfs can actually get to the water to fill the buckets, i.e. stand beside the water with the top of the water being at the same level as the floor (i.e. the water basically lapping at their feet if at 7/7).
The pond zone should be in the air one Z level above the future farm plots, obviously reachable by the dorfs. One way to do that is to dig a single tile wide slit in the floor of a room directly above the farm plot room and designate each tile in that slot as a its own pond zone. As soon as a dorf has dropped a bucket of water at one such tile that zone is deleted. If you create a single large pond zone most buckets will probably be emptied at the same tile, causing needless extra work due to evaporation. Once all the tiles have been muddied, the slit can be enlarged and the new tiles designated as new pond zones. However, I'd probably just create a number of slits and have the farm plots made according to that design, as it's less work.
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Lord Shiteblast

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Re: Water source activity zone
« Reply #3 on: November 15, 2017, 07:04:41 am »

They can definitely access the water, they dug out the area after all! I have the farm room channeled as per instruction with slit ponds, but the dwarves still won't fill it. The water and farm rooms are separate, just to clarify.

Some screenies:-

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Some of the water there is the unusable stuff, but the rest of it should be enough to fill at least half of my farm area I reckon. I checked the door too, to be sure.
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Water source activity zone
« Reply #4 on: November 15, 2017, 09:13:21 am »

So you've got a water depth of 2? I'm not sure what the minimum depth for scooping up water is, but it might be more that 2.
I'm also unsure of whether dorfs can scoop up water diagonally (while there's no perpendicular access: it's known dorfs can do stuff diagonally then, such as building, but only if the COULD have stood perpendicularly).

Also, I assume the marked room is the farm room. If so, you may want to consider removing the ramps before pouring water on them (once you got that going), as removing muddied ramps removes the mud as well.
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FantasticDorf

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Re: Water source activity zone
« Reply #5 on: November 15, 2017, 09:41:04 am »

Looks like your water spread out & evaporated already. Its a long shot but you could try collecting the water into a basin using a screw pump to condense it to a more compact place to draw upon, or just cave in more carefully another spot with ice.

Multiple layers of ice on a compact area = draw out with a pump at hand quickly into basin rinse & repeat, collect from basin.

Alternatively put the farm at the edge of the map, and pour water behind a bridge until 7/7 (or pump it directly behind the bridge) then release, and let the water run off past stone fortifications at the edges, but thats more for less conservative water engineering like rivers & large ponds etc.
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anewaname

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Re: Water source activity zone
« Reply #6 on: November 15, 2017, 02:05:23 pm »

You will get a "no water source" message when the water-supply zone has 0 water tiles. (use 'i' to check the zone and look for "water source (x)". If x=0, then the zone is the problem. That number is how you can be sure the zone is a valid water source or not.

That number represents tiles that a dwarf can stand in and can reach 2/7 water from, where the water is one z level down. If the water source disappears while the dwarf is walking, you will get a different message.
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